Tamarack Canopy Tour and the Hurd Forest Fire

August 28, 2010

August 28, 2010

News of the Hurd Forest Fires in the Boise National Forest, just 1.5 miles South of Tamarack Resort has reached our customers, past and future.

Tamarack Canopy Tours has SURVIVED!

All State and Federal resources to include US Forest Service, BLM, Department of Lands, and fire fighting crews from at least ID, CA, OR, WA, and UT were on site fighting the blaze.  The Hurd Fire was approximately 1300 acres on August 26, 2010, burning hot, and frequent crowning of sub-alpine fir.  This was in part to weather factors such as very low humidity, high temperatures, and winds gust up to 30 mph. This caused the fire to crown and jump ahead of fire fighting crews on the ground. This fire movement put the threat on Tamarack Resort as the fire reached the southern edge of the resort border.

Fire fighting crews threw all their available resources on the fire to include some 10 helicopter tankers, 3 air tankers, 3 smaller retardant planes, spotter aircraft, some 775 fighter crew on the ground, smoke jumpers, and other local and state resources.  At one point fire retardant was being dropped on mid-mountain structures and lower mountain structures, including fire breaks protecting the zipline course.

The weather factors that contributed to the fire growth have now reversed aiding in the reduction of fire size and spread. Winds shifted from the NW thus blowing the fire back upon itself, day high temperatures decreased from the mid 90's to the mid 60's, higher humidity levels, lower wind speeds, and overcast skies, have all aided fire fighters to reduce the scale of the fire greatly.

The stage 3 mandatory evacuation of the resort has been lifted as of yesterday August 27, 2010.

Today the zipline office was set back up in our modular building and we expect to return to normal zipline operations and tours for Monday August 30, 2010.