STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

                Kurt Nelson led Chris Leman and Jo Heiss down  the farthest most stretch of Deer Creek Road—a road they’d been over often on bicycle and horse.

                Suddenly, the road disappeared, peeling off into a rollicking creek 20 feet below.

“I don’t recognize any of this,” said Chris Leman, bike trail coordinator for the Blaine County Recreation District.

                Nearly two years after the Beaver Creek Fire ravaged the Deer Creek area west of Hailey, spring rains have left once-burnt hillsides a lush green with fields of yellow tumbling mustard, heartleaf arnica, purple penstemon and red scarlet gilia adding their own spots of color.

                But signs of the 2013 Beaver Creek Fire are everywhere.

                Dried mud envelops a picnic table up to one of the seats. Heavy rains following the fires tore open gouges in the earth 8 to 10 feet deep. Boulders and other debris are lodged in the branches of alder trees. One side of the North Fork of Deer Creek Road resembles a ditch two foot deep. And an acre of cobblestone covers what used to be the North Fork trailhead parking lot.

                “It looks like a dredge has been through here,” noted Nancy Humphrey.

“Ma Nature’s dredge,” replied Nelson, district ranger for the Ketchum Ranger District.

The severe devastation in Deer Creek prompted the Forest Service to wait before reopening the area to the public. Even now the 100-foot Douglas Fir that line the North Fork of Deer Creek mask the moonscape on the ridges above that could still tear loose in a heavy rainstorm, said Zach Poff, recreation manager for the Ketchum Ranger District.

But Poff said he hopes to reopen the area by Fourth of July to allow camping at the campground, which was untouched by the fire. Poff is also identifying new dispersed campsites to replace those that were lost in mudslides.

On Thursday Poff and Nelson led 14 people past a locked gate that has barred access, giving representatives of the 5B Restoration Coalition, horse riders groups and others a chance to see the work that lies ahead to restore the watershed and recreation.

Workers have been busy removing mud from the road that was six feet deep in some cases. They’ve pushed fill on portions of the road that was taken down to the bedrock, installed new culverts and removed logs and other debris that had settled on bridges.

Nelson described how the North Fork of Deer Creek—normally a creek so tiny that it can easily be hopped—was wall to wall water as late as last August.

“You couldn’t even drive on parts of this road a couple weeks ago,” he said. “Every one of these drainages in here came unglued. It was like a huge fire hose gone crazy. You can see where willows are still bent to the ground.”

                Nelson paused at a wooden bridge sitting above a mess of gravel and described how he and other workers had to pull logs out from underneath the bridge and create a new channel.

“The water level on the road was 20 feet above the creek. We were sneaking along the edge, hanging onto the willows.”

Nelson pointed to pink flags surveyors had set on the hill above. The Forest Service is considering rerouting nearly a mile of the road out of the bottom onto the hillside, provided it can come up with the funding.

 “This particular area has been a perennial issue with beaver dams flooding the road and the stream wanting to move back and forth while we want it to go under the bridge,” he said. “The bridges  are 45 to 50 years old, anyway, so they would have to be replaced eventually.”

The fire uncovered “an astounding amount” of  railroad track and cars from the narrow gauge railroad that used to carry ore from Panther Creek area to two unloading docks where the bike path is today, noted Chip Deffe, owner of Sun Summit bike shop in Hailey.

It also scoured the topsoil from hillsides, exposing a lot of rock, added Nelson.

Nelson said six weather stations have been placed in the burn area ranging from Deer Creek to Baker Creek to alert the county to potential flash flooding should it rain a quarter inch or more in a 15-minute span.

“You hear about the flash floods in Texas that caught families out camping,” he said. “I want to keep that in mind as we reopen.”

The Forest Service plans to reconstruct the Kinsey, Wolftone and North Fork of the Deer Creek trails this summer, Poff said. Until work’s complete, no mountain biking or trail biking will be permitted.

But hiking will be allowed as soon as way finding markers are put in place. Hikers should be prepared to pick their way over cobblestone as they make their way up to the North Fork of Deer Creek. But Howard’s Trail, which branches off that area, was largely unscathed by the fire.

Idaho Parks and Recreation plans to bulldoze an ATV trail linking Kinsey and Wolftone trails and the Forest Service will finish it by hand.

And the Bureau of Land Management hopes to reinitiate a proposal for a single-track trail from the Hidden Valley bike trail in Croy Creek over the ridge into Deer Creek in its master plan in Fall 2015, said John Kurtz, the BLM’s recreation planner.

The Ketchum Ranger District also has a grant to refurbish the 12-mile Osberg Trail on the ridge above Baker Creek north of Ketchum this summer, Nelson noted.

Nelson said the number of funds the district can secure will help determine how fast work gets done.

“What we get done we get done,” said Nelson.

“You’ve done a remarkable job already,” said Heiss.

 “We have a mission—kicking butt,” replied Nelson.

SEE MORE PICTURES IN TODAY’S EYE ON SUN VALLEY