While an accident like that might motivate some people to reconsider careers, this guy was spotting, ground-pounding, and rappelling the next season, and then jumping again after only a year off jump status. His right leg was now an inch and a half shorter.
A few years later, to prevent future orthopedic problems, he went to a hospital in Seattle where doctors had developed a new procedure. They removed a piece of bone from his good leg and sewed it back up, knowing the muscles would shorten themselves naturally.
Five weeks later he was jogging again, back to normal except for one thing. When he left the plane over Glacier Peak he was six feet tall, and now he was five feet ten. He made another two hundred and thirty jumps before he retired.
A water landing sounds simple, but it’s not always a pleasant experience. Once I landed near the edge of a lake near Mount Baker in Washington. With the reflection off the surface I couldn’t tell exactly how deep it was.
You know how sometimes you’re walking down the stairs and you think there’s one more step but there isn’t? My landing was like that.
My feet hit the bottom a tiny bit sooner than I expected. The shock caught me off guard and my teeth snapped shut, clipping off a piece of the side of my tongue. (Pro tip: shut your mouth before you hit the ground.)
I talked a little funny for a day or two, and I wore a mouth guard for a few years after that.
I also found some tadpoles in my leg pocket.
Jump in the Cascades long enough and chances are you’ll end up hanging in a tree at least once. I’ve done it about a dozen times.
A tree landing means a lot of extra work, so you try to avoid it if you can. And usually the smaller the tree, the better.
If a tree landing is your best (or least bad) option, you want to cap the tree well.
That means lining up the top between your legs like gun sights, pulling the brakes and, hopefully, if you had enough time to do everything right, spreading the canopy over the top of the tree like a hat.
If you end up well hung, so to speak, your canopy will make a solid rappel anchor to get to the ground.
Paying attention as you drop your letdown line could save you hours of grief, and luck helps too. A good toss will give you a clean rappel line. But if you aren’t paying attention in a wolfy tree that’s full of crap, and toss your rope, you’ll have a terrible time getting down. In that case it’s best not to throw it at all, but reroute it back to your leg pocket as you rappel down.
If you don’t cap a tree cleanly, it can be a nightmare. You might end up hung on a limb, in which case you better hug that tree like a cat and start thinking about dumping gear to lighten up.
A canopy can snag on branches and deflate. The next thing you know the jumper is bouncing down between the branches like a Plinko chip on The Price Is Right, grabbing at anything to slow down.
A bad tree landing is a sobering thing to see, like a very unfunny cartoon explosion with stuff flying everywhere. Our jumpsuits are tough but sharp branches can still punch through, or even impale you.
If you hear the sound of snapping branches, you can’t help but give a silent prayer, hold your breath, and listen for anything—cursing, usually—as proof of life.
You never leave a chute hung up even if it’s completely shredded. It’s not just littering the forest; each canopy represents close to $2,000 of taxpayers’ money.
If you can climb the tree and pull it down, great. Otherwise you’re looking at cutting off the treetop, or maybe even the whole thing.
It might have to wait until you’re finished with the fire, but eventually that canopy has to come down.
On the ground we have to deal with the usual hazards of working in the outdoors: dehydration, headaches, sunburn, poison ivy, wasp nests, snakes, and wild animals.
The list gets a lot longer when you add the risks of fire and the tools we use to fight it.
Year after year breathing smoke and ash can cause chronic respiratory issues, not to mention black snot. Chain saws cut through legs as easily as branches.
Sawyers are supposed to cut trees and shrubs flush with the ground. If they don’t, sharp little stumps called stobs are left behind, sticking out of the ground like punji sticks. God help you if you fall on one of these. I’ve heard tales of these ending up where the sun doesn’t shine. That would suck.
Wildland firefighters also must keep an eye on their pee: if it’s brown and they’ve been working especially hard, it could be a sign of rhabdomyolysis, a buildup of electrolytes and muscle proteins in the blood that can permanently damage the kidneys.
That’s one reason we have a rule of thumb of drinking a gallon of water per day during arduous duty.
One of the biggest dangers on a fire are falling snags. You never know when or where a dead tree or limb is going to fall. The big ones can be as thick as you are tall.
A normal-looking tree may be rotten or burned through just under the surface. A falling trunk covered with branch stumps might as well be studded with swords.
Snags are called widow-makers for good reason. Dead trees and branches have killed plenty of firefighters, including a jumper out of Redding in 2013. Helmets help, but they could be better. That’s why I helped a leading company design a better helmet in my off-duty time.
If we’re required to wear head protection, I want something that actually works.
Rolling stones—not the band—are surprisingly common, to nonfirefighters at least.
Intense heat causes everything to expand, loosen, and crumble, including soil and stones. Flames burn away roots that hold rocks in place. Gravity takes over and things start heading downhill.
Runaway rocks are common enough that firefighters have given them a tasteful nickname: “Bowling for Hotshots.”
ON THE LAKE CHELAN fire, the boulder heading toward me was plowing aside trees like a bouncing bulldozer. I could feel the vibration through my boots.
I’ve rolled some rocks in my time, mostly as a kid in California. Once my dad and I aimed a big one at an old VW bug someone had abandoned in a ditch. It hit the car hard enough to spin it halfway around.
This one was much bigger.
I did my best Indiana Jones impression and lunged toward the fir tree. Just as I reached it the boulder slammed into the other side in an explosion of debris. The shock felt like the rollover car accident I had in my twenties.
I opened my eyes and saw the boulder hurtling away below me, heading at a slightly different angle, blazing a clear, splintered route all the way down the hill, as far as I could see.
I yelled to one of the other jumpers to come down and be my witness. He found me standing beside the tree staring at a huge chunk of bark almost as large as me that was lying on the ground.
We both knew that if the tree hadn’t been there, he would have been picking me up in pieces.
I ended up following the nice, clean path cleared for me by the boulder down to the nearest trail, then hiking out to the rendezvous spot for a helo pickup.
I never did get that damn boat ride.
EVERY NOW AND THEN you’ll get a mission that’s just a checklist of misery.
On one such occasion, I and another NCSB jumper started out with a good landing on a small lightning fire north of the base.
Our cargo boxes, on the other hand, ended up hung in the trees.
The whole point of smokejumping is to get to the fire as quickly as possible. You can’t screw around once you hit the ground. If there were more than just us two, we could leave someone behind to retrieve the gear. But there wasn’t.
We had no choice but to leave almost all our firefighting tools, food, water, and cold weather gear dangling in the branches and head off to find the fire.
I had only one canteen of water on me, which was frozen. That and some Gatorade mix and a Snickers bar.
Then it got worse. The forests of the Pacific Northwest have the densest biomass in the country—sometimes lots of huge trees, but in this case, an incredibly dense u
nderstory.
This fire was burning somewhere in that brushy tangle. To find it we had to get on our hands and knees and squirm through tunnels of vegetation like some kind of jungle commandos.
The fire was hardly smoking at all, which meant it was a bitch to find. Over the radio, air attack snidely suggested I try and sniff it out. I’m notorious at the base for having an almost uncanny sense of smell; if I even get a drop of milk on my clothes, it will drive me nuts. I laughed at the transmission, suggesting they come down and give me a hand.
No luck here, though. After a brief but intensely frustrating search, we finally found the smoldering pig, dug some line around it, and got it confined for the night.
We made it back to the jump spot by sunset. We were parched, but it was too dark to get the cargo down now. We had to wait until sunrise.
We shared a few “Gato shots,” two capfuls of water mixed with a little Gatorade.
Not a good idea.
I didn’t know it at the time, but ingesting too much glucose and too little water can cause bloating and diarrhea. (Now I know; and I carry a better electrolyte replacement mix on every jump.) I don’t think I’ve ever been so thirsty, even in triple-digit Southern California summers.
The temperature was dropping fast, but our sleeping bags were somewhere overhead in the darkness.
We both had the same idea simultaneously: out came the fire shelters. They’re designed to keep heat out, but turns out they’re pretty good at keeping it in too.
We deployed the shelters and settled in for the night. I ended up getting a great night’s sleep—the silver lining, so to speak, to a shitty day. I’m still not sure why this isn’t standard training in case of emergency.
The next day we got everything down from the trees. Then it was time to head back to the fire and put it out.
We were down to one cubie of water—a cardboard box with a five-gallon plastic bladder inside. Normally these are for drinking, but under some circumstances—such as this—we use them to help put out a fire.
Anything to get out of this shithole faster.
We drank up, filled our water bottles, and saved the rest for the fire.
Back into the jungle tunnels we went.
Usually you carry a cubie by sticking your pulaski through the little cargo strap on top and slinging it over your shoulder.
Here, of course, that was impossible, crawling through dense thickets on our hands and knees.
Just to move on this hellacious hillside I had to put the strap around my wrist. The box kept twisting and banging into me until I was ready to cut it loose and watch it tumble away.
But we needed the water, so all I could do was thrash around and practice my French.
When we reached the fire, we were able to put it out quickly. You’d be amazed what five gallons of water and two pulaskis can do.
Even then we weren’t done yet. The local forest helo reconned us a pickup spot and estimated it was an easy hike away.
From the air, distances can look completely different from how they are on the ground. I had a superintendent back in California who was fond of saying, “Just one more chain, Snapper.” This always meant we’d be walking to China.
I could hear his voice in my head as we hiked and hiked and hiked some more.
Hours later, we finally reached the helispot and called for pickup.
JUMPERS ARE ALWAYS LOOKING for new and better gear to make their lives easier. Aside from a government-issue helmet, fire shelter, and a few other basic necessities, we have to buy everything ourselves.
The list doesn’t even include boots, a firefighting essential, although rumors are in the air that we might be getting a stipend for those.
After that night in a shelter, I did some research and discovered a camping hammock made by Hennessy Hammock. I picked one up and found it to be one of the finest inventions ever made for sleeping in the backcountry.
Since then I’ve never jumped without one in my PG bag. I’ve only had to sleep on the ground twice more: once because there were no trees, and once because I was just too damn tired to set it up.
CHAPTER 12
THE BACK WALL OF the NCSB loft is decorated with memorabilia and a few photos. One of the pictures shows a jumper stooped under a huge pack that towers above his head. He looks like some kind of medieval peasant carrying a load of goods to market.
Guess who that is?
The setting was Crater Lake National Park. Redmond is the closest jumper base, so the park is usually their territory. But just as jumpers from other bases get to see our backyard in the Cascades, I’ve been lucky enough to jump there a few times.
The deep, almost alien blue of the lake and the jagged rim of the collapsed volcanic caldera make for some world-class scenery.
The park is huge, though, much bigger than just the lake. On this two-man mission we jumped into a part called the pumice desert, a barren area covered in powdered rock and ash from the same eruption that created the lake seventy-seven hundred years ago.
I was out one morning answering the call of nature when I heard an elk bugling nearby. I couldn’t see anything—we were in the densely forested side of the park—but I had never heard one this close.
I started sneaking toward the sound through the woods. I wanted to see this thing. I kept searching quietly through the trees and bushes until finally, stepping around a trunk, I almost stumbled into a bull with a large rack off to my left. He gave an angry grunt and charged.
Let’s just say if I hadn’t done my business already I would have shit myself. There was nothing to hide behind and no time to run, so I stood my ground.
He passed within a few yards and went crashing off into the trees.
When my heartbeat returned to normal, I looked around the dense forest and realized I was a bit turned around.
Did I mention I was JIC?
As I realized I was turned around, I knew I needed to pay close attention and retrace my way back to camp. Without a radio or a compass, I had to rely on my experience and landmarks to work my way back. It took a bit, especially if you include my elk excursion and sightseeing. Once I knew I was finally getting close, I hooted a few times in case the other jumper could hear it. He was only a rookie on the fire and probably thought I was hurt or something. At one point I had even heard a plane that sounded like a jump ship and thought, Shit, my radio’s back at camp, I’m the JIC, and they are trying to contact me. Just great.
It was a good lesson in how you should never go off, even a few yards into the woods, without your radio and a compass in your pocket.
When I finally got back to camp, it turned out nobody was looking for me or worried about my extended absence.
“Did you hear me hoot a few times?” I asked the rookie.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I thought that was some hiker!”
WE FINALLY FINISHED WITH that fire and returned to the jump spot to pack up to leave.
Normally any cargo that burns goes into the campfire to lighten the pack-out. Here, however, we were within sight of a scenic viewing area. Visitors might be watching, and you can bet the rangers were. We had to carry everything out.
As I shouldered my pack I heard a few stitches pop in the shoulder straps. Luckily the hike was flat, with only scattered soft spots and holes from ground varmints to watch out for. I spent most of it struggling to stay upright.
My jump partner obligingly took a picture.
It took us about two hours to go about two miles. When we reached the truck I backed up to the tailgate, leaned back, and unclicked my strap buckles with a sigh of relief. That feeling of sudden weightlessness never gets old.
A tourist had drifted over and started peppering me with questions.
“Sir, give me a second,” I said, hands on knees, trying to catch my breath. It took a few seconds of stretching before I could straighten my spine out all the way.
When we returned to base, my jump partner tried to convince me to let him weigh our packs. I
figured it would be a serious morale breaker if it only came in at 110 pounds. I told him, “No, dude, I’m okay.”
A few minutes later I heard some ruckus in the cargo area and voices saying my name. Great, I thought. My pack usually was under 110 pounds—I must be turning into a pansy.
When I entered the room, one jumper said, “Holy shit, dude, you had 154.8!”
I looked at the scale. He was right.
It was my heaviest load ever for me. My pride felt a little better. The popped stitches made sense.
Soon a new photo joined the others on the wall: a not-too-tall jumper bent under a backpack heavier than him.
AS YOU MAY HAVE assumed, there’s a certain protocol to fighting fire in national parks. Firefighters need special approval for things like retardant drops, cutting down trees, and using motorized equipment like chain saws and pumps. We’re often restricted to light hand tactics, essentially nineteenth-century firefighting technology. The technical term is MIST tactics—Minimum Impact Suppression Techniques.
The whole experience can be a bureaucratic nightmare.
On another Crater Lake mission, a local fire chief called on the radio as soon as we landed. “You guys are not here,” he said.
“Can you please repeat?” I said.
“You’re not even here. Do not dig holes, don’t disturb anything. Don’t even fart.”
I laughed to myself, but after a glance around I got the picture. We were in some kind of special research area that was pristine even by park standards.
Where we were standing had the cleanest forest floor I’ve even seen. It looked like some millionaire’s property where a caretaker used a Miele vacuum on it every few days.
A PACK-OUT ISN’T A race. Everyone travels at his or her own pace, usually alone.
You’ve been busting ass for days, working in the dirt, and sleeping on the ground. You’re lucky if you have only 110 pounds on your back.
You’re free to stop for a dip in a river or some huckleberry grazing, anything you want, as long as you make it to the pickup spot on time.
Smokejumper Page 12