More than just a 137,000 acre wildfire of June 2002, the disaster continued for miners at Crystal Creek as erosion destroyed their roads and quarries each year. By 2006, most had given up. In 2008, the "Hayman" strikes again in the form of an epidemic of pine bark beetles harbored in the Hayman Burn area- now predicted to destroy the entire population of lodgepole pines across Colorado, which may feed a cycle of even larger wildfires.
