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Hello every one...

ELKCHSR

New member
Joined
Nov 28, 2001
Messages
13,765
Location
Montana
Well I'm back and they are leaving us off the line until Tuesday morning, then we will probably be off for another couple weeks...

This fire was one of fun, excitement and boredom that is the nature of this job...
The first night we were out, they had us drop into a nice little valley just below the fire a ways, about midnight, some thing didn't feel right, I hadn't been sleeping very well, tossing and turning, when the wind shifted from moving upslope to side slope. I jumped up and started putting my sleeping stuff back together for a hasty retreat, with in about five minutes, the wind shifted to down slope and I was waking every one up at about the same time the boss of the fire was telling every one to get up and move. The sky boiled with a red/pink glow and shots of bright yellow red flames shot out over and above the glow of the advancing fire, as smoke and cinders started to move down the valley where we were at...

It didn't take long for every one to be on the buss and in the trucks moving out of the area we were in. As we were kicking every thing back out of the buss at a safe distance some fifteen minutes later, we could see the fire on the hill side advance down to the edge of the road to where we were just at, this is the stuff that makes ones blood run and the excitement of the day settle in and make it very hard to sleep. After about an hour and a half, the fire had laid back down and the whole hill side where we were at glowed with a thousand lights from the hot spots that remained after the beast had traveled thru and made itself known to those that planned on killing it that it was very much alive and ready to take on any one that challenged it on its own ground.

I finally fell asleep watching the beauty of the aftermath that lay in front of us on the hill side just a half mile away, the next morning the over head made every one sit back and let the raging beast consume more ground as it plundered all that lay in its hold on the mountain. This is some of the stuff that us, as fire fighters as a whole, love to watch and dream all winter to be able to witness, and behold the power that is inherent in this wild beast as it gains power in the wake of its growth.

The third and fourth day consisted of rain, which put a major hurt on the beast but by no means made it any less dangerous, we were put up on it's North flank to work out an area that was full of a patch of Christmas trees that combined with the forty mile an hour winds, made it so we could only look over the top of the hill over into the patch of thick snags, brush and trees that would flare up on occasion and prevent us from sliding in and putting an ending blow to the animal that still showed signs of a hidden anger that could still cause destruction for those not wary enough to heed the signs of hidden violence at hand.

The dozers were finally able to put a line thru the worst part of the brush and we then were able to step into the den of the giant and put an end to its life. Not one ember was left as far as any one knows after all the men and women were finished with the weapons of their respective trades.
But this beast is a very sneaky and subtle animal that can come back to become a raging giant once again if it has been crafty enough to hold on to one smoking ember after the fire fighters have left the scene and ran off after enough another raging dragon...

On other notes of things noted on this incident, I saw a set of bear tracks that were about four inches across and in one of the tracks a definite sign of a little bear print imbedded in the track that was about two inches across, that was very cool, I also on the first morning that we were finally moved to a main camp, spotted a white tail doe and following here were four babies about half grown. I didn’t realize that deer would adopt others, or she had four little ones this last spring. It was very cool any way, there was three falcons that had moved into the burn towards the end, my guess was that they were after the small birds that had also moved in after the beetles that are all over the freshly killed trees…
We had rain on the fire four different times and it wasn’t until the last one that the felling blow was administered to the fire. I think that I will be working in the state of Montana for the next month or two; I sure hope I get time to go hunting this year. Three quarters of the nations fire fighters are in Montana trying to get a handle on the fires that plague this state this year. One good thing about it is that it is really putting a hurt on some of the diseased forests I have been witnessing. I have been starting to compile pictures of the places I have been. This winter when things start to slow down, I will start putting them up. Some are really cool, some are just part of the job....
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GOOD post... BUT how did you get time to write this AND bump every friggin topic from the last month
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Good luck with the "BEAST" !!! It sometimes seems alive eh ?
 
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I've been practicing with two years and thirteen thousand plus posts...
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And have been glad that you yanked me from one of the other boards ever since....
Thanks Moosie...
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LMAO!!!
I would have been up around another 2500 plus if I would have been around for the last two months...
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I see your starting to catch up because of it, I will have to jump hard on it this comming winter...
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Glad to see you back safe Russ. It was good chatting with you tonight. That is a nice piece of writing above. Thanks for the great story and I am looking forward to seeing the pictures you have taken.
 
Great story. Glad that you had that feeling to get up and everyone else too. Can't wait to see the pics either.
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Thanks all!!!
I will be back in probably another couple of weeks, I have to leave again this morning for a meeting and will more than likely go out pretty much immediatly when we get our crew back up on the board to go out. Seems there is a bit of a need for firefighters in this state this year...
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