(Pics below)
I was heading out for what I was hoping would be a good day of recon at Castaic Lake! I wanted to see if the Bass had moved into the shallows yet, how cold the water was to the touch & how much shore I had access to do to the high water level (Its a few feet shy of Full)! Little did I know the recon I did would have little to do with fishing (Water was cold to the touch, very murky & 3ft to high for my spot! Not a bite!)!
I parked up by the church at the spot where all the boats turn around to line up before the lake opens! As I walked down into the old park I noticed the tree line seemed to be...missing! At first I figured the rain or wind took some trees down! The further down the path I went the more horrifying the realty became! The area had been all but clear cut by loggers for firewood! 95% of the trees (around 200) were gone... but they were still there! They have been bucked & cut into 16in logs and piled up in about 200 piles that are scattered erratically throughout the Old Park grounds! The park is now a disaster area!
The only word I can find to describe the scene is chaos! It's looks as if they were logging, starting fires, & fighting fires all at the same time!
There are piles of wood stacked everywhere! Some neatly stacked & some in a heap! The road is lined with large amounts of charcoal from burnt wood as if someone wanted to reenact Mad Max Fury Road! There are dozens burn spots scattered throughout the area (12ft circles) where they seemed to have starting small fires intentionally! There are dozens of piles of branches stacked 5 feet tall (Bonfires waiting to happen)! The ground has been completely torn up by heavy machinery & there is still equipment like fire hoses & couplings scattered throughout the area!
Now I don't consider myself tree huger! I'm a Charcoal burning, Cowboy steak eating, Beer guzzling, Slow Smoking, Violent movie watching Red blooded American but this was a cold wet slap to the face! Needless to say I was horrified! My shouts of "WTF!" Could probably be heard from both Dams! The Woods of the abandoned park that I had walked through with my father as a boy & with my friends as a man are completely gone forever but its remains was scattered everywhere I look! To me this is blasphemy!
I could tell that the logs had been cut within a week or so because the piles of branches still had green needles on them! The piles of logs all seemed to be cut from live trees with the dead ones simply cut down & left whole to rot on the ground! It appeared that this part of our National Forest has been turned into a firewood storage facility! As I looked across Hawks Nest Cove towards Trout Point I can see that the ridge on the other side has been clear cut as well!
I looked online & found the order! It was a bid to cut 25 trees! 25! I was looking at well over 100 fell trees! Now I'm looking for answers & heads! THIS PARK HAS BEEN COMPLETELY ABANDONED FOR OVER 30 YEARS! IT WAS A WASTE OF TAX DOLLARS TO BEGIN WITH! This travesty must have a million dollar price tag on it! They had to repair the road just to get down to the trees & that was no small feat! The decades of rain had eroded a 20ft wide 20ft foot deep hole in the road half way down! The same forces will erode the entire area into the lake now that the trees are gone!
I can understand cutting down dead trees to prevent beetle infestations and fires but this was a hack & slash job & to add insult to injury they left the place completely trashed! But I think I've said enough! You can see for yourself what they have done but unless you have walked those paths you will never know the true devastation that has occurred in this once sacred (at least to me anyways) place!