I took this shot while flying with a Forest Service buddy in 1989.
I am pretty sure that this is Forest Service land, near the Groveland Ranger District office. When I worked there in 1990, the Timber Management Officer was still angry at the less-than-aggressive post-fire salvage efforts that allowed so many “brain dead” trees to die and add to the fuel loading. I’m sure that all those dead trees had some green needles on them as salvage logging was proceeding. As you can clearly see in the photo, there are PLENTY of snags left in this HUGE wildfire zone. This isn’t even where the fire burned hot. The subsequent bark beetle bloom spread northward, chewing up forests more than 100 miles away. On the Eldorado, our Ranger District harvested 300 million board feet, between 1989 and 1992, of dead and dying timber from the severe bark beetle infestation. We were lucky, able to slide our EIS into place before the litigators could gather their case together. The Tahoe National Forest was too slow, and lost 2 years worth of salvage logging opportunities, turning merchantable dead trees into future wildfire fuels.
The Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit was also hard hit, and slow to react. Here is a 1990 view of the north end of the Lake Tahoe Basin. My first two summers in the Forest Service were spent at the top of that mountain as the Martis Peak fire lookout. Of course, there are a LOT more dying trees up there than just the brown trees. So many of those trees became unmerchantable before they could be salvaged, as the public and eco-groups hoped that “nature” would take care of the problem. Since fire suppression in the Tahoe Basin is ensured, most of those dead trees are now horizontal, and perfectly preserved as fuels for the next big, destructive, erosion-causing, lake-polluting disaster.