{"id":129703,"date":"2026-05-19T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-vallecitos-35-foot-tall-logjam\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T13:06:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:06:19","slug":"the-mysterious-disappearance-of-vallecitos-35-foot-tall-logjam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/the-mysterious-disappearance-of-vallecitos-35-foot-tall-logjam\/","title":{"rendered":"The mysterious disappearance of Vallecito\u2019s 35-foot-tall logjam"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A 35-foot-wide and 35-foot-tall logjam blocking Vallecito Creek as the result of October floods was covertly removed by an unknown person months ago. (Courtesy of Bruce Evans)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A massive logjam left blocking Vallecito Creek after the October floods has seemingly disappeared into thin air.<\/p>\n

Well not exactly. It was likely burned by an unknown person and carried away in billows of smoke.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know who did it; we have no clue,\u201d said Bruce Evans, Upper Pine River Fire Protection District chief. \u201cAnd frankly, I don\u2019t want to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

The jam \u2013 a build-up of logs and debris stuck between two boulders in the creek running through the Weminuche Wilderness \u2013 was discovered in the weeks after the flooding.<\/p>\n

Until recently, it lingered as something of a headache for Upper Pine fire.<\/p>\n

In November, Evans said the blockage \u2012 roughly 35 feet wide and 35 feet tall \u2012 posed an imminent threat to downstream ecology and nearby neighborhoods. Officials worried the pileup could become far more dangerous if loosened during spring run-off, potentially wiping out remediation work completed downstream.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo was it was the right thing to do? You know, probably,\u201d Evans said.<\/p>\n

\"A
A logjam roughly 35 feet wide and 35 feet tall was blocking Vallecito Creek \u2013 the result of October floods that caused widespread damage north Vallecito. (Courtesy of Bruce Evans)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

He had previously applied for permission to burn what was effectively a \u201clog dam,\u201d he said, but was denied by the San Juan National Forest Service. In the past few weeks, Evans had renewed his efforts to get rid of the pileup.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, Upper Pine firefighters training on rope rescues discovered someone else had already gotten to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was probably burned two or three months ago, maybe longer, because the burned ends of some of the logs are already embedded in the mud and silt in the channel,\u201d Evans said.<\/p>\n

Whoever did it was pretty savvy, he said. They likely did it when the cloud cover was low, so that nobody would report the smoke.<\/p>\n

The San Juan National Forest became aware of the logjam\u2019s disappearance through word-of-mouth at the end of April, spokesperson Lorena Williams said.<\/p>\n

Because the apparent burning happened months ago and the Forest Service only recently learned about it, no investigation will be conducted, Williams said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is log jam. It\u2019s gone now. End of report,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

jbowman@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"A
A 35-foot-wide and 35-foot-tall logjam blocking Vallecito Creek as the result of October floods was covertly removed by an unknown person months ago. (Courtesy of Bruce Evans)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone quietly removed the large blockage on the creek that was created during October floods <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":129704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[1820,1497,28,1231,199,1829,6419,1370,1500],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-129703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-dh-trueanthem","tag-flood","tag-headlines","tag-pine-river-times","tag-san-juan-national-forest","tag-tcr-trueanthem","tag-tj-trueanthem","tag-upper-pine-river-fire-protection-district","tag-vallecito"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129703"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129759,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129703\/revisions\/129759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129703"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=129703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}