CAMP SHERMAN – Firefighters held the line on the 636-acre Link Fire burning west of Black Butte Ranch. The fire, which was first reported Saturday, continued to flare Monday afternoon as winds fanned the flames near Cache Lake south of Highway 20.

Firefighters called in air strikes from Forest Service tankers and dug lines around hot spots Monday afternoon, as gusting winds fueled the blaze. ”They handled it, which was awesome,” said Carol Connolly, fire information officer at the Central Oregon Interagency Dispatch Center in Prineville.

Forest Service officials said Monday evening that the Link Fire was 50 percent contained and about 636 acres in size. If all goes well, the fire may be contained by Saturday, according to a press release from the Central Oregon Interagency Dispatch Center.

In the meantime, fire officials continue to pour resources into the Link Fire, which had doubled in size Sunday from 300 to 600 acres, spreading east toward Black Butte Ranch.

The resort community is about four miles southeast of the fire, said Jon Stewart, an information officer working with the Blue Mountain Interagency Management Team. The Blue Mountain team took over firefighting operations at the Link Fire on Sunday afternoon after an initial attack by local firefighters.

To the south, crews continued to mop up at the Davis Fire west of La Pine.

Firefighters declared the 21,181-acre fire totally contained Sunday afternoon. A new crew from outside the area which specializes in monitoring fires will take over at the Davis Fire tomorrow, said Earl Cordes, information officer for the Central Oregon Interagency Incident Management Team,which has fought the fire for more than a week.

Cordes said the fire will continue to smolder through the summer.

”With a 21,000-acre fire you can’t put everything out,” he said. ”What you do is put out the edges and let everything in the interior burn, or go out.”

Connolly said in addition to the Link and Davis Fires, several small spot fires across Central Oregon were touched off by lightning strikes Monday afternoon. Those were all under control as of Monday night, she said.

So far, the Link Fire is burning exclusively within public lands on the Deschutes National Forest near Cache Mountain. It’s almost the same spot where the Cache Mountain Fire started last year at the end of the fire season. That fire consumed several thousand acres of forest land and crept to the edge of the Black Butte Ranch where two homes were lost to flames before the blaze was contained.

Ironically, the Cache Mountain Fire which roared out of control, racing some 7 miles eastward toward Black Butte Ranch in a matter of hours, may be the key to stopping a repeat event on the Link Fire.

Firefighters are using the area burned last year on the south side of Cache Mountain as a wall of sorts while fighting the Link Fire.

The idea, said Stewart, is to corral the fire using a system of roads and fire lines against Cache Mountain where it will be starved of fuel.

”What we are trying to do is push it up against the Cache Mountain Fire because the fuels there are pretty thin,” said Stewart. As as precautionary measure officials have already evacuated campgrounds to the north including Camp Tamarack, a children’s summer camp at Dark Lake, and campgrounds at Scout Lake.

Camping remains open at Suttle Lake as does travel on Highway 20. However, dispersed campgrounds in the Meadow Lake area west of the fire were also evacuated over the weekend. Although the fire was moving in the opposite direction on winds out of the west, Stewart said firefighters fear that winds could shift and push the fire into the mountain lakes area. If that happens, the team would face a difficult and dangerous task, said Stewart.

The area west of Cache Lake is filled with thick stands of fire-prone trees, such as Douglas Fir. Much of the stand, Stewart said, is in poor heath from a decades-old bug infestation and is extremely susceptible to fire.

”This whole area is filled with dead and dying timber,” Stewart said. ”And if the fire went the other way, we would have a real challenge ahead of us.”

Forecasts for Tuesday evening call for unstable weather over Central Oregon, including dry lightning over the Ochoco National Forest, which could mean a sudden shift of winds, Stewart said. Forest Service officials area also concerned that the fire could move north into the Metolius Basin and Camp Sherman.

The Forest Service has yet to complete planned thinning work in this area which is about 6 miles north of the fire. Stewart said the Forest Service had prison labor crews ready to start on the thinning before the Link Fire. However, the work was put on hold when opponents appealed the project earlier this year, said Stewart.

The threats have given fire managers a sense of urgency on the Link Fire, said Stewart. But the fight hasn’t been easy. Firefighters pulled back temporarily Sunday as winds spirited embers from the Link Fire as far as two miles. The embers created more than a dozen spot fires ahead of the main blaze. Firefighters countered Monday, reinforcing fire lines along roads to the north and south of the flames. By mid afternoon, nine teams, approximately 180 firefighters, not including equipment operators were battling the Link Fire.

Using bulldozers, they pushed a new line through the backcountry on the east end of the fire, connecting fire breaks to the north and south of the Link Fire.

Other crews worked to connect fire lines on the north slope of Cache Mountain with roads to the northwest. The work on that side has been slower going though, said Stewart. The area is designated as a Research Natural Area, by the Forest Service. Federal regulations prohibit the use of heavy machinery, including bulldozers, in these areas which have been set aside for study because of their unique ecology and relatively pristine conditions.

As a result, crews in the Cache area were cutting nearly a half mile of fire line by hand, using chain saws to fell trees.

”To cut a line through that area takes a lot of effort, a lot of time and it’s very, very labor intensive,” Stewart said.

The cause of the fire is yet to be determined, but it is believed to have been started as a result of human activity, Stewart said.

Eric Flowers can be reached at 541-504-2336 or eflowers@bendbulletin.com.