Chapter 3 - And now, the fire.
The next morning, I heard Slim banging around and getting a fire started; by 6 am he had flap jacks and a big pot of boiled eggs all ready and was yelling for everyone to “come an get it!”
It was always my habit when out on a fire to eat breakfast first, supper last and lunch when I could. This day would not be an exception. There were some decisions to be made before we could even get on with doing a reconnaissance and attacking the fire. I ate quickly and headed over to the river. This branch was quite different from the main river. Instead of a wide valley, it was quite narrow, more canyon like. Instead of a bed of mostly small boulders and sand, it was all large boulders. The grade of the river was steep as opposed to being relatively gentle.
At that time of the day the water levels were low, but the thought of taking the crew across twice a day and the return trip during the flood stage immediately raised major alarms. If we set up camp on the other side and if by chance the fire started to blow up, we would be trapped with two rivers at our back. I sat on a large boulder along the river and looked around. I noticed a bank just up stream a few yards that rose several feet above the riverbed. Growing back about 10 feet from the edge of the bank was a large spruce tree, across the river was another bank more or less about the same height but a few feet further down stream. That was it! Problem solved. I went back to camp and told Ben that as soon as he was finished eating to bring his power saw and meet me at the riverbank. In a few minutes he joined me and quickly understood what I wanted. The heaviest limbs and the greatest number were on the downstream side of the tree; some care would have to be taken in dropping it where I wanted it. Ten minutes later we had our bridge and with some limbing and knot removal it was quite adequate. We returned to camp, I gathered everyone together, confirmed that Scotty would stay in camp with Slim as flunkey and assistant cook and the rest of the men I split into two crews, Bob in charge of one and Ben the other. For that day, I left Harry and Hank in camp as well so that things could be set up properly and as comfortable as possible.
By seven am we were crossing the river. However, another problem quickly surfaced. When it came Holgar’s turn to cross he took about two steps and then declared that he couldn’t do it, that he would fall in and stepped back onto the ground. I went back across, walked up to him, shoved my face up as close to his as I could and said, “Then get down on your goddammed knees and crawl across!” We eyeballed each other for a moment or two, he at about 6’ 2 and 280 pounds and me 5’ 9 and 150 pounds, then he lowered his eyes, got down on his hands and knees and crawled the 100 odd feet to the other side. I went back across again, got my two new strawbosses aside and told them while I did a “recce” of the fire, I wanted them to start building fireguard along the edge before us. One crew was to work their way up hill from a starting point and the other from the same starting point to go down hill and tie the break into the river. The fire was relatively quiet at this time of the day and all the smoke and embers would be going downstream for several hours to come.
Once they started out up slope, I headed down river until I came to where the two rivers joined each other and once again on a moose trail, headed upstream along the main fork of the Raush. I hiked along for about 15 minutes then decided I should get up along the fire’s edge in order to get a better idea of how much it had grown. I finally found the edge, just over ½ a mile from the river. It was burning quietly and I confirmed that it was following the classic spread behavior of mountain fires. At night in the cool air it would burn slowly down hill in fingers along the forest floor following the driest and finest fuels, then during the daytime it would become more active and roar up-slope, retracing its route of the night and joining the fingers it had created. I had to take care not to follow up along any of the fingers, because once the daily up-valley winds kicked in, the fire would change from its night passivity to a roaring hell in a few minutes. So going from finger to finger and slowly gaining elevation, I finally came to a point that I felt had to be the leading edge. It was still in heavy timber, but I knew at the upper levels it would be in scrub pine and mountain balsam. I decided to go straight across slope and see what was ahead. I had with me an aerial photo and a geographic map of the area. Both showed a large slide chute up ahead but neither revealed the true ground conditions and both were several years old. After about a half hour of slow going I came to the chute; it was about 200 yards across at this point there was a good stream running through it from the snowfields above and the ground was wet and soggy along the stream’s perimeter. Slide chutes can be a mixed “blessing”. They can have a stream as this one did, they almost always have green slide alder growing in them, but they also have dead and broken twigs, limbs and dry leaves all along their course. Often along the edges there are dead trees brought down by avalanches.
This chute had it all, but it was wider than most and the wet area also was fairly wide. I felt that with any luck this would serve as the firebreak to stop the fire’s progress up the main valley. My decision made, I headed back.
A couple hours later I met up with the Bob’s crew who were working the lower end. Progress was slow, but considering that they only had hand tools and they were working in timber up to 4 feet in diameter, I was satisfied. I headed up to where Ben and his crew were and again came away happy with their progress. I told both Strawbosses to have their men back in camp by 5 p.m. ; after the trek in I wanted them to have an early evening and then revert to the usual 12 hours the next day.
When I got to our log bridge I was greeted with the site of the river just a few inches under the log, spray was already spewing across the top! I hurried on across and into camp and told Slim I would need his corral rope. I thought he might balk at this, but he just scratched his head for a moment then said, “ sure, I’ll leave Scotty to finish preparin’ supper and I’ll take the horses down to that little meadow a mile or so back, there’s lots of feed there and they should hang around.” We quickly took down the corral and I took the rope back to the log bridge and strung it across the river, securing it firmly at each end. I wasn’t concerned that the log would be carried away as the butt was lying close to another tree and the top was jammed between several large boulders. A lifeline to hang on to was what I wanted, it wasn’t great but it would have to do. About an hour later the two crews arrived together, the river hadn’t changed much from when I went across and all crossed without incident.
We had supper a little while later and after everyone made their beds a little more comfortable all were in bed by around eight p.m. While I waited for Slim to get back I strung up the radio antennae and readied the radio for the next morning. Slim showed up just as I was finishing and after a brief discussion, I ‘hit the hay’ as well.
The next morning we crossed the river again at 7 am and both crews picked up where they had left off the day before. I stayed with them for about an hour then went back to camp to catch up on my payroll records that I had been neglecting and to sketch out the approximate fire boundary. I called McBride on the radio and luckily was able to send and receive with a good signal; I filled the Ranger in on the fire situation and gave him an estimated fire size of 650 acres. He told me that one of the workers at the mill where we had started had contacted him and thought that in the afternoons he could probably get a long ways up river in his 20-foot riverboat. This was great news! If it could be done it would alleviate our supply problems and we could consider using fire pumps. We arranged for further contact every four hours, commencing each day at 7 in the morning. Scotty was familiar with radio usage, so I assigned him the task of manning the radio when I wasn’t there.
I took Bob and we went up to where Ben was and I told them that once they had completed the guard from river to timber line, to take their crews and working as close to the fire as they could, build guard along the bottom edge. They could do this in a leapfrogging action. If the fire had been very active along this bottom side I would have fallen back and depended on the two rivers to be the firebreak. However to do that a large amount of good timber would have been lost and the future environmental impact on the flood plain area could be severe. I sent Bob on back to his crew and stayed and worked with Ben and his crew for the rest of the day.
When I got back to camp I was greeted with the news that the riverboat had left about noon ! Cougar Grant was the name of the river-man, he would be bringing extra fuel for his motor and one helper to help him around logjams and through any rapids. We were in a bit of a dilemma as we didn’t know how far up river he could go, so couldn’t send anyone down to meet him and then there would be the strong possibility we would miss him anyway! I was mulling this over when suddenly we heard, “ahoy the camp!” and there at the edge of our camp was Cougar and his 18 year old son!
Apparently they had spotted the horses in the meadow and realized that the camp was nearby, so put into shore, found the trail and walked in. Cougar would only stay for a few minutes as he didn’t want to get caught by dark and there were several bad spots where there were “sweepers” sticking out in the river. I walked back to the boat with him and we discussed what had to be done to fix up a landing spot, I helped unload the three 10 gallon kegs of gas he had brought and the two of them left.
As I walked back to camp, I assessed how this would change things for us. We could bring in more manpower, as greater amounts of food and equipment were now feasible; if someone got hurt we could have an easier medivac. We could also bring in fire hose and set up a “gravity feed” to get water to the fire (I had already dismissed the idea of pumps). These and a host of other thoughts ran through my mind. In the end I decided to arrange for only two more men, one a faller with saw and one more to replace Ben as he had been hired as a faller and could go back to that. I would promote Greg to take his place. I would order 10 Jerry cans of mixed gas, 3 gravity funnels and 1500 feet of hose and we would include fresh meat, vegetables and fruit in any future grocery orders.
I stayed in camp the next morning when the crews headed out as I wanted to make sure that my request was understood. I anticipated that because of the size of the fire that Cy would want to send in a bunch more men. I was correct in that anticipation. I was finally able to convince him that more manpower would only result in complicating our supply problem and that because of the configuration of the fire and the slide chute I intended to use, the crew I had was adequate in size.
Chapter 4 - Day after day
E |
ach day became more routine like; rise, eat, work, eat and sleep. Morale can always be a problem so I set up a rotation schedule so that each day, one man would take a turn staying in camp and help with the chores. In these kind of situations, no one could be given a day off, but by assigning a day of light chores and providing the opportunity to wash out socks and underwear while getting their regular pay for the usual 12 hours generally helped things along.
One day after Coco had started this routine we had an extremely hot day and that afternoon, when we got back to the bridge, the water was actually surging across the log where it sagged in the middle. Everyone hurried across forgetting all about Coco and as we all watched the last man cross we also saw the dog jump up on the log and head across. We knew to a man what was going to happen! She walked right into where the log was covered and was gone! We saw her surface a couple of times and then she just disappeared in that boiling, tumbling cascade of water. We all stood there stunned and shaken. There was more than sweat and river mist on several of those whiskery faces. We stood there for a moment and then filed onto camp. I broke the news to Scotty and then I went over to Slim and asked him if I could have the rest of his bottle. He never said a word, just went and got it and gave it to me. There was just over a third of a bottle, I poured a couple of cups of water into the bottle, then got a tin cup for each man. Every man was watching silently. I poured about half a cup in one then measured the remainder out equally so that there was a sip for each man. I handed the first cup to Scotty and motioned everyone to come forward and take one. When everyone had their cup in hand, we turned to the river raised our cups and drank, not a word was spoken. We then prepared for supper.
The next day we carried on with the daily drudgery. I was getting a bit concerned with the amount of guard we had now completed with unburned material between it and the fire boundary, so I decided that with the help of George, Jim and Billy, I would burn off along all of the southeast guard that morning and along the northerly guard in the afternoon. Both burns went off without a hitch; now all we had to be concerned with along our completed guard was burned out trees falling across.
When we got back to camp that day, Scotty, Slim, and Frenchy were all sitting by the campfire, each one with a peculiar look on his face. I thought, ‘what now?’
I said, “ What’s goin’ on Slim?”
“Nothin’, just a little surprise for you all, ” he replied.
At that, Scotty went over to the cook tent and lifted something out of a cardboard box. When he turned around, there in his arms was – Coco ! Well, I’ll tell you there was a hullabaloo! Everyone crowded around and Coco apparently none the worse for wear was wagging her tail and ‘dog grinning’. It seems that sometime in mid afternoon she just came up the trail from the direction of the horses, limping a bit, but otherwise just fine! I guess her body was small and light enough she just rode over the boulders and somehow she survived. On the trip in we had seen how she didn’t fight the current but had used it to her advantage.
There was a different atmosphere that evening!
To be continued
To be continued
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