CPR News
Despite the intense heat and smoky air, John Omstead decided to spend one of his days off this summer fly fishing. He traveled from his home town of Vail to a spot on the Eagle River near Dotsero, just a few miles away from the Grizzly Creek fire raging in Glenwood Canyon.
After a few hours of catch-and-release, including “one really big rainbow,” Omstead had to call it quits. The smoke started to burn his eyes, and the water had warmed to the point where fish start to get stressed and sluggish.
“You can’t even really fish all day anymore, it’s just too hot,” Omstead said.
“It’s almost becoming the new norm.”
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Mike Lester, the director of the Colorado State Forest Service, said that fire suppression over the last century has greatly increased the number of trees and available fuel, and forest management needs change.
“It’s going to take an investment in our forest to try and bring that forest health around to where the fires that we do have, and which we will have, are low to moderate intensity fires,” Lester said. “But we haven’t really made those investments in our forest, and so we find ourselves in the situation we’re in today.”