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Lodge owner recounts Mullen Fire near miss

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A Christmas tree on display in the dining room of the Albany Lodge pretty much sums up the year for owners David and Trixie Wright.

In place of ornaments, it’s decorated with blue paper face masks. The tree itself has no needles. Its blackened branches have been burnt down to charcoal stakes. David Wright looks at the tree and laughs.

“We definitely weren’t putting up a live tree this year,” he said.

Outside the lodge, which sits at the edge of the Medicine Bow National Forest on the south end of the Centennial Valley, rows of gleaming snowmobiles wait for winter. A fox trots across the porch looking for a free meal from a friendly human. A dusting of snow on the hills portends powder, and the visitors that seek it out.

Peek between the green trees that line the road, and you’ll see burned trees a stone’s throw away. Beneath the snow-dusted hillside, the ground is black. A few miles up the road to the west, a burned-out sign points the way to Lake Owen and Fox Park.

“You could say that we had a close call,” Wright said. “That would be an understatement.”

A tight-knit community

David and Trixie Wright bought the Albany Lodge a couple years ago. David had worked in sales and marketing before they decided they wanted a change of pace and a change of location.

They left the Dallas area looking for a bed and breakfast in the mountains, and they settled for a lodge with cabins, restaurant, bar and year-round rental shop. The 75-year-old business had been for sale for several years when they discovered it.

“We just stumbled on it, didn’t even know it existed,” he said.

The Albany community sits on the eastern edge of the national forest at the terminus of Wyoming Highway 11. Lake Owen is a few miles to the south, while Rob Roy Reservoir is a few miles to the west.

Most residents leave for the winter, which is also when the snowmobilers arrive. Albany serves as a jumping off point for the 300 miles of groomed and ungroomed trails in the Snowy Range.

“Everybody knows each other and it’s a very tight-knit group,” Wright said. “They watch out for each other.”

The Mullen Fire takes off

The Mullen Fire started Sept. 16 in the Savage Run Wilderness, more than 20 miles from Albany. As a member of the Centennial Valley Volunteer Fire Department, Wright got a call right away.

The U.S. Forest Service was also on the scene right away, when the fire was just a few acres in size. But the wilderness area’s rugged terrain and dense vegetation, thick with beetle-killed deadfall, left fire crews at a disadvantage early on.

Overnight, the fire grew from six acres to 800 acres. By the end of the following day, it was at 10,000 acres.

“It just literally exploded,” Wright said.

Volunteer crews stayed on the fire the whole time, even as the Forest Service continued to elevate the management teams involved. For a few days, the fire appeared to be on track to stay away from the eastern side of the range. But on Sept. 25, the winds picked up.

Defending Albany

Winds from the west approaching 70 miles an hour pushed the fire across the forest. It was about 35,000 acres large on the 25th. On the 26th, it was twice as big at almost 70,000 acres.

The Forest Service issued mandatory evacuation orders for Foxborough, Fox Park and Albany on the 25th. Back at the Albany Lodge, employees helped Trixie pack up lodge memorabilia and records for storage in Laramie. They knocked on hotel and cabin doors alerting guests.

“You could see the glow of red coming over the top of the mountain,” Wright said. “I told our guys to get their gear on.”

In a Facebook post on the 25th, he announced that the fire had arrived.

“We are preparing to fight for our town and the lodge,” he wrote.

The winds shifted that night, holding the fire away from Albany for a few days. But the fire returned in early October, by this time more than 160,000 acres in size and heading down the valley. Fire crews had already moved ahead, anticipating spot fires up to a mile away.

Wright was taking care of business away from the fire line and waiting for news when the fire finally roared through Albany. He didn’t think it would be good news, and he gathered his staff together and told them as much.

“I expected to be calling insurance,” he said.

The next morning, he got a call from a firefighter telling him the lodge was still standing. In fact, every structure in Albany was still standing.

The fire had burned down the valley, moved onto the hillsides and skirted the community on both sides.

“It went around Albany and came back together at the end of the canyon here and continued to burn,” he said. “You can tell it really should have come in and ate all this fuel up. It went right around us.”

At the bottom of the canyon it spread out, moving along the ridge toward Centennial for another mile or so before cold weather arrived and it died out days later.

Communities up the road weren’t so lucky. Cabins were lost in Lower Keystone and Lake Creek. Most cabins in Foxborough didn’t survive.

Recovering and re-opening

Wright said it’s hard to describe all the emotions he felt during the fire, including those hours when he was certain the lodge was gone.

The Wrights and their staff were already reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic when the fire arrived, forcing them to shut their doors for six weeks after months of operating at reduced capacity. They continued to keep their employees on full pay through it all.

“It was the right moral and ethical thing to do,” he said.

Recovery didn’t happen right away. Electricity to the lodge was cut during the fire, forcing the Wrights to clear out the restaurant’s food stores. They spent two weeks after the fire scrubbing the walls to clear out the smoke smell and restocking their kitchen.

Now they’re waiting for snow, which attracts snowmobile enthusiasts from around the country to the Snowy Range. Albany Lodge is usually fully booked a year in advance over Christmas. The holiday season will be full this year, but reservations are coming in a little slower. Wright gave a big thank you to locals coming up from Laramie to dine in the restaurant.

“The loyal customers are coming no matter what,” he said.

Another sign of better days ahead: Wildlife is returning to the valley. Wright has seen moose, deer and other critters, including that fox, who knows where to go for handouts.