The Bear Valley Trailhead area looks fine. Burnout and back burn operations along the Bear Valley Trail between here and the Meadow Trail junction did only limited damage.

I headed into the wildfire zone as I climbed the Meadow Trail. There were more deciduous trees here than elsewhere on today's hike. Some of these definitely took a hit.

This meadow part way up the Meadow Trail shows to mosaic of burnt and unburnt.

On the Sky Trail now, near the Meadow Trail junction. In some directions it doesn't look bad at all, even into areas reported to have burned.

The Mt. Wittenburg / Z-Ranch trail junction. No fire here. That's almost a shame. I have old (and badly faded) pictures of excellent poppy and lupine displays up here in the mid-1980's. Now it's mostly Eurasian weeds. A good ground fire might reverse that.

A newly sprouting branch on an otherwise 100% burnt-out young (<10 foot) Douglas Fir. Youth has its advantages. I've read that more mature firs can recover from being 50% scorched, but survival goes down with more.

Sky Trail below the Meadow Trail, in that 3/4 mile section before the Woodward Valley Trail junction. Right here the forest did OK. Some scorched lower branches. Lots of cleared out understory. But lots of green growth too.

About the same place, June 17, 2020, two months to the day before the Woodward Fire began. I noted at the time that this area had burned lightly in the 1995, wiping out some lower branches of the firs but leaving the "poles". That's even more the case today.

Just a few minutes farther along, the fire hit harder. Not many intact fir branches, and a greater hit on the understory. There's green, but it's mostly grasses, with some elk clover and re-sprouting huckleberry.

Who's going to make it? Yes, firs can live with damage. But I rather think the forest would be healthier if most of these old poles didn't do so, allowing for a new generation to come in.

Let's return to the understory. Staychs sp. (hedge nettle) was the only real wildflower in this area, but there were fields of the stuff.

Huckleberry was coming back from the roots, even in spots like this that saw lots of fire. Getting close to the junction with the Woodward Valley Trail now.

Where the ground burned under the firs and there was receptive open ground -- not a given -- there could be new fir sprouts. (This one's well out-of-order, having been taken on the Meadow Trail, but tiny seedlings were not just there.)

In moister spots, the sword ferns were reclaiming their position in the understory.

A very few hillsides burned severely enough that the understory has yet to begin its recovery. This was on the Sky Trail between the Old Pine and Baldy Trail junctions.

But go on a ways and we are back to a green carpet under a forest that saw mixed impacts. The white flowers are cow parsnip here. Near the Old Baldy Trail Junction.

The only showy wildflowers today were between the Baldy and Coast Trail junctions on the Sky Trail: a nice bank of Phacelia and paintbrush.

Pretty sure this forest section isn't going to make it. The ocean is not far below. I suspect this is one of those spots where the forest and coastal scrub have been fighting it out for eons.

Point Resistance. Burnt-out coastal scrub below.

On the Bear Valley Trail near the Coast Trail junction. With some strategically aligned fog coming in, there's no evidence of anything amiss.