A wildfire in Colorado’s Mount Zirkel Wilderness blew up Sunday, burning out of control and spreading across 1,832 acres, and federal firefighters initially focused on evacuating more than 100 campers and hunters with a helicopter deployed for that purpose.
The fire started late Saturday about 30 miles northwest of Walden. Federal fire managers said the cause is uncertain but there hasn’t been much lightning in the area. The point of origin was 3 miles from a Hog Park guard station inside the wilderness area on the Routt National Forest.
U.S. Forest Service officials nevertheless were treating this as a wildfire that must be suppressed.
“It was right on the edge of the wilderness with the ability to come out of the wilderness,” federal incident command spokesman Aaron Voos said.
On Sunday night, flames were spreading northeast near the town of Pearl a mile south of the Colorado-Wyoming border — west of where the 60-square-mile Beaver Creek fire burned in 2016. (Suppressing that fire in the end cost $30 million.)
Wind gusts at up to 25 miles per hour grounded air tankers and helicopters. One helicopter was deployed to assist in evacuations, but Voos said he could not confirm whether any campers or hunters were air-lifted.
“It is rocking and rolling,” he said at dusk. “We haven’t been able to get air on it since midday because of the winds. Our efforts have been focused on evacuating hunters and campers.
“We worked on it as long as we could before it got up and moved. …. It’s been hot and dry. We haven’t had any recent storms in the area.”