It was a long fire season. First of all I would like to thank all of you who followed along. I hoped you enjoyed the ride. I tried to keep you up to date on all of the happening's. It was hard at times with little to no cell service. It was really irritating at times too. But all said it was a success.
At first in July we were called to Utah. We went down to the "Shingle" fire. It was near Cedar City near the Arizona border. We worked for 6 day's and had 4 day's travel. When we were demobed we realized how close we were to Zion National Park. So on the way home we made a slight detour. It was a 12 mile trip to drive through the park. The cost normally is $25 but they let us go through because we were firefighters. It was a short tour and I wish we had time to really enjoy it. Maybe some other time.
Our next tour was a short one. We were called to the "Long Draw" fire. We went to McDermit OR/ NV. We drove all night just to stage for initial attack.We sat all day waiting for lightning. It never happened.The next morning we were demobed.
We were home for a short stay and then we were called to Idaho. We went to the Mustang Complex. When we got there the fire was only 700 acres. We saw the fire grow rapidly. In fact some of the largest growths in history happened on this fire. One day the fire grew 36,000 acres. It is now over 336,000 acres. We were there doing structure protection along the North Fork Salmon River. Very pretty area with lots of wildlife. We saw Rattle snakes, Bald Eagles, Elk, Deer, and Bighorn sheep. We were there for 12 day's and then went home for a few days of R&R.
While we were gone the engine we were running had the transmission go out in it. Arrangements were made to replace it with another engine. We did but there was a fly in the ointment. We were on night shift and to make a really long and frustrating story short, they pulled us off the line during the night and told us we had to go back to camp and get our paperwork done for the new engine. When we mad it to camp we were told we didn't do anything wrong, just needed to get paperwork done. The next morning we were given a long runaround of get permission to you have permission to "Get Lost You are Demobed". So after a very frustrating time we were back on our way home. The company lost out on 3 day's pay. That was a tough one.
On our way home from that fire we decided to drive through the Sawtooth wilderness. It wasn't so much out of the way as much as it was just an alternative rout. It's a beautiful valley and then it goes down through Sun Valley/ Ketchum resort.
We were still on our way home when we reached Boise we received a call from home base. They had another dispatch for us. We were going back to the Twin Falls area to the "Horse Butte" fire. We actually started out at the BLM base in Shoshonee. The BLM guy's apologized to us for bringing us there. They told us that the fire had a years worth of rain that night and put it out. But we went out to the fire anyway. We use a little water on a couple of smokes for a bout 20 minutes. Then we sat all the next day before being sent home the next morning.
We figured our season was over and after being home for a couple of weeks we had another dispatch. We were on our way to Washington to the "Yakima Complex". We had a 14 day tour there. We had some good day's like when the fire backed down to the line and also when we supported the burn out along HWY 12. The last 6 or 7 day's were very slow as we patrolled the line to make sure there wasn't any chance of re burn. Then now we are home.
Totals for the year. Including travel day's My crew and I logged 47 day's this year. My biggest year of all time.
I hope you enjoyed following along.
I will be working on a season in review in pictures, so stay tuned.....
