But when they woke up, they saw a plume of smoke rising into the sky. Darren Wilson had anticipated something like this, even before their trip began.

“It was in the back of my mind — I hope we don’t hike into somewhere and get trapped by a fire,” recalled Wilson, a Hamilton, Montana, resident.

They were hiking through the Anaconda Pintler Wilderness and knew it was under strict restrictions: No building campfires, no fire allowed anywhere, no exceptions. The summer had been dry and hot, and wildfires had been erupting throughout Montana.

But as the group continued hiking toward Hidden Lake, they realized the trail of smoke ahead might be the early stage of a wildfire.

The hikers weren’t trapped, but 200 yards from Hidden Lake they came upon scorched earth surrounding a tree split down the middle, most likely from a lightning strike. Its bark was blackened and glowing, and beneath the tree the charred ground smoldered. The smoke they’d seen was seeping from beneath hot charcoal and dry wood.

“You could tell the tree torched and burned while it was standing and then cracked and fell on the ground,” said Darren’s wife, Chelsie, an x-ray technologist with previous experience in wildland firefighting.

“I think everyone had different feelings,” she said. “Those who had never seen forest fires before were panicking.”

The group put Chelsie Wilson in charge, and she laid out a two-step process: Some people would run to Hidden Lake to fill every water bottle and hydration pack. Everyone else would use the water to turn the smoldering dirt into mud.

Chelsie Wilson and Brittney Erickson, one of her fellow hikers, poured water on dirt, using the wet earth to put out the fire bit by bit. Chelsie kicked a burning stump into the ground. The team smothered it. She instructed and delegated jobs, describing the team as willing, communicative and diligent.

“It was really scary at first,” Chelsie said, “and then it became fun.” After two hours, she gave her team the all-clear. They had transformed the patch of smoldering char into a wet pile of dirt and debris.

On a hike later the same day, the group climbed West Pintler Peak only to spot another fire, this one on the horizon some 10 miles away. They called in the sighting from a ridge with cell service and heard a plane fly low overhead the next day. Weeks later, they said they think that was the first alert to the Johnson Fire, a 270-acre blaze southwest of West Pintler Peak.

If there was a theme to the hikers’ trip it was definitely fire, because while camping near the bank of Oreamnos Lake, they spotted wispy smoke billowing from the opposite shoreline.

“We start yelling across the lake, top of our lungs,” Darren Wilson said. “‘Is there anybody there? Do you have a fire?’” Hearing no response, they initiated a then-familiar course of action. Gathering every container of water they possessed, the group rushed toward the smoke’s source.

“Like children of the corn, we come out of the trees,” Wilson said, only to find three men huddled around a prohibited campfire. The hikers explained that they’d put out a smoldering wildfire, spotted another and were worried about a third — the campfire they were now looking at.

“The guys were not very impressed with us, though,” Chelsie Wilson said, as the men reluctantly extinguished their fire. “They didn’t like our story at all.” Still, they’d agreed to douse the fire and the hikers withdrew, hoping this was the end of fires popping up on their trekhike.

“It’s a real possibility,” Darren Wilson said. “You could be caught behind the wrong side of a fire.”

Zeke Lloyd is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He lives in Helena, Montana and writes for the Montana Free Press.

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New research has linked wildfire smoke exposure to higher rates of dementia, reproductive health issues and lung and heart disease, and forest service employees say the iconic, red fire retardant slurry dropped out of planes has been linked to thousands of fish kills.

“There are hundreds of gases that are emitted from wildfire smoke, some of them in very, very small quantities,” National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Rebecca Hornbrook said. “Some — like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides — are emitted in higher quantities, but some of those smaller quantity gases are actually even more toxic.”

Short-term effects of wildfire smoke

“Everyone can be impacted by wildfire smoke,” said Colleen Reid, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies the health impacts of wildfire smoke. “…We see increases in health impacts within one day of high smoke exposure.”

Normal symptoms when smoke is heavy in the air include coughing, shortness of breath, headaches, tiredness, chest pain and itchy and watery eyes, Reid said. Emergency room visits and hospitalizations for respiratory problems also go up when smoke is active.

Mild symptoms often go away within a day or two of smoke clearing from the area, according to Reid.

In addition to smoke, wildfires also leave behind ash that can irritate the lungs, eyes, nose and skin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As residents clean up areas impacted by a wildfire, they should wear protective clothing and goggles and wash off any ash that gets on their skin, eyes or mouth as soon as possible, according to the CDC.

Researchers exploring long-term health impacts of smoke

“We know a lot about the short-term health impacts of wildfire smoke exposure, we know less about long-term effects,” Reid said.

According to Reid and David González — an assistant professor of environment health sciences at the University of California Berkeley who works with Colorado researchers to determine the long-term impacts of wildfire smoke exposure — recent studies have linked wildfire smoke exposure to increased cases of the flu, decreases in lung function, and higher rates of depression, anxiety and dementia.

The increase in influenza cases was first noticed after a bad wildfire season several years ago, and researchers believe that exposure to wildfire smoke may have made people’s lungs more susceptible to infection when exposed to the virus, Reid said.

According to González, wildfires also impact cardiovascular health — smoke can trigger heart attacks and strokes, worsen heart failure, cause abnormal heart rhythms or exacerbate pre-existing heart disease — and reproductive health — smoke increases the risk of birth defects, miscarriage and infertility in both men and women.

Reid said people can start seeing health impacts — both short-term and long-term — after just one day of high smoke exposure.

Sometimes, smoke from fires farther away can cause more significant health impacts on communities than fires nearby, according to a recent study from Colorado State University.

Researchers believe that’s more likely due to changes in behavior than the distance of the smoke itself, Reid said. People who see the fire or smell the smoke may be more likely to take proactive and protective measures than people farther away from the burn site.

While how far the smoke travels depends on the wind, weather and how high the smoke is in the atmosphere, researchers are seeing an increase in air pollution across the world, even in places where wildfires are uncommon or non-existent, González said. Smoke can be traveled to states or even countries away.

“If there is smoke, try to stay indoors with windows and doors closed,” Reid said. “Wear an N95 or KN95 mask when outdoors and try to time your outdoor activities to when the air is cleanest.”

Reid said people should use air cleaners in indoor places and frequently replace filters on air cleaners and air conditioning units — the smoke can clog up the filters and prevent them from helping.

“There’s so much more work to be done here,” González said. “This isn’t the end of the story.”

Health, environmental impacts of fire retardant

Wildfire retardants contain about 85% water, 10% ammonium phosphate fertilizer and 5% minor ingredients — including a colorant to help pilots see where the slurry has already been dropped — according to former U.S. Forest Service employee Andy Stahl.

“It’s bad for the environment when it’s dumped into water because the ammonium phosphate turns into ammonia and ammonia is highly toxic to fish,” Stahl said. The former U.S. Forest Service employee currently serves as the executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. A single drop of fire retardant in a stream can be lethal to fish and other aquatic organisms.

Under “very specific conditions,” the fertilizer may poison animals that have eaten contaminated crops or drank water with retardant in it, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

However, as long as people aren’t standing under the retardant as it’s dropped, the mixture hasn’t shown any signs of long-term health impacts on humans, Stahl said.

The ammonia-based fire retardant will sting if it gets into cuts or scratches, or if it comes into contact with chapped or burned skin, according to the U.S. Forest Service. People should wash any skin that comes into contact with the slurry with water and soft soap, before using a hand cream to avoid dryness and cracking.

If retardant gets dropped on homes, residents should clean off the building as soon as possible, Boulder fire officials said. However, the retardant-covered homes should be safe to stay in until they can be cleaned.

That’s the weather forecast for today and Monday across Denver and the Front Range.

The National Weather Service Boulder expects temperatures to be above normal with temperatures ranging between 85 and 90 degrees in the urban corridor and the plains. Temperatures in the mountains will be 63 to 78 degrees, according to the forecast.

The mountains could see isolated thunderstorms.

Similar weather conditions are expected for the holiday on Monday with highs hovering near 90 in the Front Range and plains.

Skies will be hazy today with smoke from out-of-state wildfires that drifted into Colorado on Friday, according to the Colorado Air Pollution Control Division’s Smoke Blog. The smoke is lingering but atmospheric conditions should help the smoke disperse, beginning this afternoon, when light winds pick up.

High ozone warnings were lifted at midnight Saturday, but the smoke blog said many air quality monitors were detecting moderate particulate matter in the air, which could affect breathing for unusually sensitive people.

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While the phenomenon sounds straight out of a cartoon, it’s actually more common than you’d think, experts said. It’s a big enough problem that electric utility companies brainstorm efforts to mitigate bird electrocution, said Taylor Barnes, a Fort Collins-based biologist and geographic information systems specialist who co-authored a 2022 study entitled “Wildland Fires Ignited by Avian Electrocutions.”

Researchers found no coordinated records or data illustrating how frequently electrocuted birds dropping off power lines spark wildfires, so they sifted through Google searches of avian-induced fires in the United States from 2014 to 2018 and found 44 reported cases.

California had the highest number of incidents at 15. Colorado had two in 2016 — one in Littleton and one in Berthoud, the study found.

However, in July and August of this year, Colorado’s Front Range has been the scene of at least three reported bird combustions resulting in wildfires.

Investigators determined the flaming carcass of an incinerated bird sparked a July 13 brush fire in Arapahoe County that burned more than 1,100 acres and destroyed property southeast of Byers.

On July 31, the West Metro Fire District responded to a small brush fire in Jefferson County near Morrison after a bird was electrocuted by overhead power lines, caught on fire and fell to the ground, igniting the grass and brush below, the fire district said.

And on Tuesday, firefighters from West Metro and South Metro Fire Rescue responded to a 35-acre brush fire burning near a Denver Water treatment plant and Roxborough Park in Douglas County. Officials said the cause appeared to be a bird that hit a power line and fell to the ground, catching the grass on fire.

No humans were injured in these brush fires, and they were all contained.

“We’re getting more grassland or wildland fires from birds than we normally do,” said Mark Jurgemeyer, interim chief operating officer of CORE Electric Cooperative, which services more than 375,000 Coloradans with electricity.

CORE, which serves areas in Adams, Elbert and Douglas counties, was the provider for at least two of the recent avian electrocution incidents, in Byers and Roxborough Park.

Xcel Energy and CORE both serve the Morrison area, so that one is trickier to determine, Jurgemeyer said.

Xcel was the first utility in the country to enter into an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to proactively address issues involving birds and powerline structures, said Michelle Aguayo, Xcel media relations representative.

“We understand our infrastructure can be attractive to birds for roosting and building nests and can pose a collision or electrocution hazard to birds,” Aguayo said. “Our facilities are designed to meet industry standards that prevent or reduce the likelihood of avian incidents.”

Jonathan Ashford, fire investigator with the West Metro Fire Protection District, said that, during Tuesday’s fire investigation, they found four birds with varying degrees of burn damage in the area of the fire’s origin near an electrical line. Normally, a bird in the path of fire would fly away, Ashford said, so this was a good clue that the burned birds started the fire.

Ashford said he believed the birds likely would have been close enough together to face joint electrocution.

There are a couple of reasons why birds are increasingly meeting an end better suited for the “Final Destination” films.

It’s partially because of climate change, Barnes said.

An electrocuted bird is more likely to ignite a fire if conditions are dry, he said. Nearly half of Colorado is now in drought or has near-drought conditions, according to the most recent report from the U.S. Drought Monitor.

In July, a series of wildfires burning along the Front Range foothills killed one person, destroyed structures, caused the governor to activate the Colorado National Guard and enveloped sweltering metro Denver in a heavy cloud of smoke.

In addition to climate, there is the human introduction of electrical utility equipment into the environment, Barnes said.

Birds can sit on one wire, no problem. But if a bird touches a second wire, it opens a path of electricity right through the bird’s body, with a resulting zap that can be potent enough to send the bird up in flames.

Larger birds like hawks and eagles can be more at risk of electrocution, Barnes said, because their wider wingspans put them at greater risk of touching two different wires simultaneously.

There are ways to design power poles and their accompanying structures to make them less susceptible to bird electrocution, Barnes said.

Barnes works at EDM International, an electrical utilities consulting company, where the biologist tackles this very issue.

For new electrical poles, Barnes said designers can ensure enough space between “energized components” to allow birds to exist without touching two electrical components at once.

However, many utility companies can’t rip out and replace all their infrastructure, Barnes said, so there are ways to retrofit existing equipment to make it safer for birds. For example, utility companies can cover problematic wires or exposed electrical equipment with insulating material or put cages around pieces they don’t want birds coming into contact with.

“It’s amazing how resourceful birds can be when they want to be,” Jurgemeyer said. “We are constantly trying different products and different ways of working with vendors to come up with stuff that doesn’t exist to figure out ways to keep animals away from those energized parts.”

Sometimes smaller birds on the hunt for bugs will drive their beaks under insulated coverings in hopes of a snack, only to find an electrical jolt instead, CORE’s Jurgemeyer said.

“Every utility in the country that has overhead power lines has the same, exact problem,” he said.

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“We literally are a fire station building a fire station next to a fire station between a river and a highway,” Durango Fire Chief Randy Black said. “It’s 10 feet from the existing one and they turned us down because of the wildlfire risk. It’s just ludicrous.”

After months of searching for a policy, Durango Fire found an insurance company in May that would write an affordable policy to cover the construction of its new building. But the fire department’s predicament is indicative of the struggles many Coloradans face as they try to buy property insurance for their homes and businesses.

For some, the looming crisis over the escalating costs of property insurance — if you can get it at all — is causing as much financial concern for residents and business owners as the property tax issue at the center of this week’s legislative special session.

“The availability of homeowners insurance and business insurance is more significant than the discussion we’re having at the Capitol about property taxes,” said Garry Briese, executive director of the Colorado State Fire Chiefs. “It’s going to impact every single homeowner.”

More and more Colorado property owners report that their insurance policies are becoming unaffordable or being dropped because of the risks. A 2023 Colorado Division of Insurance report that looked at rates between 2018 and 2022 found the state’s homeowners have seen their insurance costs escalate faster than the rest of the country because of wildfires and hailstorms, which are growing more severe as the planet’s climate changes.

An estimated 321,294 homes across Colorado valued at $141 billion are at risk of being destroyed by wildfires, according to CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment.

But the rising costs are impacting every property owner in Colorado as insurance companies increase rates to cover their risk when a catastrophe happens anywhere in the state. That makes people’s monthly mortgage payments go up as most homeowner insurance is paid by their banks through escrow accounts. It also increases rents as landlords charge more to cover their expenses.

The Durango Fire Protection District is building a $12 million, 15,000-square-foot fire station at 1235 Camino del Rio, next to the Animas River. It will replace an existing building that has served as the city’s downtown fire station since 1983 — a building that was supposed to be a temporary home, Black said.

“They temporarily — and the joke here is temporary — put us in the building that had been the electrical suppliers’ annex shop,” he said. “It’s outdated. It’s unsafe. It doesn’t have near the space we need.”

After years of searching, the fire agency learned the property next to the existing building was available and drafted construction plans. But buildings under construction must be insured by a builder’s policy, which covers materials, equipment and unfinished structures. It’s separate from the policies that cover existing structures.

Three insurance companies — Travelers, Liberty Mutual and Hartford — refused to sell builder’s insurance policies to the fire department, citing the wildfire risk, Black said. Others offered insurance policies that cost five times more than what the fire department had in its budget, Black said.

Representatives of the three insurers either couldn’t be reached or weren’t able to comment.

The fire protection district finally found an agent in Grand Junction who landed a policy through Central Insurance for $20,000 for a year, Black said.

Homeowners in Durango are finding themselves in the same situation as companies see the local ZIP code and deny coverage, citing the fire risk, Black said. Almost the entire city is within what is considered the wildland urban interface, meaning it is close to the high desert to the south or the mountains to the north with open space, parks and trails all over the city.

Some residents call the fire district to ask if there was something the fire department could be doing to help lower insurance prices. Others are just simply looking for help, he said.

“The big thing for us is we use that story to tell people we sympathize with you,” Black said. “It’s crisis stage for our community and the people that are trying to insure buildings. I tell people we are in the same boat you are.”

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CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment comes as insurance companies increasingly rely on technology to help them determine how big the wildfire risk is across the United States and, in turn, how much they need to charge homeowners to cover those risks while still turning a profit.

The problem, according to consumer advocates and industry regulators, is these modeling systems do not account for all of the mitigation work being done to protect properties from fires. It’s a problem Colorado Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway is trying to solve.

“What the majority of them don’t do at all is incorporate state-level or community mitigation,” Conway said. “They have been telling homeowners they have to mitigate to keep insurance affordable and available. But if they’re not going to take that into account, that’s a very big problem.”

Colorado homeowners have seen their insurance costs escalate faster than the rest of the country because of wildfires and hailstorms, according to a 2023 Colorado Department of Insurance report that looked at rates between 2018 and 2022. At least one analysis found home insurance rates increased in the state by 19.8% between 2021 and 2023.

The increasing costs are not just impacting those whose homes are at risk of burning in a wildfire. Every property owner in Colorado will pay more so insurance companies can cover their risk when a catastrophe happens elsewhere in the state. That makes people’s monthly mortgage payments go up as most homeowner insurance is paid by their banks through escrow accounts.

The increase also affects renters as landlords will charge tenants more to pay for their expenses.

Those rising rates are being driven by increased wildfire risk — a result of a warming climate — and inflation, said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, an advocacy group for consumers. But new technology that provides insurers with maps, graphics and piles of data also are contributing to enormous increases, she said.

The latest wildfire risk assessment was produced by CoreLogic, a tech company that creates risk assessments for wildfires and other natural disasters. But CoreLogic is just one of a handful of companies producing such assessments by using artificial intelligence, drones and mapping, Bach said.

For example, Verisk Analytics’ most recent analysis on the cost of home reconstruction after a disaster, which also is used by insurance underwriters, reported that Colorado had the second-highest increase in post-disaster reconstruction costs in the country, behind only New Hampshire. The cost to rebuild a house rose 9.05% in Colorado between July 2023 and July 2024, the analysis found. Colorado also had the second-highest jump — 11.57% — in rebuilding commercial properties.

“In the beginning, I thought it was climate change driven,” Bach said of rising homeowners insurance costs. “But now I believe it’s the tech factor that is equally causing a dramatic shift in the market.”

Wildland urban interface

CoreLogic’s 2024 Wildfire Risk Assessment estimated that 2.6 million homes in the western United States are at least at moderate risk of burning in a wildfire, and the cost to rebuild those homes would exceed $1.2 trillion. Colorado ranked second with the most homes at risk while California was first and Texas was third, the assessment stated.

In Colorado, 68,928 properties in metro Denver are at risk along with 50,298 in the Colorado Springs area. Most of the homes in the state that are threatened by wildfire are in what insurance companies and firefighters call the wildland urban interface — in other words, houses built near open spaces or on the outskirts of mountain towns such as those that burned last month in the Stone Canyon fire near Lyons and the Alexander Mountain fire west of Loveland.

That growth around the wildland urban interface is contributing to rising insurance costs in Colorado.

Insurify, a digital insurance agent that compares quotes from more than 100 agencies, found that Colorado’s average annual home insurance rate is expected to increase by 7% to $4,367 in 2024 from $4,072 in 2023. In 2023, Colorado’s average home insurance rate was $1,695 higher than the national average.

Colorado’s continuing popularity and people’s desire to live near the mountains and foothills contribute to the state’s high ranking in the CoreLogic report, said Jamie Knippen, a senior product manager for the company. Since 2010, the number of homes built in Colorado in the wildland urban interface has increased 45%, she said.

“So as people have moved and development has increased within these areas, risk has also grown just due to the number of homes and the value of those homes,” Knippen said.

CoreLogic started producing the wildfire risk assessment in 2019 to help insurance companies figure out the risk they would take on when selling policies to homeowners in different areas of the country, Knippen said. The company also writes risk assessments for hurricanes and floods in other parts of the U.S.

The company wants to report accurate data so insurance companies and the general public understand risks, Knippen said. The risk assessment should start conversations about the perils homeowners face and how they can be taken into consideration when it comes to decisions such as buying a new house or protecting the ones people already have.

Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Association, said the various data reports generated by tech companies are really reflecting what insurance companies already know — hot, dry weather in Colorado is increasing the chances of wildfires and still people are building expensive homes in the mountains.

She disputed arguments that the various analyses cause rates to go up.

“What it really does is provide accuracy, first and foremost, for what your risk is,” Walker said.

Modeling isn’t new

Computer modeling for wildfire risk is fairly new to the industry, Walker said.

It is much more sophisticated than years ago when a homeowner would talk with their insurance agent about how far they lived from the nearest fire station and where fire hydrants were located in neighborhoods. Now, drones, satellite imagery and other data points can help analyze the slope on which a home is built, the vegetation around the house, construction materials and, yes, the distance to the closest fire station.

Those models also are helping with the science of mitigation, which is an increasingly big part of reducing wildfire risk, she said.

That means homeowners do as much as they can to reduce the chances their houses will burn in a wildfire. It involves everything from upgrading roofs to moving wooden fences farther from houses to clear-cutting dense brush around the perimeters of homes.

But that’s where the fight is centered. If insurance companies are going to ask homeowners to mitigate risk, then the homeowners should receive discounts for that work, Conway said.

So far, the risk analyses and modeling programs that insurance companies rely on are not taking into account all that work, he said.

For example, Colorado deployed a Firehawk helicopter for the first time to fight blazes that sparked this summer in Boulder, Jefferson and Larimer counties. The state’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control also has airplanes to map fires and carry water and retardants to extinguish them. Those aviation assets saved valuable property.

But the state and its homeowners do not get credit in risk assessments for those airplanes and the helicopter, Conway said.

The models also don’t take into account all the work that communities such as Boulder County have done to help reduce the level of destruction a wildfire can cause. For example, Boulder County collected $8.9 million last year through a sales tax dedicated to wildfire mitigation that funds projects such as using goats to graze on open space in Superior.

The same fight is happening in California, Bach said. It’s impossible to put the “tech genie back in the bottle,” so it is up to regulators like Conway to push the tech companies to change their models and predictions so mitigation efforts are included in the assessments, she said.

“That is the fight,” Bach said. “From my perspective as a consumer advocate, if you’re charging someone who has mitigated the same rate as someone who hasn’t, then you’re overcharging.”

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Mountain View Fire Rescue officials posted about the fire burning north of Colorado 66 at 5:40 p.m. Thursday. The 2-acre fire was fully contained as of 6:25 p.m., according to the Lyons Fire Protection District.

The area is east of the Stone Canyon burn scar, which scorched 1,557 acres north of Lyons, killing one person and destroying five homes three weeks ago.

This is a developing story and may be updated. 

U.S. 6 through Clear Creek Canyon will reopen around 5 p.m. after crews wrap up final fire operations, the sheriff’s office said in a post on X.

The fire did not threaten any structures or cause any evacuations, burning across steep, rocky terrain near the first tunnel in the canyon.

This is a developing story and may be updated. 

Fire crews responded to a lightning-sparked wildfire north of Lookout Mountain near Golden around 5 p.m. Tuesday. Flames quickly spread across an estimated 10 acres, fire officials said.

Witnesses saw lightning strike the mountain and the fire started shortly after, said Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jacki Kelley.

Strong winds in the canyon caused erratic fire behavior overnight, and it grew to nearly 200 acres by Wednesday morning, burning to the edge of U.S. 6, Kelley said.

But calmer winds, frequent water drops and the work of 65 firefighters scrambling across steep terrain held the fire’s size at 204 acres late Wednesday.

“All that we hoped would happen today is happening,” Kelley said at a briefing Wednesday afternoon.

The fire was 60% contained as of late Wednesday, and crews will resume fighting the blaze Thursday morning “to put this fire ‘to bed’ for good,” the sheriff’s office said in a post on X.

State transportation officials closed U.S. 6 in both directions between U.S. 40 and Colorado 93 in Golden on Wednesday morning, but fire officials hope to have the highway open as soon as possible, Kelley said.

The terrain is more treacherous than what firefighters faced when fighting the 580-acre Quarry fire near Deer Creek Canyon, which started burning three weeks before the Goltra fire and is now 100% contained.

“[Firefighters] that were on the scene last night said that every step is rocky, every step is unsteady,” Kelley said Wednesday morning. “And once again we’re dealing with a lot of rattlesnake activity in that area.”

No homes or structures are threatened by the fire and fire officials do not believe any evacuation or pre-evacuation notices will be needed, Kelley said.  Cooler weather on Thursday is expected to help fire conditions.

3D Maps of the #GoltraFire Perimeter

Please note that yellow dotted lines represent US HWY 6. Thank you to the @jeffcosheriffco and all of the fire fighters who are working hard to contain the fire! #Jeffco pic.twitter.com/FKF5ntFpD6

— Jeffco Colorado (@JeffcoColorado) August 21, 2024

A small wildfire likely sparked by lightning is burning just off of U.S. 6 near Lookout Mountain west of Golden, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

The Goltra fire was reported late Tuesday afternoon, about an hour after lightning moved through the area, sheriff’s officials said in a post on X.

Smoke can be seen rising from the mountainous area near the first tunnel for U.S. 6 through Clear Creek Canyon.

The fire is approximately 10 acres and has slowed down as it moves through shrubs and rock outcroppings, sheriff’s officials said at 7:45 p.m. No structures are threatened by the fire, and crews are fighting the fire from the ground.

Update to #Goltra Fire: Approximately 5 to 7 acres in size, crawling along the ground. There are absolutely no structures in danger as fire crews continue their ground attack. @JeffcoOpenSpace enroute with additional brush trucks. pic.twitter.com/8BiCk85MTk

— Jeffco Sheriff (@jeffcosheriffco) August 21, 2024

The sheriff’s office will monitor the fire overnight and fire crews will resume work on the blaze Wednesday morning.

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