charred

They liked them charred on the outside and gooey on the inside.

A hiker clambers across a scorched landscape of ash, his footsteps crunching on charred earth as he peers over a ridge at a burn scar pocked with blackened stumps.

Nature Friends lodge, built with quaint Bavarian styling by German immigrants in 1923, had been reduced by the fire to heaps of charred timber, twisted metal and broken dishes.

Smoke was still rising from the charred remains on Sunday.

Tearful family members stood outside the charred buildings, many of them clutching photographs of their missing relatives.