Here’s another batch of pix from our 6/19 flight over the Sherpa Fire. These were taken from our approach slowly climbing in the hot thin air over Montecito at 2pm to get above the 7,000′ safety area, until we first reached the NW corner at 2:30. They’re out of sequence with the ones hastily posted here and on Edhat earlier, but I’ll post more tomorrow to complete this set of larger and different views from those. First is this view into the smoke from over Montecito, unedited (except for size) to show how thick the smoke was. Most of the rest have been tweaked to better show detail.
7630 Smoky Distance
Next a much closer view into the smoke as we neared the Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) area created to safely separate fire attack aircraft from everyone else (including photojournalists, of which we were the only aircraft there that long before TV news time).
7633 Nearing Smoke
Continuing our slow climb across the mountains into Santa Ynez Valley we finally got above the smoke layer for a clear look back SSW across the ridge.
7685 Clear Air
At the left you can see some of the many expensive broadcast towers along that ridge that firefighters worked to protect the night before. Finally well above 7,000′ feet we turned SW back over the ridge and saw our first PhosChek drop of the day.
7707 Small Tanker, Big Red
They were working spot fires at this Northern edge of the burn area, where they’d already painted the hillside to slow and eventually stop the fire’s up-slope advance well below the expensive TV towers. Here’s another angle on that spot, showing how the fire was affected a few minutes later.
7721 Bigger Red, Smaller Fire
Nearing the Northwest corner of the burned area we could see a few more spot fires well within the scratched-bare earth, already-burned, and/or PhosChek-protected areas.
7717 NW Corner
Last up for this post is a view of the whole Northwest corner from more overhead, tweaked to better distinguish the burned areas in the dappled light from broken high clouds.
7736 NW Corner S to Beach
Straight up from the left red area and smoke plume is the El Capitan campground jutting out into the Channel. At the top-right is Refugio campground. Check out the layers of bare earth fire breaks, some quite wide, and multiple red lines of PhosCheck “insurance.”
John & Anne Wiley 
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