Chestnut fire, Gabbs, Nevada

Monday morning John Hauck departed to visit cooler and wilder places with some different scenery. Karen was preparing for a trip to the airport to pick up Sharron, our neighbor, from a recent trip. I was trying to think of something constructive to do while everyone else was gone. Like a nap! The phone soon destroyed that idea, with a new fire and a job for the water tender that I use.

The new assignment was in Gabbs, Nevada. Apparently best known for the oldest operating mine in the US? and a Tarantula migration in the fall.

Sometimes these fires are a bit hard to find, since they tend to be off the beaten path a bit. Not this one, it was visible for quite a ways off. I was also met by some of the citizens and directed to an overhead stand pipe to fill with water. After filling I was directed to the School yard, which was designated as the camp ground for the fire team. I was the first piece of equipment to arrive. There was only a skeleton forest service crew there as well, and about the only thing they could do was to watch.

I choose the spot that I felt would be the furthest spot away from where I thought all the concentration would be. There was a ball field with a bit of sparse grass, but I was informed that the convict crews would be camping there. I wanted to be as far away from the most people that I could get, cons or not. My first night was peaceful, right up to about 12 AM when the kitchen crew arrived. It was made up of almost all women. The night quiet was then destroyed by giggling and cursing women. A little bit like a combination of nightmare and wet dream. They parked a refrigeration truck about 30 yards away. I suppose that it had a muffler on it, but I wouldn't swear that was actually on there.

 
As you can see the ground is actually a gravel parking lot. I had gotten a new bigger tent for my next trip, and I leveled out an area for it. Unfortunately my quest for some decent tent pegs had been foiled by the demise of the generator in my personal Dodge truck. After running all over Nampa Idaho to get it repaired and back on the road, I had little taste for shopping. The aluminum pegs supplied by all tent makers performed only a little better than a rubber crutch.

The work days on a fire start at 0600 and generally do not end before 2030, or 8:30 PM.

I arrived back at camp to find it full of people and my new tent wadded up in a ball, held by only one peg and my bag of clothes. I managed to get things somewhat straightened out in the headlights of the truck. There had been gusts on 50 MPH or more that blew through camp. My tent had fared better than a lot of the ones pitched by the kitchen crew. A lot of them had broken poles. I was only missing the new door mat that I had bought to try to keep the dirt out of my tent. I never did find it.

My job this time was to supply water for the tanker crews that were doing the actual work. Pretty light duty as I only had to be ready to refill their tanks when they came to me. The tankers are of various sizes, some of the bigger ones carry up to 900 gallons of water and the little two man crews will have from 125 gallons to 200 gallons. Most of the work is done by hand with various fire tools, so on some days I would only fill three or four tanks. If you look close you can see my chair sitting in the shade at the rear. I had expected deployment and was for the most part prepared. My bag had been packed and waiting since my earlier return from McCall. I had down loaded two kindle books and had three paperbacks in my bag as well.

My duty station was at a little clear area at the beginning of the nasty rough part of the Mountain where the fire was. I would arrive there in the morning with 4000 gallons of water and spend the day reading, napping or just enduring the passage of time. There of course was interesting weather with high winds, flare ups, dust devils and thunder and lightning storms. They do not stay on the mountain when there is lightning.

Dust devils would pop up in the burned areas.

Some would get pretty big and wide, while others were just miniature tornado's.

Then the wind would cause flare ups that would have to be taken care of.

  

You can see the fare up through the ash cloud that covered the Mountain.

The area where I was sitting was at about the 6500 to 7000 foot altitude, and there was really no wild life there other than Pinion Jays, and Ravens, an occasional visitor would come through.

Almost all of the work was done by hand, helped by the fact that the spread of the fire had been stopped by a wind change that blew the fire back on itself. A dozer crew from the same company that I worked for had cut a fire line on the East side of the fire. Hand crews finished what the dozer could not, and from then on it was just mop up for the crews.

Several of the days had some interesting weather, and one of which I could not explain.

I have never seen smoke rings in the sky, much less one inside of another.

This one developed over a period of an hour or so, with lenticular clouds forming and dispersing only to reform again.

They finally got enough of a handle on the fires that the crews could be reassigned to other fires. There seems to be no shortage of them in the West this year. 

Time to rest and regroup for the next one. I will for sure be making some new tent pegs. Enough is enough.

Karen's turn.

Its been a bit hot here lately and every thing is staying in the shade as much as possible. I've been up in the Mountains where it has been fairly cool, but I still stayed in the shade as much as possible however.

On my last deployment, I discovered that my little "airplane" tent, ( as light as possible, thus pretty small ) wasn't all that much fun to sleep in for 8 days. Its not that bad if you are alone in an area, so that putting your pants on outside the tent is not likely to cause either scorn or alarm. I decided that since I was making all that "extra" money I would get a good medium sized tent that I could both get my cot and a chair inside it. All the other ones that I have are either too small or too big. Obviously a shopping trip to Cabela's and Sportsman's ware house was in order.

We found just what I was looking for in Sportsman's Warehouse and it was $20.00 cheaper than Cabela's. We got back home and I helped Karen put it up, so that she would know what she needed to do if she used it. After putting it up and admiring our handiwork, she announced that she would like to go camping. Like most of her suggestions and comments, it swirled around in my brain for a day or so, when I also came to the conclusion that she deserved a trip to the trees if that was what she desired. We had not taken the new fifth wheel for a test trip either as of yet. So I started looking into some of the camping areas around Burns. Yellow Jacket Camp ground came up as the best option. Quiet, up in the trees and the road to it was also paved, perfect for a first trip with no other expectations other than quiet, wooded, and not likely to be crowded.

We made arrangements with out neighbor to feed what critters we left behind. We decided to take the dogs, as well as the cats, since the cats required medication each day for their asthma. "Its a pretty big trailer with its slide out" was the reasoning at the time, as I recall.

Actually the trip with the trailer turned out to be pretty easy in spite of my pessimism, and we made the trip in about three hours. The only spot that I would consider ( all the way back and away from any of the other three camps in the area.) was not very level. None of them were actually, but we managed to get things pretty well squared away.

Since the altitude at the camp was not that much higher than where we live, it was still pretty warm.

While we were getting set up, Karen told me that we either had a Goshawk nest nearby or a Stellers Jay. ( Very good at mimicry ) I went to the back of the trailer just in time to see a juvenile Goshawk come soaring out of the trees. A male and his sister were calling very loudly for Mom to come feed them. They entertained us for the duration of our visit. At about 5 PM Mom came in with food, and the male, (faster and more agile) grabbed it and the chase was on through the trees. Not sure if he got to eat it all or the female took her share. It appeared to be a Chipmunk, as it was pretty small. Oh by the way, there weren't any of those little guy's living in the campground either. Mom had apparently taken care of them.

They were pretty curious and came up to look me over. I went down to the lake to see what was there, and the female flew within  15 feet of my head going over to a perching spot on the outlet of the lake.

 Of course we took the racing dogs down there with us. Josie was busy cooling off, while Betsy was doing her racing bit.

Its quite a cute little lake, but at this time of the year it is filled with algae and not much worth the effort to try to fish. Fishing wasn't on my agenda anyway, so I was not disappointed.

We had a little Mule Deer Doe come down by camp. It appears that she has some kind of skin problem to her right side. I was not able to determine what if anything the problem was.

It got pretty hot and in the trees there was no breeze, so the night was a lot hotter than I can sleep in. We forgot to bring our pillows and that only made the problem worse. Betsy, our Pointer, is by nature a pain in the ass at the best of times, and a strange place only makes her worse. She hears Bogey men every where, and of course barks, which makes me bark as well. We had brought our two cats as they both need medication. They generally sleep in a large dog kennel, which we had brought. I put Betsy in it so that she would shut up. That left Tiger and Frank on the loose.

I had abandoned any thought of getting to sleep in the bed and was out on the couch with all the windows and door open. In spite of having to lay cross ways on the couch, I had just about gone to sleep when Tiger started twanging the screen door. Of course I had to be wide awake to run him down and swat his butt. Then shutting the door raised the temps about 5 degrees. Finally it cooled enough and I got tired enough that I was able to go to and get to sleep. Then Frank ( the idiot that has claimed me ) came in a started purring in my ear. Strangely enough It did not disturb me, of course a claw in the butt made up for it. I decided that the hell with it, I was going home to the air conditioner as early the next morning as I could.

Well of course reason returned with the daylight, and I decided that I would suffer through, with modification, for Karen's sake. I had a generator with us. One that I had bought specifically with a rating that would be able to run the air conditioner. I decided that I would run it from 6 PM to 10 PM, and hopefully get the temps down enough that it would last us until it cooled off. It made the generator grunt and groan, but I finally got both of them running, and things were looking up.

I had cooked burgers on a small grill that I had used on the RR. The cheese ran over a bit, so I left the lid open in the hopes that it would burn off.

Karen and I had finished eating and the generator was running in the truck at the front of the trailer. Karen poked me, pointing out the rear of the trailer. A Doe, older than the first, was walking down the hill, ignoring all the noise. She walked right up to the back of the trailer, then turned towards the picnic table. She then proceeded to lick my grill as clean as she could get it, as well as all the grease that she could get off the table.

 

I will admit that this was a new one for me. The hell with salt, I am going to barbecue the next time I go hunting.

Our second night was a lot nicer. Betsy was shut up in the kennel, and it was pretty cool for a change. I even fell asleep pretty quickly. Some time in the night Frank came in to serenade us with contented purrs. Then about 4:30 or 5 Josey came in to cuddle, and that wasn't even too bad. Then of course they ganged up on us and wallowed us awake. Still not bad, it was daylight and time to be up.

We learned some good lessons on our trial run that will be implemented our next trip. I will personally make sure my pillow is in the trailer, Much more music, potatoes and bacon will be high on the list as well. A dog and two cats will be left at home as well. Things will then be nicer. Too bad if they feel left out, they had their chance.

On the way back home as soon as we got into cell range, Sharron, the sweety that was caring for the ones left behind, called and informed us that a raid on the Pigeons had taken place this morning. From the sound of it, I was pretty sure that we had another Bobcat visiting us.

There were 15 birds that he was not able to eat left scattered around the floor, and I was then sure that it was a Bobcat. I have a live trap set for him, if he is smart he will get in it. I am going to try to keep him out of my livestock, but a Cat on Welfare is not an easy or smart adversary.

Back home again and there is a Red Flag warning for the area. Winds so far have been in the 25 MPH range, and now there is the smell of a new fire towards Rome. Every one here is out at the time, so I don't know if we will be going out to try to fight it or at least limit its spread.

Thunder City, my latest assignment.

I got to sit at home for a few days, before I was tasked with supplying water to a fire just south of McCall, Idaho. My boss brought the truck to me here at the house, so the next morning I started for McCall. It is back in the mountains along a twisty narrow road that borders the Payette River.

The "IC", Incident Command, was located just off the Hwy at a little crossroads called Lake Port. After arriving, I was tasked with dust abatement within the camp. The only problem was that no one knew where to get this water. I was told to pull it from a nearby creek. I chose an irrigation ditch instead for safety reasons.

There were 284 people assigned to the fire. Their task, from the Forest Service, was to contain the fire within the Frank Church wilderness area. Since the designation of Wilderness does not allow any interference with natural occurrence's. Therefore once contained it would be allowed to burn out.

These camps are small cities that have just about everything needed by the people who are either fighting or supporting the crews that do the actual fighting. Since this was in the Wilderness area the "Hotshot Crews" rappelled from the heli's to their assigned areas. Food, water and all other supplies were brought in by these helicopters.

http://vimeo.com/71534333    password-  owyheeflyer

The next morning after arriving, my truck's starter would not engage. I had been complaining about this problem at the other two fires I had gone to, but no one could seem to find the problem. I have to admit that I do not accept those kind of failures very well. After all I am the one that is required to explain "my truck won't start" to those who are depending on me to preform the job that I was contracted to preform. After all, a truck that will not start is merely a pile of "used parts".

One of the locals gave me the number of a Mobile Mechanic, and I managed to get him to come out to camp and check it out. After some checks on the electrical system, it was decided that the starter was at fault. He got me started, and agreed to go to Boise, pick up a new starter and meet me after work to install it.

I kept the truck running all day long, and he showed up at 2000 hours ( 8 PM) to install the part. After a long and lengthy ordeal, due to the location of this part, we finished at 2400. The next morning the truck started, but I again kept it running all day long due to distrust on my part.

I went into McCall, which I would classify as a "tourist destination", with a "redneck" permanent population. I was in a NAPA parts store buying a hose clamp to stop a leak, and a guy comes walking into the store. ( Now having been a cop at one time, you learn to evaluate anyone entering your immediate area for possible threats.  I am no longer in any sort of a position to be a target, but it is ingrained, whether it is needed or not. ) What I saw was a man in great condition, dressed in shorts, sport shirt, and "Roman Style" rope sandals,---- with Aquamarine painted toenails! I guess no where is safe any more.

The entire camp began to relocate to a site nearer to the fire. The new site was a 75 mile drive to a new site just south of Yellow Pine, Idaho, on a mostly single lane dirt road that had down grades of 12 degrees.  There was 8 water tenders and we were tasked with dust abatement on this road. In eight days I put 148000 gallons of water on a four mile stretch of that road.

The weather was a lot better than it was in Vegas, and on at least two of those mornings I had to wear clothes to bed to keep warm. The only problem that I had was the many many horseflies that were waiting for only moments of inattention.

The new camp was in a meadow just south of the Johnson Creek airstrip.

 This is the Lake Port site.

 This is the new site on Johnson Creek at the Cox Ranch.

 Camp, looking south.

supply lift.

 Johnson Creek behind camp

The meadow behind camp,looking North.

One of the more interesting surprises about this trip was one of the other tender operators assigned to this job. Look close at his name tag.

I inquired about is ancestry and found that he was a fifth generation resident of Utah. The likely hood of him being in any way related is pretty remote.

  

I spent 8 days on this one, returning home yesterday. One of my first things to do is mow the yard as soon as I can. I am sure that this is not the last trip of the year for me.

Local fires

One of the hazards of the High Desert is fire. Normally the hottest month of the year is July, and it puts the finished touches on the Sage, which is already dry. Most of the month has humidity in the low teens and sometimes in the single digits. Then in August the "dry lightening" starts. Sometimes water actually hits the ground, but mostly it is in the form of "Verga". This year however we went right to Dry lightening in July. I can only guess at what August will be like.

Mike, one of our friends from New Mexico flew through a storm on his way back form our fishing expedition on the Owyhee River and flew over some of the fires close to the house. He made a nice video of the flight and the fire, and has kindly made it available for your viewing.

 http://vimeo.com/70596313   password- backcountry

He was also curious as to the method used to fight these fires. Fires are ruled by the availability of the fuels on the ground. Sage burns hot and fast. Tumbleweeds burn even hotter. If there is Cheat grass, is tender dry in July, and all of them combined can burn very hot and very fast.

Now first the disclaimer - 6 months ago, I couldn't even spell "firefighter", so what ever knowledge I claim to have is through common sense, and listening to those who do know something.

The first rule of firefighting is to stay in the black. The fire has already burned all the available fuel there, and it is the safest spot at the fire. Generally concerning Sage land fires, they will try to get a fire line around the fire to deprive it of fuel. Occasionally a back fire will be used, but it also causes more land to be burned. What is of course is the best, is a line of fire retardant either on the leading edge of the fire or in front of it.  The fire you will see in my video was stopped by just such a method. The ground crews, (Hotshots) will come in after that and put out all the hot spots that may be left over. Of course the best is to get them before they get big enough to began to make their own wind and weather.

 https://vimeo.com/70691829     password- owyheeflyer

This is likely to be an interesting year, while I was editing the video I got another call for a fire in Elko, Nev. Fortunately there is an alternate driver, and I opted to sit this one out.

New Fire- Las Vegas

I had been home for two days from the last fire, and had gotten a few things done around the house. The second day at home the phones quit working for some reason. I called the phone company from my cell phone to report the problem. There is a spot out by the pine tree in the front yard that you can sometimes get cell service. Finally late in the day I decided to check my cell phone for messages. The contractor in Winnemucca had been trying all day to get me to answer my phone.

I returned his call and found that I was supposed to be in Las Vegas by four PM the next day. The fire was named the Carpenter 1, and it was threatening structures.

I got to Winnemucca by 8 PM, Got all my stuff in the truck and met the other guy who was taking an older water tender that had been sitting for two years. They had done all the inspections and wanted to get two trucks out and working. The plan was to drive to Tonopah and find a Motel for some sleep, then continue on in to Vegas the next morning.

The drive to Tonopah was miserable, strange road, dark as could be, not bright enough lights made it miserable in the extreme. We persevered, and finally found a Motel at 4AM. It of course was run by a family of Indian descent. What a place! The steps to the top floor were closed, due to holes in the concrete steps. The rug that is usually on the walkway was pulled up and there was just tar paper instead. The fixtures were all loose. The smoke alarm was hanging open, but I think it still had a battery in it. The shower head and valves were all loose in the shower stall. It was a bit disconcerting for a bit, but being an old Rail Roader I was used to such accommodations. I managed to sleep for about 5 hours, and we were on the road again.

It is not my intention to disparage the fella that I was teamed up with, but being an inveterate people watcher and closet cynic, I was interested in what he was going to be like to work with. He had owned a garbage business that covered a lot of the area that were were going through. He had sold it and I guess like me thought that a little side money would not be bad. My first inclination that things might not be as they should was when we started driving all over Las Vegas looking for a truck stop. After touring through the second housing development, I called a halt and drove to the nearest gas station that we had passed and got my fuel. Driving a Kenworth tanker truck in Vegas traffic is not one of my favorite things. You haven't seen "crazy" until you do. I am a much better welder than I am a truck driver. The greater the stress, the less likely that I am going to hit the gear that I was aiming for.

 I find all this fire stuff to be intimidating, since it is a whole new world with rules that I know nothing about. I mostly muddle through by being willing to admit that I am new, and asking for help in my best "lost but cute puppy" manner. The worst is trying to find out where you are supposed to be, since some of them may include driving for 75 miles to find a duck pond that you are supposed to fill, back in some Canyon.

We checked in among the probably thousand people that were already there, and of course found that no one knew who had ordered us, and none had any idea of where we were to go. We first had to get our equipment checked. They found that the other truck had leaky wheel seals. He went off to a truck shop to see if he could get repaired. He never did get the repairs that he needed and was sent home after two more days, while I was assigned to a "Phos check batch plant". That is the red fire retardant. There were about 5 other water tenders assigned to the plant.

 We were furnishing retardant to two "Erickson Sky Cranes".

We got our refills from a hydrant in a housing development at the bottom of the hill. Turn around time was about 55 minutes each. We worked 12 hour days. The BLM guy assigned to the plant would bring up a sack lunch each day, and generally brought a few extra, which worked out for me as I was sleeping at the site. There was enough food in each lunch to supply me with lunch, dinner and some P'nut butter and Jelly "crustables" for breakfast next morning. When its that hot you don't need much anyway.

The temps in Vegas were from 105 to 107 during the day and down to 102 at night. You can well understand why I would choose to stay in the hills where it was a bit cooler. Sometimes in the early morning it would get cool enough that covering up with a summer sleeping bag would feel pretty good. Not so in town however.

The terrain was quite interesting to me. Of course Vegas is situated in the middle of a old dry Lake bed, while the hills are Granite, and so rugged that the fire could only be fought by helio's with retardant. The crews had to wait until the fire came to them. Vegas is on one side of the fire, and over the Mountain was Pahrump. That was where the structures were threatened.

We had a couple of days where it was cool and rainy up on the Mountain. This slowed the fire considerably, and furnished Vegas with some flash flooding. Combined with some serious retardant drops, the weather allowed them to get the fire under control.

They began to "demobilize" as many crews as they could. I got one more day to assist two other tenders to fill a "duck pond" that this character had in front of his house. The fire crews used it to refill their containers and tankers when they were trying to keep the fires from the houses there. We put 27000 gallons of water back in it for him. He was quite a character! Boots, Bermuda Shorts and a pith helmet. I assume he was a "flim flam" man, from his speech patterns. I was grinning all the time he was talking to me or anyone else that came by.

 The news media was all over the place trying to get " the story".

 Flim Flam was in all his glory as he told the story of his "close escape". One set up is camera in front of my truck, but a blast from the air horn convinced him to relocate.

I spent a total of six days on the fire. Some of the days were busy as could be, others were spent sitting in the shade of the truck. I had one book on my kindle, but it didn't last all that long, and I was back to people watching again. Finally one of the guy's finished a "Longarm" novel. I read that in less than three hours. :-/

It was nice to get back home again, get a shower, and get in out of the sun.