Fire!!!

Today we were out chainsawing, and on a ridge about 3000ft above us we saw smoke. Then we heard frantic radio traffic and saw helicopters and a small Helitack crew fly in and start dropping water, then we heard that the Forest Service was calling up the Mill Creek Hotshots, Big Bear Hotshots, Del Rosa Hotshots and the Mojave Greens. Which is a lot of people for a small fire, about 80-100 firefighters for a small fire, but we are having a huge drought so I guess they wanted to hit it hard. We almost thought they were going to call us up since we were in the area, but they didn't which is good. They got the fire out in about an hour which was cool to see, we sat two S.E.A.T's flying in with retardant (Single Engine Attack Tanker) which was pretty cool, and we saw the helicopters drop water quite a bit. It was really cool to see how the crews actually work.

Forest Recovery Team Backpacking trail maintenance

Since Wednesday we (the Forest Recovery Team) have been backpacking like crazy around the San Gorgonio Wilderness doing trail maintenance. We all packed out Tuesday evening with all the gear we would need, and left Wednesday morning around 9am. We drove nearly 2 hours to get to our destination, and then we parked the cars, got out our packs and prepared for a 5.5 mile hike climbing from 8000ft to 10000ft. And we would camp at a campsite at roughly 10000ft. We got to our campsite in a little under 3 hours and set up camp, made dinner and we all went to sleep pretty early to hike out the next day to work on the trail.
We got up around 7am, and made some breakfast, then we packed up what we would need for the day, and walked out another 5 or 6 miles on the trail. once we got there we pulled out tools and began to cut the trail back, and make the trail more usable, now I think the trails here in SoCal are basically like highways, they basically are 2 to 3 feet wide and not really all that steep at all, but that is what the Forest Service wanted us to do so we did it, we cut about 3 miles of trail and then hiked back to camp. We got back to camp around 6:45 pm and we got some dinner ready and went to sleep.
We got up around 7am again and packed up to hike back to the cars, another 5.5 miles, we eneded up leaving around 9:15am, and hiked to the cars, which we got to by 11am. A really fast hike, although it was all downhill and pretty easy. We got in the cars and drove back to camp, we arrived at about 1:30pm, and then we were off for the rest of the day. A really good week, mostly hiking and not too much work although we did hike 23 miles in a little more than 48 hours, which was a little tiring, but we have the weekend now. It was really fun, I thought it was really odd that some of the people with us had never been camping before, I guess with all the camping experience I have I let it slip past me that some people don't really ever get the chance to camp, or canoe or hike as much as I do. But everyone had fun which was really cool.

Forest Recovery Team, so far

So far through August and this part of September I have been training as a wildland firefighter. I had to take 3 weeks of classes, and 1 week, the first, as Physical Training for make benefit of altitudinal workings.The 3 weeks of classes were pretty interesting, although we had to get up pretty early to go into San Bernardino in the valley to go to class at the Forest Service Offices. We had to learn firefighting strategy and how to go about doing all the things necessary to our job. After the three weeks we spent time doing what we call "cutting line". This is basically what all HotShots and SmokeJumpers do to contain a fire in the wilderness. We cut a certain amount of material, depending on the fire, usually 6 feet-10 feet of cut line, and 2 feet-4 feet of scraped stuff to mineral soil to prevent the fire from spreading unwatched past us.
After that, we went back to classes for Chainsaw training, which was basically us taking a bunch of written tests and learning about the cuts, and how and where, and also when to drop a tree. After that was our out in the filed test, which was a lot of fun. We cut down a whole bunch of dead and burned trees, and spent 2 days doing that. And now after all of that I am a "red carded" firefighter which basically means I can be a firefighter anywhere, a hotshot in any region of the US, which is pretty cool. Also I am in a cabin with some pretty cool guys, and all the people here in the camp, in Angelus Oaks CA, are really cool.