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As Southern California’s last pack station, Maggie Moran’s team of donkeys at the Adams Pack Station hauls supplies for cabin owners in the hard-to-reach area of Big Santa Anita Canyon.
She and her family live on the property at Chantry Flats, a popular recreation area in the Angeles National Forest, and were relieved to learn firefighters defended her home and business from the Bobcat Fire.
It was a close call. “The fire did go around [the property] in both directions,” Moran said.
Moran doesn’t yet know if the land is stable enough to return to in the fire’s aftermath, though, and it’s unknown how many other cabins in the area survived.
“It's been a roller coaster … not knowing what lies [ahead] for the pack station,” she said, “in terms of our business and if we’ll go back to being able to live there again.”
It will be even longer until the public is allowed back to Chantry Flats, so Moran will likely lose business. In the meantime, her family and pack of nine donkeys are forced to hole up elsewhere.