Aldrich Mtns.

We spent last week training in the Aldrich mountains west of town. It is a great opportunity to practice what we preach, or as the saying around the base goes, "Work like you train and train like you work." While it snowed and/or rained on us every day, it was a very successful week of experiential learning filled with saw training, PT, SAR and medical scenarious, PT, line digs, live fire training, and oh yeah, more PT. Camping in the woods for a week is also a great way to start the ever important crew cohesion process. The program is a great way to shake the cobwebs off, gain some valuable training and evaluate the rookies.

Day Two

Day two is over. Looks like a really good rookie class this year. Fit and motivated. It brings back a lot of memories from when I showed up not knowing what to expect last year. Its a lot different being the returning vet! I'm very much looking forward to the rest of the season.
Our first helicopter showed up today, a Bell 205A++, which is basically a souped up civilian version of the Huey. Looks like a great ship and I can't wait to fly in it.

Another Season

After another successful season of prescribed fire with The Nature Conservancy of Arkansas (and a consequent 6 months of blog neglect) I'm back out in John Day, OR for another season on the Malheur Rappel Crew. Do I still have any readers? Probably not. Oh well. I'll try to keep the blog up to date this summer with fires etc. but if you want more info check me out on Facebook. Yeah, I finally gave in and signed up this fall. Work starts tomorrow! PT test, pack test, paperwork and more. Looks like rain so it should be interesting.

Crater Lake

We filled out our 14 day detail in CA and stopped by Crater Lake on the way back. Really neat. My days off lined up nicely so I got a block of 3 days off and headed up to Spokane. Spent the night at a hot spring on the Umatilla NF and then met up with a buddy in the city. I went to the Whites Boots factory and got fitted for custom boots. The guy was amazing! He knew so much about their boots and about feet. Really impressive!

Down in California

Well I guess its been about a month since my last post. In that time I rappelled a fire in the Strawberry Wilderness just outside of John Day. It was about 30 ac. at the bottom of a steep south facing slope when we got to it and despite our best efforts it got away from us. I returned later in the week with our national helicopter for 6 or 7 days and staffed helispots, did cargo and crew shuttles. I got another operational rappel on that same fire to extinguish a hot spot near the retardant line high up in the rock cliffs but then we promptly got pulled off due to lightning and had to leave our gear on the hill, paving the way for my 3rd operational on the same fire to retreive our gear! About the same time I rappeled a fire on the Umatilla NF and spent 2 days there, including a grueling 110 lb. packout through blowdown. On Aug. 15th I got dispatched with 5 others to CA. We've been
moving every couple days and are now on the Red Rock Fire where I saw this cool Fire Cobra.

Dry Spell Continues

Well no fires yet. Very hot and dry weather but no lightning. There is a chance of lightening this weekend so fingers are crossed for that. The first crew that went to staff our national helicopter in California is back and the second crew for the helicopter left on Wednesday. I'll probably make the third crew in a couple weeks. In the meantime its just the old waiting game again. Everything is clean and organized so we are having to look harder for projects to stay busy. Some folks have elevated tool rehab to an art. The picture is of some of my favorites. I've been staying busy in our sew shop learning how to sew and working on putting together some packout bags.

Busy times...

Busy times at the rappel base! Its a pretty slow fire season nationwide right now and we're no exception. We had a small lightning bust around the 4th of July and I got on two fires but didn't get to rappel either. Our national helicopter went to California with a crew of 10 but other than that we've been spending a lot of quality time around the helibase. Its bound to pick up sooner or later though. It always does.