Text and photos by Tom Story.
Crews in the Southwest Region (Arizona, New Mexico & a little bit of Texas) get ready early in the calendar year for the beginning of fire season, and the preparation of the Tonto National Forest’s Mesa Hotshot Crew northeast of Phoenix is typical.
The crew was formed in 1973 and was based on the Pleasant Valley District until the move down to the Sonoran desert of the Mesa Ranger District two seasons ago. When the hiring process was all over for this year Superintendent Pat Moore had 7 new hires, “the most I’ve ever had” he commented, to begin their third season on the desert.
The crew’s week long critical training period included the usual pack test, safety refresher, first aid and CPR training, equipment issue and lots of other details.
Since the crew moved to the desert, they have begun to build a new set of physical training traditions. One is called the “desert assessment”, a timed event at the Coon Bluff Recreation site just down the road from the crew’s base at the Goldfield Work Center. It consists of a 1.7 mile run with a 600-foot elevation gain (and loss) followed by tire pounding with a sledge hammer (10 times each side), 20 pushups, 50 total step ups, and 3 per side sandbag getups.
After four rotations of the exercises, participants don a 45-pound weight vest and hike the same route in reverse. The best time of the day recently was 54 minutes, 10 seconds.
Slower than the record, but this year running with the weight vests was not allowed. The idea was to see what shape they were in, while being careful to not cause injuries. The test combined pure aerobics, hiking, and work capacity with the various exercise motions typical of firefighting. Superintendent Moore said the assessment “ isn’t about checking fitness, it is about mental toughness”.
Field exercises and a camping shakedown were held both on the Payson and Pleasant Valley Ranger Districts on the Tonto National Forest. The site for their chain saw refresher, brushing along some overgrown fence lines by the Ranger station, was at their old home base in Young, AZ. The “final exam” held the following day was constructing about a mile of fireline in steep country to simulate a fire scenario. The crew returned to Mesa to finish up with some classroom work.
The first day they were available, the 2015 fire season began for the Mesa Hotshots — they were sent to a fire on the east side of the Superstition Mountains on the edge of their home district.
