Two days on a fire with the Zion Wildland Fire Module

Cow Creek Fire Aspen saplings
Aspens that have sprouted on the still-burning Cow Creek fire. NPS photo by Leah H. Mitchell

Leah H. Mitchell has written one of the best articles I have ever seen about what firefighters actually do out on the fireline. It was published on October 6 at the Estes Park Trail Gazette web site. Ms. Mitchell, a Fire Program Clerk for the Northern Great Plains Fire Management Office at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, wrote the article while she was assigned to the Cow Creek fire in Rocky Mountain National Park as an Information Officer Trainee.

She spent two days with Zion National Park’s Wildland Fire Module hiking up and down steep slopes at the 10,000-foot level. The Module was assigned to monitor and burn out a portion of the fire which has been burning in a remote area of the park since lightning ignited it on June 24 — burning so long that the article included a picture of Aspens that have sprouted and grown one to two feet high after the fire burned through.

Here is the article:

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Ed Waldron holds the Kestrel, or weather meter, up to the wind. In the next five minutes, he will note wind speeds at least a dozen times to make sure he is sending accurate readings to the handful of firefighters widening the blackened line in the drainage below him.

Cow Creek Fire Ed Waldron monitor
Wildland firefighter, Ed Waldron, from the Zion Wildland Fire Module uses his compass to measure the slope while taking weather readings on the Cow Creek Fire. NPS photo by Leah Mitchell.

“When you make smoke observations, use a lot of adjectives,” he instructs Jeff Harrison, who is apprenticing to learn Waldron`s fire-monitor job. “Words like: ‘dispersing,` `rising,` `white to light gray,` `occasionally dark.'”

We watch the smoke produced by the firefighters push up the slope of Mt. Dickinson. Once the smoke hits the ridgeline, it rises straight up, creating a vertical column.

More than three months after lightning ignited the Cow Creek Fire in Rocky Mountain National Park, firefighters on the west side of the fire are attempting to create a buffer to keep the fire below them from spotting or running uphill to the north.

Waldron is particular about how he monitors weather, fire behavior and smoke. To avoid variability, the same person, he tells Harrison, should do the job all day. “Use distilled water, not tap water, in the Kestrel and change the wick often,” he says. Create shade, if necessary, to keep the wick out of the sun.

“And start 15 minutes early, so the reading is taken precisely on the hour,” he adds.

This afternoon, just below Mt. Dickinson, the winds are out of the southeast at 7 miles per hour, gusting to 15 mph, not ideal for the burnout, but workable.

Four times, a crew of four firefighters with drip torches scramble 500 feet down the steep slope and back up, dotting gas into patches of downed timber. A faint smell of juniper hangs in the air, as the ground cover burns in large patches below us.

I`ve joined the firefighters for a couple of days to observe how they are managing the fire in this remote, rugged area of the park. After a century of suppressing all wildland fires, this new generation of firefighters understand fire`s natural role in a resilient ecosystem, and are trained to safely manage fire.

The Cow Creek Fire, burning in an area untouched by fire for nearly 400 years, has helped clear out overgrown fuels, enriching the soil and allowing for new growth.

As Waldron demonstrates with his careful Kestrel readings, modern firefighters are students of fire: educated, skilled and technically proficient. Most have science degrees in forestry, ecology, biology or environmental science. Many hold graduate degrees.

Their skills are diverse: They must be able to accurately measure a fire perimeter, lead ignitions on a burnout operation, dig hand line, serve as lookouts, and receive resupply loads from a helicopter.

And they must be superbly fit to carry out these duties in unforgiving terrain — often in high-risk situations.

Yesterday we`d been delivered by helicopter to the north side of the fire, and then had climbed nearly 2,000 vertical feet to rendezvous with other members of the Zion Wildland Fire Module at an exposed knob on the slopes of Mt. Dickinson.

In the thin air at 10,000 feet, our lungs hadn`t been able to keep up with our legs, and we had stopped to catch our breaths every tenth of a mile. Following a game trail through areas burned by the fire, we had sunk into pockets of burned duff, unnoticeable until we were knee-deep.

We ate lunch at the top. The firefighters tore open MREs or Meals Ready-to-Eat, while eyeing my snap peas, cheese stick, smoothie and foil-pouch salmon steak. After lunch, I followed a firefighter down the slope to a spot where two firefighters were about to start the burn operation.

The goal: Burn 600 feet down the slope to connect into the black on the west side and then to a meadow below, creating a large buffer and preventing fire from burning outside the perimeter to the north and east.

Beginning about 2 p.m., the two lighters had worked a strip about 100 feet wide down the hill. The juniper immediately caught fire, and flame spread to nearby lodgepole and subalpine fir. But at 4 p.m., with about a third of the slope black — and the sky filled with smoke — incident commander Alex Viktora, stationed seven miles away in Estes Park, shut down operations.

Cow Creek Fire Travis Thrush
Travis Thrush from the Zion Wildland Fire Module, observes the fire's movement upslope as he plans for his next ignition point. NPS photo by Leah H. Mitchell.

The burn had already exceeded everyone`s expectations. Two firefighters, two hours, a drip torch worth of fuel — and more than eight acres were black.

Over the next 20 minutes, the radio erupted with several reports of smoke from as far away as Denver. After watching the smoke disperse and the fire subside, we hiked down to camp for the night.

Stripping off packs and helmets, the firefighters switched to housekeeping duties. One rifled through padlocked bear-proof boxes, pulling out food for the evening meal, while another fired up enough Jetboil stoves to cook dinner for seven.

Dinner–chili–was buffet style, with the food boxes serving as countertops. More than food, I wanted sleep. I was still suffering from a stinging altitude headache. If I was going to hike the next day, I needed to drink at least three quarts of fluids tonight.

I set up my tent and listened to Viktora`s evening debriefing over the radio. I was already worried about the next morning`s uphill climb. After a week`s worth of acclimatization, the firefighters weren`t concerned.

The plan for the next day was the same: Continue lighting down the slope to widen the black. After a restless, windy night, we were up by 6:00 a.m. Four firefighters took off early to hike up to the burn and position themselves as lookouts. Luckily, the helicopter was available later that morning to ferry the rest of us halfway up the slope, cutting our hike in half.

After rendezvousing with the other firefighters, we split up, some of us heading upslope to the lookout and others down to the black. At the lookout, after taking his Kestrel readings, Waldron had radioed Viktora to review the day`s burnout plans, confirm objectives and report current weather and wind information.

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More information about Wildland Fire Modules, formerly known as Fire Use Modules.

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Author: Bill Gabbert

After working full time in wildland fire for 33 years, he continues to learn, and strives to be a Student of Fire.

3 thoughts on “Two days on a fire with the Zion Wildland Fire Module”

  1. Send this story to the Loyola University professor in New Orleans — eeek! a girl wrote it, professor. Betcha the prof couldn’t hike days in a row at 10k altitude. Fine story.

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  2. Thanks to you Bill for helping get the word out about what a great group of wildland firefighters we have coming up as our future leaders.

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