Firefighters using bulldozers and engines on the ground and multiple aircraft above slowed the spread of a fire reported Saturday afternoon, Aug. 17, north of Whitney, near the western edge of Baker County.

The Lyle Fire is west of the Camp Creek Road, about 4.5 miles northwest of Highway 7 at Whitney.

The fire was reported about 1 p.m. The cause has not been determined.

The fire grew from an estimated 5 acres to about 20 acres as temperatures rose and the humidity dropped. There were also gusty winds. The fire was estimated at 22.5 acres Sunday afternoon.

Joel McCraw, assistant fire management officer for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, said the fire is burning on public land with open areas interspersed between pockets of ponderosa pine.

He said on Sunday morning that crews built a line around the fire Saturday, and they will be working on hot spots within the line Sunday. Additional ground crews were scheduled to arrive Sunday morning “to start securing things,” he said.

Firefighters also worked on a 1-acre fire reported about 5:30 p.m. Saturday just north of the Lyle Fire. It’s not clear where that is a separate fire or was started by embers from the Lyle Fire.

On Sunday just before 1 p.m., a new fire was reported in the Boulder Creek area of the Eagle Cap Wilderness, near Boulder Park. It was estimated at 150 acres on Sunday evening.

Buzz Harper, chief of the Keating Rural Fire Protection District, said the fire has been torching pockets of subalpine fir trees but is burning near the bottom of a rocky slope.

Subalpine fir trees, which typically grow above about 6,000 feet elevation, can burn readily, as they usually have limbs growing at ground level. The trees also have high levels of sap that makes the trees susceptible to torching.

The Forest Service is treating the Boulder Creek Fire as a normal wildfire, using “full suppression” tactics rather than monitoring the blaze as the agency has done with a few dozen wildfires in the Eagle Cap Wilderness over the past quarter century.