Kessler Flats

Point to point, as the crow--or the sheriff’s helicopter--flies, it’s only about four miles from where the lost hunter, Sergio Martinez, lit his infamous signal fire to the cul de sac in Ramona’s San Diego Country Estates where the Cedar Fire took the first of more than 2,200 houses in late October, 2003. On the ground, however, it’s literally a long and winding road.

Bob and I set out last Sunday to retrace Sergio’s footprints and in the process we logged nearly 100 miles on the Suburban. We started by driving north up Wildcat Canyon to Ramona, where Hwy. 67 becomes Hwy. 78, and then on past farms, horse ranches and even a camel dairy as we wound into the Laguna mountains all the way to the outskirts of Julian. A mile shy of that quaint little mining village turned tourist mecca, we turned south again on Pine Hills Road.

In most Cedar Fire reports, the fire's point of origin is usually described as four miles south of Pine Hills. I'd never been there before, but it's easy to miss--a tiny community of homes, many decidedly upscale, and all loosely clustered around a dinner theater and a fire station. It was here at the Pine Hills station that some 350 firefighters waited while their bosses drove one dirt road after another, in the darkness, trying to find a way into the fire. They never did, of course, which is why the blaze was able to simmer along until the Santa Ana winds came up in full force at midnight and shot the fire like a cannon ball out of the mountains and eventually all the way into the city of San Diego 50 miles to the west.

Pine Hills Road leads almost immediately to Eagle Peak Road, which turns quickly from asphalt to gravel and dirt. Sure enough, four miles later we came to Kessler Flats, where Sergio pulled off and parked his truck early the morning of October 25, 2003. Then he and his hunting partner, Ron Adkins, headed off into the chaparral in search of deer.

We only found a couple of spots along Eagle Peak Road near Kessler Flats where you can pull off, and certainly no place big enough for a fire engine to park, much less turn around. Think about trying to squeeze in a fleet of trucks and engines, bulldozers and crew buses. And being sure they could all get turned around and make a hasty exit if the fire turned around and headed back in their direction, as wildfires have often been known to do.

In fact, it was in almost this exact location half a century ago when 11 firefighters were killed during an unexpected flash-over in a canyon during the Inaja Fire. We'd even stopped at the Inaja Memorial just before Pine Hills Road and read their names.

As the name implies, Kessler Flats is a broad, grassy break in the rolling hills and corrugated canyons that distinguish this part of San Diego County. It must have been beautiful a couple of months ago when everything was still green. It’s still striking now, a lake of golden grasses bending in the breeze, studded by islands of enormous oaks.

We’d made a point of coming more prepared than Sergio. He’d brought only a rifle and a single canteen. We brought two backpacks full of water, a sheaf of topographical maps and two GPS locaters. We armored ourselves with sunscreen, sunglasses, ball caps and snake boots. And Bob, still my favorite Marine, even strapped on a pistol, just in case some hungry mountain lion thought we looked tasty.

There’s no trail leading from Eagle Peak Road to the point where Sergio ended up after losing track of his hunting buddy and wandering lost and thirsty for nearly 8 hours that scorching hot October Saturday. The map actually shows a bit of trail, just a loop from one point to another on Eagle Peak Road. But on the ground we saw only a few tire tracks, and even they didn’t seem to lead anywhere. Certainly nowhere in the vicinity of the latitude and longitude we needed to find. So it was strictly a cross country hike, a real adventure pointing the GPS in front of us like a water wand.

We’d plugged in the coordinates from the sheriff’s report, which documented exactly where the helicopter had landed when it arrived to extract Sergio from the mess he’d made. And we knew also from the same report where he’d been found and where the fire had been burning. Plus, we’d had help in pinpointing the exact locations from sheriff’s deputy and chopper pilot Dave Weldon, who’d been the one flying that afternoon when he and his partner, Rocky Laws, rescued Martinez.

Past the spreading grassland of Kessler Flats, the terrain drops away down a fairly steep slope and then flattens out again for a bit until it runs into a leafy line of trees growing alongside a little creek. This time of year, it’s narrow enough to step over. Immediately on the other side, we had to scramble up a serious incline to find the tiny level spot where Weldon had perched the helicopter the day of the fire.

No one can know how far Sergio Martinez actually wandered that day trying to find either his buddy or his truck. He told Weldon and Laws he’d been all the way to the bottom of a rugged canyon that falls off precipitously immediately east of where he ended up. Standing out there where Sergio stood, it’s hard to imagine why he would do such a thing. It’s a long way down and ridiculously steep, much steeper than the terrain we’d covered.

I had to wonder why he would choose such a rugged path and think he could possibly be retracing his steps. It doesn’t make sense that he couldn’t have picked out a landmark or two to steer by. But then it’s difficult to imagine, now that the fire has cleared the terrain, what Sergio’s visibility would have been at that time. Judging by Weldon’s report and the remaining black skeletons of once-mature scrub oak, the brush around him towered up to 15 feet.

When they spotted him from the air, led in by the smoke, Sergio was sitting on a low jumble of rocks. Just downwind from him, edging uphill toward the top of a broad knoll, a patch of chaparral about 50 yards square, or roughly half a football field, was burning. And the wind was already blowing at 20 to 30 mph.

Sergio couldn’t have seen the Country Estates from his seat on the rocks. He would’ve been looking east toward Cuyamaca, Middle Peak and North Peak, the heart of the Lagunas where 400 year old conifers had towered over generations of San Diegans drawn to the cool green quiet of Rancho Cuyamaca State Park. A nearly sacred place, a natural cathedral, irreplaceable. Within the week it would be reduced to ash and firewood.

The Country Estates lay to the southwest. You have to walk uphill a little farther to the top of a gentle knoll rising behind Sergio's rock pile. And that day there was a fire in the way. But when we reached the top of the knoll we could see the estates clearly, even the water tank on Thornbush Road where CDF Battalion Chief Kelly Zombro and NFS Division Chief Hal Mortier were waiting and watching that Saturday night to see exactly what this little fire was going to do.

The four miles between Sergio and the two chiefs covers some of the roughest terrain in Southern California: the San Diego River drainage. The mountains are steep here, I’d say 60 to 70 degrees as a general rule, and in some places approaching vertical. The gorge itself is a slash cut deep into nearly barren earth. In the rainy season, 40 foot waterfalls cascade from one notch in the topography to the next below it. A couple of trails wind down to the river itself. One of these bleeds off the end of Eagle Peak Road, two miles of ruts and boulders hugging the side of the mountain like a string of lights on a Christmas tree. One false step and the world falls away. It’s a full two miles in, but getting back out is the part I’d worry about.

I'd often imagined what the terrain was like where Sergio wandered for so long and got so hopelessly lost. That's why I wanted to see it. Perhaps I should've expected it would be different than I'd thought it would be. But still I was surprised to find it much less wild, less intimidating than in my imagination, though definitely on the edge of rugged. A few things do become perfectly clear once you’re out there where Sergio ended his long day’s journey into exhaustion. First, you’re a long way out in the sticks and a healthy hike in from the nearest road. On the other hand, you can turn in a circle and see nearly everyplace the fire went from here, which makes you realize that nothing is really all that far away, not the Country Estates or Barona or Lakeside. Not Poway or Scripps Ranch or Tierrasanta or Miramar. Not Alpine or Crest or even the Lagunas. And certainly not Julian or Wynola, where Firefighter Steve Rucker died fighting the flames.

Fanning out in all directions as it did, running with the wind, first southwest and then due east, when the Santa Anas died and the onshore breezes returned, the Cedar Fire was equally well positioned from this remote spot in the Cleveland National Forest to hit any and all of those locales in a straight run.

It seemed so very far away when we first heard of it. Miles and miles. But distance, like time, is relative. And the journey that took us so long by car and on foot is nothing to a bird, a helicopter or a wildfire.