Campfire season may be over at Pearl Lake State Park, but smoke can be spotted this month in northern Routt County due work by fire crews.

After two summers of wildfire mitigation work in the greater Pearl Lake and Willow Creek Pass areas, fire crews created almost 5,000 hand-gathered burn piles as part of a project to improve forest health and address fire-management concerns. The piles were marked by GPS coordinates and left to await burning by crews when conditions became safe, said Fire Management Officer Kevin Thompson with the U.S. Forest Service office in Yampa.

Fire crews can burn the piles when conditions are just right, meaning with at least 2 inches of snow on the ground but not too much snow where that crews cannot work safely or when the piles are too wet and covered with snow. When conditions are best, the professional fire crews burn as much as possible.

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“We have to burn when we have a little snow but have to stop when it gets to be too much snow,” Thompson said. “We have burned almost 1,000 piles so far on the Routt National Forest this fall and about 300 piles near Pearl Lake.”

District Ranger Michael Woodbridge said most of the burning so far this fall has taken place near Pearl Lake and in the Old Park area about 12 miles northwest of Kremmling.

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Thompson said burning the remaining 4,000 hand piles could take three to five years depending on the snow, conditions and personnel resources. He noted that although private landowners may see professional fire crews burning piles, that does not mean private landowners are automatically permitted to conduct an open burn, because county and federal burn permitting policies differ.

The daily location of pile burning is posted on the Facebook page for the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests and Thunder Basin National Grassland at Facebook.com/FSMBRTB or on X (formerly Twitter) at https://x.com/FS_MBRTB/.

Facebook posts on Nov. 7 and Nov. 13, for example, notified the community that slash pile burning was planned for forest locations east of Pearl Lake with smoke visible from Routt County Road 129.

The Forest Service information was part of various agency project updates regarding wildfire mitigation and forest health efforts provided during the Routt County Wildfire Mitigation fall conference on Friday at Library Hall in Steamboat Springs

“Let’s celebrate what’s going on and think ahead for next year,” said Josh Hankes, executive director of the nonprofit Routt County Wildfire Mitigation Council. “Routt County does collaboration really well. We learn from each others’ experiences while it’s fresh in our heads.”

Work planned for summer 2025 across Routt National Forest includes fuel-reduction treatment scheduled near the Lake Agnes neighborhood in the northwest corner of Grand County on the east side of Rabbit Ears Pass. Work also will continue on the North Routt Fuels Reduction Project around Steamboat Lake, including areas where federal land meets private land, Woodbridge said. He noted private landowners advocated for the work to lower wildfire risk and prevent standing dead trees from falling on and damaging fencing.

Multiple other projects for timber sales and fuels treatment with hand-cutting and piling and mastication are planned across the Routt County area, such as timber sales near Walton Peak at 100 Road or a fuel break near Lake Catamount; however, those projects are funding-dependent.

Kathleen Voight, additive conservation manager for nonprofit Colorado Cattleman’s Agricultural Land Trust, updated the audience on the Steamboat Front Wildfire Ready Action Plan. That work is designed to create a plan of priorities to mitigate wildfire risks and post-wildfire impacts to watershed health to the south-southeast of Steamboat Springs.

The plan will be produced by JW Associates in Breckenridge, the consultants who created a similar wildfire ready action plan earlier this year for the Bear River corridor in southern Routt County. The land trust will use funds from the Colorado Water Conservation Board wildfire ready watershed grant to pay for the threat analysis and mitigation priority mapping on 213,000 acres of private and public land to be completed by late 2025.

“After 2025, we will pursue funding to achieve the priorities,” Voight said.

Forester Carolina Manriquez with the Colorado State Forest Service reported that the agency has awarded almost $2 million in wildfire mitigation work funds for Routt County projects, equipment and staffing in the past two years.

The Wildfire Mitigation Council also led a panel discussion with four of the trained neighborhood wildfire ambassadors, including the volunteers representing the neighborhoods of Village Green Highlands, The Sanctuary, Steamboat II and Henderson Park. The neighborhood volunteers discussed projects completed or planned, such as homeowner collection of dead or overgrown trees and brush for chipping days, Home Ignition Zone inspections, reduction of ladder fuels on shared open space, and communication with neighboring landowners to maintain a 30-foot mowed corridor at the edge of neighborhoods.

Officials also continue to urge all citizens to sign up for Routt County Alerts via RouttCountyAlerts.com to be notified in case of wildfires and other emergencies. Cell phone numbers are not automatically registered in the emergency alerts system.

Fire experts said those interested in learning more about wildfire activity can download the free app Watch Duty, found at WatchDuty.org, for real-time wildfire maps and active alerts in 13 Western states including Colorado.