Hayman Fire Area Trail Ride

This was the worst fire in Colorado history. The 2002 western fire season ended with fires burning 7.2 million acres and costing over $1 billion to fight. That same wildfire season is considered one of the most intense of the past half-century in the western United States.

The premiere fire that year was the Hayman which burned 138,000 acres and 133 homes in 20 days. It still holds the record for being Colorado's largest wildfire ever. Most of the fire (72%) stayed on the Pike National Forest south and west of Denver and northwest of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Enough fire escaped national forest lands to cause significant private damage.

Beginning in 1998 La Nina brought below-normal precipitation and unseasonably dry air masses to the Colorado Front Range. Conditions degraded year after year in the predominantly ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir forests becoming drier with each passing season. In the Summer of 2002 the fuel moisture conditions were among the driest seen in at least the past 30 years.

A U.S. Forest Service worker, Terry Lynn Barton, started the fire in a USFS campground as she patrolled under a no-burn order. A federal grand jury charged Barton on four felony counts including willfully and maliciously destroying U.S. property and causing personal injury.

It's sad to see so much devastation to a beautiful forest area but it really shows the rugged beauty of the landscape.