The end.
Tomorrow is the end of the year party and thursday we head off into the sun set. Its been a good season. We almost hit 900 hours of over time and Gila IHC fought fire in eight of the states. I've figured out how to post videos. They are from through out the season. Enjoy.

Old ground. We've moved back to the original division to look for heat that an infrared fly over found. They gave us GPS coordinates to the spots. We spent two days griding and hunting down the spots. Most of which proved to be erroneous IR data.

We got released short of our 14 days. No one seemed to mind we've all had a good season. On our travel home we got to stop in Vegas for a night and the whole crew rode the roller coaster in NYNY. Then went out on the town.

Mop up. Today we mop up. The saws made the best of the big ceder snags while we all watched in envy. We ended up moping this area for several days.

Crown Fire. Today we got moved to where the fire is burning into an old burn from earlier this year. For some reason they didn't want the little strip of land between the two fires to burn. So we went in to burn off dozer line and attempt to stop the fire. Half way into our burn the winds began to push unfavorably over the dozer line. We chased pinner smokes for about an hour before the decision to leave was made. Another crew next to us had completely lost it. We waited at the trucks to see if things would change but eventually got pushed out by the crowning fire.

The Mop up begins. We've started mopping with the help of a little water brought in at 300 gallans every hour. Makes life great. Its steep and rocky. A large bolder(size of a desk) rolled down the hill almost taking out half the crew. Luckly it only took out a couple trees.

Punching in line. Supposedly the night crews (Cali fires run 24/7) finished the line that needed to be put in. But we spent today lining a slop over and starting mop up. Also we burned a little chunk of indirect line.

Moonlight Fire. 30,000+ acres. The fire was thought to be under controll once already and now has grown a good bit. Almost 100 crews are on the fire and its already cost millions. Welcome to California.

When we got to our Division the smoke inversion was thick enough that you could only see 200 feet infront of you. After meeting up with the first Cali crew our overhead decided it wouldn't be safe with the conditions and low visability. Our best option was to hold what line was in and wait for more crews or better visability. Most of our day was spent holding line and securing the fires edge.

Fire camp is a gigantic mess. Food line is an hour long and awful quality. The sleeping area looks like a tent city.

Brownie, fairy, booger up a tree

Coble Fire. Spent a sleepless night at the Plumus district office. Some drunks thought it was a camp ground and stopped to party at 3am. The L.E.O.(law enforcement) showed up after Tobey found one of the drunk guys trying to steal stuff from cars. Woke up to some drunk guy sprinting through our maze of sleeping bags.

Instead of heading to the Moonlight fire we've been redirected to the small Coble fire south of the Moonlight fire. They don't want another Moonlight so we stayed for the day to mop up the fire 100%.

Northern California. Got dispatched today to Plumus N.F. which is east of Redding. It will take two long days of driving to get there. Right now were headed to the Moonlight Fire which just blew up the day before.

Egg base ball

IMG_3031, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

R&R playing in the mud

IMG_3037, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Pile burns - montana

IMG_2937, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Disturbing wildlife

IMG_3028, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Spike camp - sunset

IMG_2991, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

BIG SKY

IMG_3019, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Griding for spot fires

IMG_3012, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Montana Sunset - spike camp

IMG_2998, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Erin thinks she's funny...

IMG_2964, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Montana

IMG_3010, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Buggy pilot

IMG_2934, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Big sky country

IMG_3016, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Big sky country

IMG_2976, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Burn out - Montana

IMG_3008, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Montana - Canadian crew and Gila

IMG_2954, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Burn out - Montana

IMG_2967, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

montana - burn out

IMG_2959, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Montana - Alex

IMG_3006, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Montana - burn out

IMG_2958, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Black Cat fire- burn out

IMG_2949, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Black Cat fire - burn out

IMG_2946, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Montana - spike out

IMG_2942, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Black Cat fire - pie cut

IMG_2932, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Black Cat fire - tail end of the dozer

IMG_2930, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Black Cat fire - my saw partner shamus

IMG_2925, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Chain gang - Black Cat fire

IMG_2926, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Black Cat Fire - Base camp

IMG_2918, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Little Goose Fire - Looking at our work for the day

IMG_2908, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

the little columns of smoke are about were we put line in.

Sup Ride - Little Goose Fire

IMG_2909, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Little Goose Fire - buggies

IMG_2913, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

If the buggies look far away its becase they are.

Little Goose Fire

IMG_2910, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Forgot to fix the color balance. I mean "its artistic"

Little Goose Fire - espresso

IMG_2915, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Mop-up is a good time to drink coffee during lunch

R&R. Stayed at Negrito for the our days off. Had a blast. Pulled trucks out of the monsoon mud. Got trucks stuck in the monsoon mud. Got irritated by all the bow hunters in my forest. Cruised the back roads in the Scout "gypsy hunter". Played egg base ball, never made it to first base...

Lots and LOTS of mop-up. 26-29th. We completed our line and moved on to other shot crews lines moping up. Crews with the most days left in their roll get sent to more pressing fires. Since we only have a few days left we stayed to finished off the left over work.

Mop-up and burning. 24-25th. We started moping up with water and burning up green patches. Still not good burning weather. On the 25th we went back to camp and got a hot meal.

Burn-out. Today we lit the line off using close to 40 gallons of drip torch fuel and 100 rounds out of the gun. The winds worked mostly in our favor but the green grass didn't. Not the best burn. lots of green islands and patchy. I got to light all day. Fun but tiring.

Spike out. We continues the prep and snagging process. Our long term goal is to burn off the dozer line to stop the distant approaching fire. The crew mostly feels we should go direct since the grass here is green. That means burning will most likely cause a mess. Dewey (supervisor) fought long and hard to get us out of the noisy camp. So we'll be spiking out near the line for a couple days at least.

Black Cat Fire. #1 priority fire in the US. On the saw again today. We arrived to our division to prep dozer line. Since the dozer does most of the work for us we sent out snagging and moving brush. Dropped a ton of dead trees. It was so thick we hung lots of trees up. We all learned a lot today about cutting trees and about ourselves.

Travel to Montana. The fire is in Lo Lo pass just outside of Missoula. Called the Black Cat fire 10,000 acres. We arrived at base camp late. Loudest camp I've ever been too. Lots of homes are threatened and several already burned.

Mop-up time. 17th-19th. We plumed hose from water tenders at the top of the drainage. Lots of roads here going to huge summer cabins. Water moping is great makes our lives better working on the steeps. On the last day of mop-up two people from a prison crew (one being their Crew Boss) got pinned under a tree. We all went to the scene and reviewed the stupid things they did. Long story short don't stand down hill of falling trees. Also no human can stop a green tree from rolling down a hill so don't try. The guy how tried to stop the tree didn't get hurt bad. The crew boss broke his leg in several places. Preventable.

Little Goose Fire. 4800 acres. The terrain here is extremely steep. We hiked in the long way going down into a drainage from the buggies and working with a BIA crew up out the other side. I got on the saw team for the day. Spent as much time getting my footing as I did cutting. Tough day. Almost got taken out by a rock (hit my pack), as did most of us. By the end of the day no one got hurt and the line looked great.

Travel. Off to Wyoming! We traveled two days arriving at base camp the 15th. No information on the fire yet.

The International Scout changing hand!!!

DSC00288, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Stop taking pictures and gas up the saw

IMG_2881, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

East Zone Complex camp

IMG_2899, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

The type one team didn't know what fire that column is from.

Horton Fire not clear day

IMG_2868, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.