Hermit’s Peak & Calf Canyon Fire

Hope Through Recovery

This is our home, and Hermit’s Peak Watershed Alliance joins its neighbors in the long-term commitment to restoring our lands and water from the damage caused by the Hermit’s Peak and Calf Canyon Fires.

Donation

If you’d like to donate towards HPWA recovery efforts, we could use all the help we can get! Please click the button below to be brought to our donation page. Thank you!

DONATION: Hope Through Recovery

Resources

Site Visit

We are here to provide you, our neighbor, with expertise, tools, materials and labor to stabilize soils and restore plant coverage of your lands to reduce flood threats, soil erosion and to protect the quality and quantity of our waters. If you or a neighbor would like a site visit to discuss what treatment and support would help, please complete the site visit request form by clicking the button below.

Please be aware that we can’t do debris removal work or the like, we are only able to work in drainages, waterways, or on the slopes of waterways to arrest erosion and stop sediment before it gets into the river/creek.

Request a site visit

Volunteer Sign-up Form

We at Hermit’s Peak Watershed Alliance believe that the correct approach to wildfire recovery is to consistently get boots on the ground, doing the restoration work one acre at a time to be sure that the work is good and that we achieve positive solid results. In order to reach these necessary goals, to affect as much land and people in as possible, we need YOU – YES YOU – to join us in our efforts and help the land to recover. Please fill out the volunteer form to be sure that your name gets added to our volunteer e-mail list.

Volunteer Sign-up Form

CURRENT WORK DAY

Hermit’s Peak Watershed Alliance is planning to host volunteer work days every other weekend throughout the summer and fall of 2023. We would be absolutely thrilled if you could find the will and the time to join us in our 2023 recovery efforts. Click on the button below to see our 2023 work schedule and consider when you might have some time to join us.

Work Day Schedule

Landowner Guides

Working alongside our neighbors in the Gallinas, Sapello, Mora and Tecolote watersheds, HPWA has learned what treatments work best on our lands and for our waters. Landowner Guides for Post-Fire flooding mitigation, soil erosion control, restoring plant coverage and tree management are available for you to download here. We hope that you’ll find them useful when considering the best restoration treatments for the long-term post-fire recovery of your land and protection of our water.

Soil Erosion

Flood Mitigation

Loss of Herbaceous Plant Cover

Post-Fire Landowners Resources

Collaboration

It takes us all working together to restore our land and water post-fire. The National Resource Conservation Service’s Emergency Watershed Protection program can also provide assistance to you as a private landowner through Tierra Y Montes Soil and Water Conservation District. Click here to download their application form, which is for the people in Gallinas Canyon. If you live in Mora, click here to download the Mora Soil and Water Conservation District assistance form.

Challenges

Flood Mitigation

Given the high percentage of intense burn (click here for map), much of the area impacted is at risk of flooding during our Monsoon season this year and up to five years from now. In fact, a 1.5″ rain event could cause a 100-year flood occurrence and dangerous debris flows. Federal, state and local government agencies are at work to meet this impending threat (click here for map). HPWA is, also, at work with landowners to reconnect our streams and rivers with their natural floodplains and to build ‘natural’ structures called PALS to absorb and reduce the intensity and quantity of flow and to capture debris at intervals throughout the Gallinas canyon watershed.

June 2024 Flooding Event

This flooding that happened due to 8 inches of rain falling in town and in the burn scar, which filled the Las Vegas Water Treatment reservoirs with more debris, ash, and sediment from the fires. Las Vegas had water treatment issues for a few months, and had do everything in its power to conserve water. Over 90 semi trucks filled with water were brought into town, businesses were closed or had limited operations due to the flood & water treatment issues, and the townspeople had to drink out of water bottles that were donated from communities across New Mexico. Below is drone footage of a part of the event.

If you’d like to view a live stream from the Santa Fe National Forest about flood mitigation, please click here.

Soil Erosion

The high intensity of the fires burned a vast percentage of grasses, shrubs, trees and litter layer that stabilize our soils by reducing the impact of precipitation and increasing absorption of water. Coupled with the steep slopes of our watersheds, we face the prospect of losing our surface soils during precipitation. These soils and remnant ash are washed away into our streams and rivers, increasing sediment in the water and scouring of our stream and riverbanks to impair our watersheds and the quality of our water for drinking, agriculture, recreation and wildlife.

Loss of Herbaceous Plant Cover

When the ground is bare and void of plants, soils are easily eroded and they lose their vital organic components, like nutrients and insects. Plants soften the impact of raindrops and slow rainwater over the surface of the ground. When rain slows down, it can enter the soil where it is stored or travels downward, replenishing streams, water table, and aquifers. Restoring plant cover through initial cover crops and grasses will stabilize the soils and begin the process of returning it to productivity while protecting our water. Over the long-term, more native plant species, including shrubs and trees can be introduced and some species will return on their own if we stabilize their environment.

Asbestos in Relation to Fire Damage

This information is to spread awareness of the dangers of wildfires in relation to asbestos exposure as many homes that are affected could contain asbestos. Asbestos is one of the most heat-resistant substances known to man, yet it can be highly toxic when it is damaged by fire. When structures catch fire, asbestos products become damaged and release carcinogenic fibers that become airborne and transportable by smoke.

Asbestos Guide

Other Resources

Daily Fire Updates: If you’d like to view daily fire update live streams, please click here to go to the official Hermit’s Peak and Calf Canyon Fire Facebook Page.

Full Incident Report: If you’d like to read the full Hermit’s Peak & Calf Canyon Fire incident report, which is an investigation into the cause of the fires, click here.

Work Day Accomplishments for 2022 Fire Recovery

The 26 site visits we accomplished during the summer (Task 3), yielded landowner agreements and projects with 11 landowners.

To treat those properties, we held 12 workdays with 645 volunteer hours.

Work entailed…

Seeding and mulching 32 acres

upland erosion control on 50 acres

drainage channel work in 1750’

construction of 34 log/rock structures.

Summer 2022 Post-Fire Recovery Work Days

Accomplishments for 2023 Fire Recovery Work

In the early summer, we hired two work crews made up of local individuals to do post-fire recovery work in the Gallinas and Sapello watersheds. The Sapello crew was a YCC (Youth Conservation Corps) group made up of students interested in learning about conservation work and wanting to help out their neighbors with post-fire recovery. The Gallinas crew was made of of local individuals who are from the local area. Below are statistics each group accomplished during this summer/fall.

Sapello YCC Crew

The YCC crew members constructed 117 structures, seeded 2.5 acrews with native grasses and oats, performed 4.2 acres of cross-felling along mountainsides, and treated 1.5 miles of stream channel over the summer. Most of the structures built by the YCC crew were one-rock dams, with 63 structures created account for 56% of the work performed. Below is a photo of a one-rock dam.

One rock dams are an essential tool in capturing sediment before it enters waterways. They also restore grade to entrenched channels, slow water velocity, and arrest channel incision. Trash racks were the second most frequently used structures, with 27 trash racks accounting for 24 percent of the work. Trash racks work similarly to one-rock dams by slowing water velocity, arresting channel incisions, and trapping sediment & debris. Below is a photo of a trash rack.

Gallinas Crew

The professional crew that worked in the Gallinas Watershed worked with eleven different landowners implementing low-tech restoration techniques learned during the training. Over the summer the Gallinas crew constructed over 30 baffles, 15 Beaver Dam Analogues, 30 log mats, 170 one-rock dams, 10 rock rundowns, 6 rolling dips, 6 zuni bowls, and 15 trash racks. The crew also seeded and mulched over 20 acres of land and planted 600 Ponderosa Pine seedlings in the Gallinas Watershed. You can find examples of all these structures in our latest newsletter.

Videos produced of the work that happened Summer 2024

Here is a presentation given by our Summer 2023 YCC work crew that worked in the Sapello Canyon all summer, at various private property, to restore areas in the burn scar. They learned a slew of low-tech restoration techniques and got in tons of practice building these structures. The work they did was to prevent further erosion of our precious soils, stop sediment from getting into our waterways, plant seeds and mulch areas of the burn scar, stop various debris from coming down the mountains, etc. They’ll fill you in!