Written better than I have the time, ambition, and talent to do myself. Strong work.

Wildland Fire’s Great Exodus

That is all.

Fires are fun when they’re out of control and there’s a lot going on. I get a real kick out of scouting an active fire, working to gain situational awareness and come up with an effective strategy. Once the fire is caught, the challenge becomes staying engaged and keeping the crew engaged. Burning is fun; mopup and patrol and rehab are not.

Doing hotshot shit, like prepping and then burning and holding a piece of line, or going direct on a gnarly division, is what draws most of us into the business and keeps us there, but a good crew will still do a good job of the “deucer” work without complaint.

Hotshot crews have a reputation for always wanting to burn and not being a super useful resource when it comes to boring days of digging out stump holes or dealing with the piles of slash in the green that have to be cleaned up after the fun part is over. On a big active fire, we often get out of doing a ton of mopup or rehab because we’re sent to the next division closer to the head of the fire. I think a good test of our character and our value as a crew is how well we accept and participate in assignments we don’t enjoy or don’t feel are fully necessary.

Mopup sucks, and I’ve spent a lot of days doing it for no good reason, going deeper than we did the day before on the same piece of ground. We’d keep working deeper, stirring hot duff and spraying out stumpholes until the interior of the fire and our mopped up edge had the same amount of heat. Fires eventually burn up all the residential fuels and go out. So why mop up at all?

A few years ago I was on a fire that we caught in one shift. We mopped up and secured the edge the next day, going as deep as we felt was necessary. One of the guys on my squad noticed a big pinyon with some heat and ladder fuels under it and asked if I wanted him to go take care of it. The tree in question was three chains in and the winds were calm so I told him we’d just let it do its thing and burn up. A few hours later, the heat under the pinyon had built to the point that it was going to torch out pretty soon. My superintendent saw it from his location at the top of the hill and called me on the radio. We talked about getting in there to keep it from torching, because there was still time, but ultimately decided to just let it clean up. When it torched, the winds picked up, blew embers across the line, spotted into some big dead junipers, and ran six miles.

A Type 2 Crew (Deuce Crew) would most likely have mopped up under that big pinyon on their first pass that morning and hung on to that fire. My lesson learned that day was that sometimes our bare minimum “just do what’s necessary” mopup standards are insufficient. Sometimes the head-down “deucer” mopup standards are exactly what’s needed, and hotshot crews have to be careful to determine what amount of effort is required in each situation.

Sometimes the mopup standards are excessive and a waste of work, exposing the crew to more ash, dust, and smoke than is required. Sometimes though, we think we’re being smart by letting interior smokes take care of themselves, but are actually being elitist lazy assholes.

It’s a fucking razor’s edge man.

That is all.

It’s been awhile since I posted anything, even longer since I posted regularly. Recently, my wife met someone from another local Hotshot Crew who knows who I am and was asking when I’d write again. I thought I had done an excellent job of keeping this blog anonymous, but oh well; it was actually pretty cool to hear that someone had read my blog and appreciated it. (Fireman Mover: Cheers!)

My last post was about a year ago, talking about being ready to move on from crew life, being too damn old for this shit, and the difficulty of moving up without being able to accept a job on a different forest or region. (Being married with kids living in a desirable location makes it difficult to relocate, FYI. (I’m not resentful or regretful, just stating a fact that a lot of us FS folks here have to deal with one way or another.)

Anyway, turns out I got lucky and got an unexpected promotion on my forest, with a different crew. So I’m a foreman now. Moving to a different crew in a leadership position has been challenging, interesting, and a great source of content for the blog.

I’ll be posting more about the transition throughout the 2021 fire season. (Delicately, now that I know I’m not anonymous!) But for the record, everything I’ve experienced since accepting the job has been beneficial; a chance for personal development, if sometimes uncomfortable.

It’s fascinating to me that two equally awesome Hotshot Crews can have such different approaches to doing the same job with the same end state. Picking those approaches apart and trying to possibly blend the best of both moving forward will be an interesting and hopefully rewarding process.

That is all.

Holy shit, I’m damn near 40. Still on a crew. Still a squad boss. Still hanging in there; just a little more sore than I remember being a few years ago. Today I ran with my squad for five or six miles at high elevation, then went and cut and piled green ponderosa for the rest of the day. It was good training and useful work but tonight my legs and back are kind of wrecked. Going to be a grumpy hoist to get out of bed mañana.

But, so it goes. I don’t think I’m too old for this shit yet. I’ve worked other professions with badass 60-year-olds that could still work hard physically without too much complaint. It’s also a good morale boost to look around at some of the newer, younger guys who have never worked this hard before and are clearly feeling some discomfort as well.

This is my thirteenth season on the same crew, other than a detail running a Type 2 IA crew a couple years ago, and I think I’m ready for something different. Always thought I’d stay on a shot crew my whole career like my superintendent did for 25 years before he retired, but now I’m beginning to reconsider. Not being able to move around the country for a job easily can really hamper upward mobility. There are crew foreman job opportunities every year, but not in my town. There will be a foreman vacancy this year, but it will be extremely competitive, and I am not convinced my application will be strong enough. Oh well.

There are many different ways to stay challenged in fire once you have the right qualifications. Last season I got to work in dispatch a fair amount, and found that working an IA from dispatch was just as challenging and enjoyable as being on the ground, (and not as sweaty and smoky!). Talking with the folks over there, it sounds like there are plenty of chances to get out as a division supervisor or taskforce leader or whatever, as well as more dispatch overtime availability than most people would care to work.

Sounds good to me.

Maybe in a couple years this site will have to be called Dirty Old Ex Hotshot.

That is all.

It is 1230 in the morning and I’ve been sleeping in the woods, poorly. I’m doing a division assignment on a type 3 fire as a qualified taskforce leader and can’t stop thinking about tomorrow’s shift. Tomorrow’s shift is pretty straightforward, but performing as a division is new to me and today was challenging at times. But it is annoying to miss out on sleep from thinking about the next day. 

Anyway, I was beginning to drift off around midnight, for real finally, I think. Then I heard some rustling in the leaves and a sort of bark/growl/roar maybe 30 feet from me. Some sort of small and furious animal was running amok and headed my way. 

I stayed quiet. Most of the time animals leave people alone. Not this little fucker though. I don’t know what this thing was, but it came roaring up the old ditch I’m trying to sleep in, ran onto my sleeping bag and got up close to my ribs before I sat up and slapped the shit out of it with my rolled up sweatshirt I use for a pillow. 

The beast squealed. I had trapped it under my sweatshirt. I briefly contemplated punching it in the face but what if it was a little skunk? A trapped and punched skunk could completely ruin my night. So I let it go and it ran off into the night. I’m camping by myself tonight, because the rest of the crew went home, but I still said aloud the only logical thing one could say after being savaged by a random 5-10 pound creature: “What the fuck was that?” 

By the time I was able to turn on my headlamp the critter was long gone. This entire incident lasted roughly seven seconds. Hopefully the adrenaline will wear off soon and I can go to sleep. Fatigue can make a straightforward assignment more challenging. 

That is all.

Our seasonal firefighters are coming back to work on 17 April. Soon, very soon. The expectation on my crew is that everyone show up on day one in good enough physical condition to do the job. We don’t always all meet that expectation…

So today I am going to write about what I have learned about preseason training in the last nine years I’ve been on a hotshot crew:

My first year on the crew was also my first year in fire and my preseason training program failed me entirely. I was in shape for the Army, not the hotshots. I did 12 mile ruck marches and six mile runs, push-ups, sit-ups, and flutter kicks. As a result, I was usually last on our PT hikes. 

The second year was much better. I hiked up hills I knew the crew would train on, measuring my times against known benchmarks to track my progress. I carried more weight than I would have in my actual fire pack. But carrying 65 pounds on a Grand Canyon hike, while good exercise, puts a lot of strain on the knees, especially when hiking downhill. 

These days, I don’t train with heavy weight at all. I periodically carry my normal pack on familiar trails to check my progress, but mostly I go fast and light on hikes and bike rides. Mountain biking is an excellent cross training activity for hotshotting. Some of the strongest hikers I’ve worked with have also been avid mountain bikers. Plus it’s fun; just don’t crash and break bones. Most of my winter hikes involve skiing back down, hopefully helping my knees last the rest of my career. I don’t run at all. Ever. Unless the crew makes me. 

This year I augmented with a gym membership, taking 3 to 5 classes per week that focus on strengthening quads and glutes as well as all kinds of smaller stabilizing muscles and especially core muscles. It’s circuit training but not Crossfit and so far I haven’t experienced any injuries at the gym, just really sore muscles. 

Maintaining strong legs, lungs, and core seem to be the key to physical performance on a crew and helps with injury avoidance. I’ll find out next week how well this winter’s workout program actually prepared me for the job, but I am confident I’ll be as strong as I was last year, probably stronger. 

The only other key to preseason training I know of is to healthy food and drink less beer. Sometimes easier said than done. 

But always a good goal. 

That is all. 

Hotshot crews provide everything a crew member needs except for boots. As of last year, the Forest Service provides a boot stipend for firefighters to buy boots, but since size and preference are so diverse, it is up to individuals to figure out which boots to buy.

The requirements for wildland fire boots are that they have leather uppers, Vibram soles, and are at least eight inches tall from the ground. From there, you have to figure out what sort of boot is right for you.

Just like in the Army, taking care of your feet is crucial for hotshot crews. If your feet hurt, you are going to have a shitty day, no matter what you’re doing. Conversely, even in you are having your ass kicked, if your feet feel nice, fucking good for you. Wear good wool socks, if they work for you, and change them at least every other day. Clean between your toes at least every other day. Use foot powder and anti-fungal ointments. Cut your fucking toenails. That’s about it for personal hygiene. Take care of your feet. The rest is about boot selection, matching the right boots to the job.

Logger boots: Whites brand logger boots are probably the gold-standard for the logger boot style. They are roughly $425/pair, made of good quality leather, with a tall heel that helps for navigating steep terrain. Logger boots are probably the best boot for wildland fire, especially if you are on a saw team. They can handle heat without falling apart. They breathe better than other styles, which is nice when you’re going without a shower for several weeks. They are wicked heavy, but that’s only an issue if you are doing flutterkicks or pull-ups. Suck it up. Breaking them in can be painful (White-bite), but once they are broken in, I’ve found them to be very comfortable until they’re worn out. I usually get about a season and a half to two seasons out of a pair of Whites. The soles wear down, and the heel gets uneven, leaving me scrambling for footing and walking in a way which irritates my knees. A new sole rebuild costs about $150 and a full rebuild is $250, which is a great option not available for other types of boots. I have never had my Whites rebuilt, so I have three pairs sitting in my locker, too worn out to use but with too much life in them to throw away. One of these days I’ll send them in for some love. Other brands of logger boots that I would recommend are Nicks and Drews. Whites have not had the greatest quality craftsmanship in the last few years, so some guys are buying Nicks for about the same price. Drews are considerably cheaper than Whites and Nicks, and seem to hold up just as well. Do not buy Redwings. Do not buy Hawthorns. Do not be a cheap asshole. Your feet deserve better.

Hiking boots: If you’re going to be walking a lot, hiking around, scouting, exploring, and doing various other overhead shit, then hiking boots might be the best option. Sometimes I walk fifteen miles in a shift, and hiking boots support my feet better on long hikes than logger boots do. They are comfortable right out of the box and break in quickly, becoming even more comfortable. They are less expensive than logger boots. They are also less durable. The worst thing about hiking boots is that they don’t breathe very well. Your feet will be all white and wrinkly if you’re sweating a lot, which you probably will be. Big fires happen when and where it is hot and dry. Your feet will stink like cat piss, and athlete’s foot flourishes in these boots. Worth it? I think so… I’m currently using a pair of Scarpa Fuegos, and I like them a lot. They have a good reputation for durability and seem to handle the heat just fine, although I avoid stepping in hot shit if possible. I have worn out three or four pairs of La Sportivas over the years, and can no longer recommend them. The old glacier boot from Sportiva could not handle the heat. Step in some hot ash and your soles would come apart, delaminate. You’re pretty much fucked if your sole comes off, and even if it’s a partial delamination, you end up with a bunch of dirt in your boot which cakes up and causes blisters. It sucks. Sportiva created the WLF specifically for wildland fire, with a glue that is supposed to hold up to heat. I used a pair for a few weeks last season and half of this season, and all the rubber on the toe of my left boot came off. Fuck. A lot of guys used to wear Lowas, but I don’t see as many these days. I’d say they’re a decent option, but they didn’t work for my feet. I got too much heel-lift on uphill hikes and got some gnarly blisters. Haix has a new, cheap option, running at about $185/pair. They are lightweight. They are comfortable, but don’t expect to get more than one average season out of them. Actually, don’t expect to get more than one season out of any hiking boot. I am hoping to get two seasons out of my Scarpas, and I know a few guys who have used the same pair for three seasons, but those guys are cheap fuckers and I care about my feet too much to wear shitty worn-out boots.

Basically, expect to spend a couple hundred dollars a year on boots. If you are an incoming rookie, and not sure if you’ll stick with wildland fire, maybe buy some Haix. If you are on a crew and intending to stay on crews, working on a saw team and/or doing mostly grunt work, logger boots are probably the best bet. You probably already have a pair. Good quality hiking boots like Scarpas can perform just as well as logger boots and are less expensive, but your feet will reek (just ask my wife). There is no perfect boot, or at least, I haven’t yet found the perfect boot. Boot selection is a three-way balance between price, durability, and comfort.

Take care of your feet.

That is all.

We never really know what to expect when we roll up to a fire, but over the years I’ve learned that reality will almost always be less exciting than my imagination. I’ve learned that taking the time to create a good safe plan is critical. A hasty plan will often fail, leading to wasted effort and possibly injuries or fatalities. Making measured decisions and taking calculated risks are how we define our tactics and ensure that everyone leaves the fire line safely. Remembering basic firefighting strategy can keep you safe when your adrenaline pushes you to beeline to the hottest part of the fire and kick some ass.

“Keep one foot in the black.”

Avoid “unburned fuel between you and the fire.”

Be cognizant of and cautious of “light, flashy fuels” like grass.

Yesterday, I was leading my squad in to the West Antelope fire thinking about those rules. My assignment, as I understood it, was to park as close to the fire as possible and hike a straight line to the fire’s edge, roughly a thousand feet in elevation up. The fuels were dry grass which burns much faster than we could run, especially upslope with some wind behind it. A straight line would have taken us through a sea of continuous unburned grass. I couldn’t even see the fire from where we parked, due to terrain obstruction. I had seen the fire from a few miles away and during the drive in, until the hills got in the way, and fire activity seemed minimal. Planes were dumping retardant along the fire perimeter and several helicopters were working hot spots with bucket drops. Still, I walked the squad along a road down low and then up to the top through the black. It probably took us ten minutes longer to get there but there wasn’t much work to do anyway. We secured a section of fire line that was hung up in broken rock along the ridge, double checked our work, and monitored it for the rest of the shift.

To be clear, I’m not sure if I was expected to walk through the green or not, because I didn’t ask anyone. I just stuck with the basics and did what I knew was safe. Having seen the fire, I would have felt comfortable walking through the unburned grass, and that’s the route we would have taken today if we’d gone back up. I have to wonder if I just misunderstood the route I was asked to take. I also wonder how many times people have incorrectly followed orders blindly, putting themselves in an unsafe position.

In wildland firefighting, if you have questions or need clarification, ask. If you see an unsafe act or conditions that could hurt or kill someone, say something. Ultimately, don’t do anything stupidly unsafe, even if it’s a direct order. (Be prepared to explain why you are turning down the assignment and offer alternative options, but don’t rush headlong into something foolish just because you’re told to.)

Be careful not to cross the very thin line between badass and dumbass.

That is all.