Ashen Aspen

When San Bernardino National Forest reopened last week, I had hopes that the scene Alena Nicholas captured two years ago in an award-winning report, Aspen Grove Trail Recovers, would look even better.

Instead, the moribund scenes captured by Lisa Wilkerson-Willis with her camera phone tell of aspen not bursting with new life, but struggling beneath a coating of ash.

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Lisa visited the grove soon after it reopened, but found little to no color. It was so disappointing, she didn’t think it “worth it to use my camera.”

The grove has so little color or promise that it will develop, that I’m classifying it as Past Peak, even though many of the few leaves there have yet turned color.

Despite the dismal setting, Lisa found optimism in the “baby aspen” pushing up “all around the grove, some as tall as 11 feet, measuring two to three inches in diameter.”

Now if we could just get a break … a year with rain, an autumn without smoke … perhaps we could see it at its best.

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Elsewhere in the San Bernardino Mountains, James Wei says Big Bear is dragging its roots, as well. He rates most of the foliage to be short of 50%, which makes it barely Near Peak.

• Aspen Grove Trail, Sand to Snow National Monument, San Gorgonio Wilderness, San Bernardino National Forest (7,370′) – Past Peak – You Missed It.
• Big Bear Lake (6,752′) – Patchy to Near Peak (10 – 75%) Go Now!