Cayuse Mtn. Fire

I am going to try to post this update. Sorrt there hasn't been an up fate sooner. The signal is really spotty. 

We have had a good fire and as if now it is lined but not out. Today's concern is the big wind event. It is really wind and so far no blowouts.

It has been a good fire thus far. One day we supported a burn. Our job was to support and hold the line. Which we did along with others. 

We saw some good fire. When i can i will upload photot. Otherwise we have done patrol and mop up. 

I hope to have more soon.

Bigfoot Wildfire's First Dispatch

After a longer then normal wait we finally go a dispatch.We are heading for Washington. The name of the fire is the Cayuse fire. It is NW of Spokane.

As always I will keep you up to date on what is going on. As I can.

Fog, Town, And Horse Drive?

While on a fire you see a variety of things. For instance one morning on the way to the fire line I saw Wolverine in a field looking for food. I have seen a badger, people rafting on the river near the fire who were nude, people transporting water to their marijuana farms (behind closed roads mind you), and many others.

Once again on this fire was another first. On the way back to camp we had to stop for a horse drive? Well the truth is I think they were moving the horses from one pasture to another. In fact this property was a sort of resort. They had places for people to stay and there was a variety of activities you could do on the ranch as a guest.

And then the rains came. We had some showers and then during one of our last nights there it rained. Hard. The next morning as we went up to the fire we hit fog. And boy was it thick. We could barley see the road. When we got to the drop point it was thick as pea soup. You can see in the pictures below.

Line Briefing?

The town of Republic was very small. It did have a grocery store and a hardware store, and a motel. It was in part a old looking western town. 

This was as the fire season was winding down.And we had one more assignment. Another first for me. Rehab work. On my next post I will show you the rehab work we did to finish our season.

A Little Ingenuity

When we are at a fire that has a cater there they provide our lunches for the day. We have two choices "Regular or Veggie".

There isn't much differences in them. The regular lunches always have at least one sandwich, candy, trail mix, and fruit. In the veggie lunch it is similar, however they do not have a sandwich. They have nuts and fruit among other things. But sometimes they will have a burrito. 

Do you like a cold burrito? Neither do I. Many times we wrap the burrito into the foil provided and then we will put it on the engines manifold. As you see below with a little ingenuity there are better ways to cook the burritos.

Burritos under the hot rock

Are they done?

We found a hot spot under the rock. It had some coals under it. So we dug it out and put our burritos in it and buried them.Then we continued on our patrol for a while. After a while, on one of our passes we checked and we had hot burritos.

Sadly later we drove by only to see our oven torn apart and destroyed. I am pretty sure it was the forest service engine. They were working the same stretch of line. But hey it worked just long enough to have a hot lunch.