As winter weather approaches, local forestry companies are preparing for pile burning season — a critical but often misunderstood step in reducing wildfire risk across Summit and Wasatch counties.
While burning is essential for maintaining defensible space around communities and restoring forest health, it’s a step that requires careful planning and particular weather conditions.
“Usually by mid-October we’re burning somewhere,” said Dave Telian, co-owner of Alpine Forestry. “We’ve had a really slow start because it’s been predominantly warm and dry. The mountains really haven’t seen that true fall pattern change that really plunges us into burn season.”
While the U.S. Forest Service started work on projects in Upper Millcreek Canyon despite less-than-ideal conditions — which caused a few smoky days in the Wasatch Back — Telian said the Park City area has more strict parameters for when to start controlled burns.
Burn seasons are traditionally in late fall and early spring, when rain and snow help deposit moisture in project areas of the surrounding forests. While it seems counterintuitive to have wet conditions for burning, Telian explained that moisture means fire danger is low and that controlled burns can be managed more safely. Plus, it’s usually superficial, meaning the moisture doesn’t fully penetrate the piles, so burning efforts aren’t impacted.
“What the moisture is doing for you in the meantime is ensuring that the fire stays localized to the piles you’re burning, and doesn’t want to spread into the leaf litter or the surrounding vegetation,” he said.
In hard-to-reach areas, having a few inches of snow also serves as a resource for crews to manage a burn. A few shovels of snow can turn down the heat if needed. Telian added that timing burns around storm systems helps reduce smoke buildup and prevent negative impacts on air quality.
“This time of year, we’re prone to cold air sinking in our valleys and inversions,” he said. “Storm systems always mix those up and open up better air quality to burn and release the smoke.”
Telian said Alpine Forestry’s pile burning workload this year is lighter in part because of funding hurdles.
“A bunch of local projects that typically got some state and federal grant funding did not get funded this year,” he said. “So there’s a lot less at the moment while some of the big landowners figure out how to reapply or self-fund some of their projects.”
Money is always a hurdle for pile burning because it’s an expensive process, requiring precise timing, experienced crews and robust liability insurance.
“Pile burning gets a little bit of a bad rap because of its costs, and a lot of people don’t realize the planning and the training to make a successful burn day happen at the right time, safely,” Telian said. “People have traditionally not viewed it as skilled labor, just ‘Oh, anyone can go out and do that,’ but no, it does take physical prowess, and it takes training and skill to do it right.”
Liability costs and the need for good insurance are another reason why pile burning becomes so pricy, Telian said.
“By the time you get into the burning phase of things, there are big liability questions that companies like Alpine Forestry have taken on,” he said. “It’s no different than a big construction site where it’s one thing to pour some concrete, but it’s another thing to bring a massive crane in and start moving around pieces that weigh 80,000 pounds. As the risks of certain tasks escalate, so do the costs to those companies performing the tasks.”
Pile burning can only happen under specific windows, sometimes shifting day by day, so crews must be on call for the right weather conditions.
“We can usually spot storms that are going to open up some of our sites about five days out,” Telian said. “But we’ve also had conditions change the night before or the morning of, so it’s an operation that you really have to stay nimble for.”
In some cases, leaving piles for a year can give freshly-cut vegetation time to cure out, so it will burn more effectively. That wait time also tends to be easier for landowners to budget, Telian said. But despite the challenges and costs, Telian emphasized pile burning is an essential final step in wildfire mitigation.
“We look at these projects as public safety issues,” he said. “If we can burn them, we will, because otherwise you haven’t eliminated the fuel from the site. And in some ways, you’ve concentrated it so that if a fire were to hit that area — and I’ve been on wildfires that had piles — it can make it really intense and hard to control.”
Among Alpine Forestry’s upcoming burns are two projects in the Aspenwood and Boulder Creek neighborhoods — both part of a string of connected treatments stretching along Deer Valley Drive. Over the past few years, Stonebridge, In The Trees, Boulder Creek and Aspenwood homeowners associations have linked the open space together into a continuous fuel break.
The project is an example of collaborative land management, connecting the land in those four neighborhoods with projects at Deer Valley Resort and on city-owned property. Thinking cross-boundary is a necessary part to create an effective fuel break, Telian said, because fire doesn’t know boundaries.
The Aspenwood and Boulder Creek parcels — roughly 10 acres total — are scheduled for pile burning this season. Once completed, the project will transition into a maintenance phase, where crews will manage regrowth to preserve the area’s effectiveness as a fuel break.
“Especially in our local hardwood species, like maples and oaks and chokecherry, they all want to sprout back really twiggy,” Telian said. “You’ll lose the effectiveness of the fuel break unless you go in and maintain it.”
Telian said Alpine Forestry crews will also have ongoing work in the Pinebrook and Summit Park areas, which can often be seen from Interstate 80.
In addition to Alpine Forestry’s work, Apex Fire Preparedness co-owner Trevor Searle said several other pile burning projects are slated for this season across Summit and Wasatch counties.
In Wasatch County, two major state-led projects organized by Forester PJ Abraham with the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands — a 13.5-acre site above Timber Lakes in the Lake Creek area and a 23-acre site in Big Pole Canyon at Wolf Creek Ranch — are both scheduled for completion before Dec. 19.
Closer to Park City, Searle said the Robert’s Parcel project near lower Pinebrook will also see work this season. The project has approximately 150 piles that were created in May as part of a project organized by County Lands and Natural Resources Director Jessica Kirby, funded through the Utah Watershed Restoration Initiative.
“It will be very visible from the highway, so there will be a lot of warnings given to the area and signage posted,” he said.
Other projects include a 3-acre private aspen regeneration burn in Wolf Creek Ranch’s Whispering Springs area, and the start of test piles on Extell Development’s large-scale forest health project at the Deer Valley East Village expansion area.
Telian said pile burning will only continue while conditions allow it. With a high-traffic, small town like Park City, those involved try to stop burning before the holidays.
“We’ve gotten in the habit of really turning off from mid-December on,” Telian said. “Even though we’re tempted to keep doing things with good conditions, the town gets too busy around the holidays, and we try to be respectful of that.”
For Alpine Forestry and Apex Fire Preparedness updates to burn projects in the area, visit alpineforestryutah.com and apex-fp.com.