Vegetation has begun to return in the wake of the fire that scorched this area along the Oracle Ridge Trail in the Catalina Mountains a few years ago.

photos by Doug Kreutz / arizona daily star

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Dead trees stand like towering tombstones along the Oracle Ridge Trail high in the Catalina Mountains.

The scorched pine trunks pose a bleak reminder of a fire that ravaged the ridge four years ago — but newly sprouted trees, lush green grasses and vibrant wildflowers shout rebirth and renewal.

Trek the trail now and you'll get a firsthand short course on a wildfire's effects and a forest's resurrection.

The route begins north of the mountain community of Summerhaven and extends 12.5 miles to the outskirts of Oracle. Hiking even the first mile or two of the trail will give you a good look at a blackened woodland coming back to life.

"What's happening along the Oracle Ridge Trail illustrates some of the natural, positive aspects of fire," says Heidi Schewel, spokeswoman for the U.S. Forest Service. "After the Aspen Fire burned through there in 2003, the residual ash acted like a fertilizer. Nutrients that had been locked up in living plants were released — and they're now available in the soil for new plants to use."

Some new plants sprouted almost immediately after the fire — and by now many species are flourishing.

"The wildflowers and the bracken ferns have come back very well," Schewel says. "You'll see fleabane daisies, lupines, paintbrush, penstemons, shooting stars and even some wild orchids along the trail."

As those flowers put on a dazzling summer bloom, wild grasses and ferns form a rolling carpet of green at the foot of fire-killed firs and pines.

Trees, too, are on the rebound.

"Anything that re-sprouts from the root system, such as aspens, will come back very quickly after fire," Schewel notes. "Along the Oracle Ridge Trail, the New Mexico locust trees have come back quickly. They re-sprout from the root system like aspen and grow to small-tree size."

She says oak and juniper trees found on some parts of the trail also have begun building new woodlands.

But conifers — including Douglas firs and ponderosa pines — will lag behind.

"They don't re-sprout from the root system. The dead trees remain standing in many cases, and it takes quite a while for new ones to grow from seed and regenerate the conifer forest," Schewel says. "The aspens tend to regenerate first, and the conifers come in later."

Get to the trail: Take Tanque Verde Road to the Catalina Highway and follow the highway past Milepost 24 to a right turnoff for the Control Road. Drive 0.3 of a mile on the Control Road, past the Mount Lemmon Fire Station, to a parking area and trailhead on the left side of the road.