My first season of experience in wildland firefighting has revealed it to be addicting. What other role has you cutting down fat trees, working long hours for decent pay, and aping with your hommies on the hotter than hell fireline. What job has you saying things like ‘I’d follow that guy to hell and back’, and truly meaning it in a reasonable and sane manner, and not just as an e-jock-ulation? Despite the testosterone fueled workplace, the competitive atmosphere, and a completely depleted dirty joke repertoire, this is undoubtedly some of the best kind of fun there is…

After training for months, and a rainy/quiet AK fire season, our crew was called down to California to work on one of the 12000 odd fires down there, almost all caused by an intense bout of lightning in July. We were sent to the Canyon Complex (a complex is a regional operations hub where upper tiers of command are located, along with staging fire crews, engines, supply, planning sections, GIS, etc.) near the headwaters of the Feather River in Plumas National Forest. We were shuffled through a few different fires before being sent to Feather Creek spike (a secondary camp set up to allow for quicker regional access). Here we worked on the Frey fire, cutting a line through the trees and brush, then backfiring it towards to main body of flame, so that when the fire moved towards what we cut, there would be less fuel to sustain it, reducing its insensity and likely stopping it in its tracks (if all goes well). Hotlining, is one of the most intense and fun operations we did. Cutting down burning trees, running back and forth with the hoses, and making sure the fire didn’t jump the line and ruin our work requires everyone to work in concert, work hard, and stay on their toes at all times

Basically, the most fun piece of this job is that when there is fire on the line the job can’t be cheesed, faked, fobbed, half-assed, or phoned in. People put their all in to the work they do in an efficient and intelligent manner while keeping an eye on each other’s 6; everyone working harder so the guy next to them doesn’t have to, which makes for a great environment and a tight crew.

Basically I like it, and I’ll likely be doing it again.

In the meantime it’s back to Juneau for the winter doing ski patrol at Eaglecrest in December, in Bethel AK for some cutting in November, and likely cycling between Bellingham WA and Arcata CA during late sept/oct, but who really knows. I’ve been busy trying to get picked up by an IHC outfit (the top level besides smokejumpers in firefighting) from the lower 48, as all the open AK slots got filled, but have plenty of good recommendations and qualifications and all that junk. Again, its a competitive environment, and operates well as such. We’ll see what the next few weeks bring.