Cold North Star

Its been a slow and cold fire. The high temperatures have been only in the 60s. The last two mornings it has been 30,31. We have had mostly cloudy skies.

We are camped in a spike camp in the fairgrounds at Republic Wa. Its an hour and a half NE from Omak.

Due to the weather we havent been able to burn all the control lines together. They need to get that done in order to lift the evacuation levels and let the people go home. 

That being said Mother Nature may have a say in where the control lines are. There is another storm coming out of the gulf of Alaska, and we are supposed to have light rain tomorrow and showers on Sunday.

It looks like we will be here for our full 14 day tour. If so and they dont extend us we will be on our way home on the 17th. This may be our last fire if the season.

When all the dust settles i will have more to share with you when the season ends. It is sometimes hard to keep you up on what is going on due to poor phone signal. I also have a lot more pictures to share. It has been really hard to upload photos because of poor at best signals.

Anyway if you can please help me out with your generous donations twards the wildland engine fund i have posted on gofundme.com. You can find the link in my Facebook page under Mountaintravis. Or you can make a direct donation tome and i will forward it to the fund for the engine. If you cannot afford to donate please repost the link to those who

may be able to help out. 

Thanks again and we will be home soon....

North Star

Just when we thought our season was over we received a dispatch. We have been dispatched to the North Star fire. We will be camped in Omak Wa.

Tonight we made it to the state park above Cheif Joseph Dam.

I will try to keep you posted as I can. I have no idea of the signal or wifi. I am bringing this post to you because the park has wifi.

This fire has burned over 200,000 acres.

Also just a reminder if you can help donate to the build an engine cause we would really appreciate I ate it. Thanks to those of you who have already donated as well as reposted my cause. Thanks Keep it up!

See you all soon😀

Homeward Bound

Today we finished our tour of 21 shifts in a row. We are all tired. Nothing a bit of R and R won't fix. When we get home we will rest for two days and then be back available for the next dispatch.

It will take us a couple days to get home. We will be back late Saturday.

Here is a few pictures. Enjoy!

 See you all soon

Day 16 of the Route Complex

Today our assignment is to mop up and patrol from H-2 to drop point 98. We took one pass and there isnt a lot to mop up. There will be more hot spots that show up as the days heating continues. Otherwise it will be a patrol job. 

The pictures below are of a map of our area and also the cedar trees that have cat faced.

Sorry about the backwards maps. Some things I can't seem to fix while i am mobile.

Extended Time

Just an update for you. We were given a seven day extension. What that means is we will be working 21 days straight. Then  we will have to take some time off. It is likely we will be heading home. But from the sounds of it we wont be home long.

Here is some photos of what we have seen and been doing:

Burn operation

Its been a busy several day's. We have been supporting a burn. They burned about 20 miles. 

After the burn we started mopping up and that is what we will do today to. The main part of the fire has been growing and doins some torching and running. The fire has spread ash and embers across the line. This has caused a number of spot fires. So they pulled everyone off of mop up to grid the green.We were able to get all of the spot fires so far.

I hope to have another update for you soon.

Cold mornings slows fire

We have been getting up to cold mornings. This morning it is foggy and 43 degrees. Feels like fall. But it is supposed to warm up this week.

We had one night in a spike camp. It was really a neat spot. Our fire is mopped up to 100 feet. We will find out this morning if we are going to be patrolling it or not. 

All the nearby fires have layed down the last two days. But with it getting warmer they look to get cooking again. They have been expecting ours ro blow up. This fire is a little different. The fire has an additional feature. Slope driven terrain.

Here is some more pictures. See you all soon....