Awesome pictures!! Nicely done on the ride too, congrats! That's a difficult route, the foothill sections especially.

It's seeming more and more like the race is going to be a GO. The smoke is much better today than Sunday and they're seeming to get a good hold on over 50% of the perimeter.

Like when there's a fire detour in the Tour Divide (almost every year it seems) just gotta work around it and next year's CSTR will be game on for the full course. 

Mosquito Ridge Road is a classic road ride, it's a really cool long steady climb that mostly lacks cars. Gorman Ranch Road is another one of my favorite local roads that this new route would use both out and back. It's around a 7 mile railroad grade dirt road that isn't used by cars either since it doesn't really go anywhere.  Point is, this is a worthy alternative route that Sean is suggesting. 

Yubanet has the latest pictures and info:
http://yubanet.com/nevada/American.php

Here's a simple Google earth map of the start of the fire in relation to the CSTR route from the incident command's website.  Red line on the left is Deadwood Rd. (outbound CSTR), right is the inbound track from Last Chance. The point of the location of the fire doesn't show that it's on both sides of the North Fork of the Middle Fork canyon now, heading up towards Deadwood road and towards Last Chance.  We'll see how it goes tomorrow...not looking good.

Here's a link to the Google Map of the route with water points, if anyone's interested.
http://meriwethermaps.com/CSTR_2013.htm

a few more pics...

Sean and I did some of the course on Sunday. I think it was about a 55 mile loop but with my 2 front flats (pinch, thorns) and slow leak it was a long day!  According to the mileage cues we started at about mile 59 and went to mile 84.2 where we turned right and linked back up onto the return part of the course at mile 340 and rode it back to mile 363.5.

The Little Bald Mtn trail out of Robinson Flat is in great shape and is awesome. It's got great views of where the course is going and it's the high point up to that point (7088 ft). There's plenty of water right now in Duncan Creek. The Poppy Trail is pretty grown over with Whitethorn so will be hard to navigate especially at night.  The trail around French Meadows hasn't been cleared of the deadfall but it's mostly rideable. Lots of water along this part of the course.  Just thought I'd share some photos too...