HOOD RIVER — The Mark O. Hatfield Trail from Hood River to Mosier through the Twin Tunnels remains closed due to the Milepost 66 fire in the Columbia River Gorge.
The fire was contained at 70 acres on Thursday, but crews will be working through the weekend to control the fire inside the lines.
Interstate 84 remains open, although one eastbound lane is closed at milepost 66, just east of Hood River.
Cascade Creek Fire — The 15,565-acre blaze on the south and west side of Mount Adams is 50 percent contained, the Washington Incident Management Team said Friday.
On its west side, the fire is burning about two miles east of road No. 23, the main route from Trout Lake to Randle.
Smoke continues to plague firefighters and local citizens as it is locked into the valleys during the night and morning by cold-air inversions.
In the Stagman canyon, the fire is burning about an eighth of mile per day as it backs downhill toward the headwaters of the White Salmon River.
“Because of the sparse ground fuels, the fire isn’t building up enough heat to torch the crowns of the trees and create embers that can spread ahead of the fire,” said Dean Warner, fire behavior specialist. “The light winds aren’t carrying the fire very far, and the inversion is keeping humidity high at ground level,” he said.
Several crews, equipment and aircraft are being demobilized from the fire as the firefighters come closer to accomplishing their mission of containing the fire.
Truckloads of fire hose that once stretched for miles along the Aiken Lava Bed to the northeast corner of the fire were carried back to the Cascade Creek Fire Incident Command Post Thusday to be dried and rewound for storage.
The cost of estimated the fire so far is slightly more than $10 million.
