When you get on a crew, all the different duties and roles are divvied out. I was asked by my Overhead early on if I would be the helicopter guy. They set me up to become Helicopter Crew Member qualified (HECM) so we could keep all our flight Ops internal, keep flight manifesting internal, and so we could always say:
“We got a guy for that.”
I was also the radio guy for some time, but that was more about punching in numbers on a Bendix King brick with a pen cap and collecting radios each morning like a teacher collects homework, all while trying to caffeinate before the morning hike.
“What the f*uck dude, my air to ground doesn’t work.”
Calling in ships was my favorite part of the job for quite a while. I would wander deep into the interior, commandeer a ship from the neighboring division, and hammer edges until I ran out of coffee in my thermos. Then you hit a pile of sniff snuff and hike to the next trouble spot that needs attention.
Load and return.
“Ok, I see you down there now…. you’re way out here… nice.”
But bucket work isn’t the only thing that brings helicopters overhead, like a teetering dragon that wants to help but might also wreak havoc on the village. Nearly every time they arrive, they are almost always carrying 3,000+ lbs of cargo or water underneath or internally. Unless you’re a type 3…, then you get a bambi.
But is this flight necessary?
If you ask a pilot, the answer is almost always yes. If you ask a Supt, the answer usually depends. The answer, I think, is found somewhere in the middle and is situation-dependent. But unexpected things happen all the time during perfectly normal flight Ops.
“Is there a better way to complete this mission?”
Yeah, you can just hike your ass up there.
One thing that is always a concern for crews is when they become separated from their gear. Landing on the top of a mountain and not having your chainsaw right away makes you feel like a naked and abandoned kitten in a dark alley with no warm milk to lap up… and while you unbutton your yellow and double roll your sleeves back up, you wait longingly until that next load shows up with familiar faces.
But what if that next load doesn’t show up?
“We have to suspend flights due to winds at Helibase.”
We were down on the Gila National Forest and had just arrived in a dirt pullout at the base of a stupid steep mountainside after driving for 2 days. It was near pumpkin time, but not late enough that flying was out of the question.
*Pumpkin Time: The time in which flight Ops shut down due to light levels, and if you want anything moved or carried, you better be ready to put it on your back and do that sh*t yourself.
Local folks arrived to meet us at the parking area, and they were convinced we could get a squad up there before aviation shut down. We were in the back of Alpha Buggy waiting for the official word. Everyone was excited and checking their watches as the sun slowly started to go down, this was late spring, and the temps were dropping.
The call came, and we got flight ready, but the plan was altered compared to how normal shuttle operations would usually go. The plan was to fly up a squad fully equipped but then immediately fly up their overnight bags… because it was night now. We jumped in the ship, Alpha squad flew up and landed on the top of that stupid steep mountain. As soon as we got out, we needed headlamps, and we knew our gear wasn’t coming up, and neither was the rest of the crew.
“Ya…. we gotta shut it down. We’ll see you guys in the morning.”
So… there we were, naked kittens on the Gila collecting firewood and tearing into MREs from our line gear to sit down to a cold and rocky dinner while the rest of the crew had the luxury accommodations of a dirt parking lot on a dead-end forest road. The rest of the night was spent trying to find the right balance between sleeping too close to the fire and not close enough while grumbling savages put the closest piece of combustible woody material on the fire, hour after hour.
It really wasn’t that bad… but it was in the 30s and we were at 9,000 feet, so a sweatshirt would have been nice. The rest of the crew hiked in the next morning, and a couple of hours later, the Gila Shots rolled into our spike area. We crushed the fire and hiked our asses out, PG gear and all.
4 memorable moments from that Glia fire…
First, we found the perfect spike spot: a perfect green valley in a drainage next to the fire. This was some Planet Earth documentary-type location. But there was this 125-foot tall dead-standing Pine that had a directional lean across the most perfect sleeping spots.
“It’s probably been like that for years… it’ll stand another 20 years.”
Nah… In the middle of the night, it started to pop and crack in the wind. One by one, headlamps started to turn on as the weary apes started to realize their environment was changing. One of the Leads, who was sleeping directly under the tree, jumped out of his sleeping bag just in his boxers, went to the line gear stacked up, and grabbed a Pulaski to take matters into his own hands.
An eventful night.
Second, two mornings later, we were all gathered around the breakfast fire, waiting for our feet and coffee to warm up. The rookie on the crew came in hot, demanding to know who had been standing over him the last few nights with their headlamp on. As we all calmly sipped our coffee and let the nicotine soak into our bloodstream, an impromptu investigation started.
“What the f*ck are you talking about dude?”
Turns out, this kid grew up in LA, and had never seen a full moon in it’s full glory, unobstructed at elevation. Homeboy thought the moon was a headlamp… We never let him live it down.
Third, we found three half-cooked grubs and decided we wanted to watch someone eat them. Bravo lead had been up on lookout duty for the last 4 days and was becoming increasingly depressed on the radio.
“Hey…. how you guys doing down there…..”
He was waaaaay out there.
So we radioed him and asked if he wanted to eat them for money, get a change of pace, and give us some entertainment. He accepted immediately. As some pre-grub-eating entertainment, we scattered three guys in different directions, and every time the lookout asked for a “hoot” to locate us, we had a different guy yell from a different direction, creating confusion and plenty of laughs.
Once he arrived he was a little irritated and immediately downed the grubs, all about the size of Andre the Giant’s fingers. He held them down for the allotted timeframe to get the money, vomited, and then hiked his ass back up to the lookout spot, $450 richer.
Lastly, we didn’t get a flight out. Once the fire was wrapped, we loaded up camp on our backs and hiked the 5 miles out, everyone with at least 80lbs+ on their back. One guy brought basically everything off the buggy because he expected his gear to get flown out. Nah… you gotta carry that sh*t now.
The hike wasn't the memorable part; it was just your standard death hike on a beautiful morning in the Gila with everything you own on your back. By the end, people were half dead, or at least they thought they were… until we got to the bottom. Then we saw what half dead looked like.
As we popped out at the bottom of the trail, hours after we started, looking like a bunch of soggy sorry-for-ourselves mutts, the first thing our eyes saw was a horse tied to a tree, looking like a skeleton, sores all over its body, bleeding from the nose, and barely able to stand.
The universe decided to show us what dead f*ucking tired look like. Abandoned, forgotten, and left for dead on some god-forsaken dead-end road. Only to be found by a bunch of weary travelers who thought they knew what tired and hungry were.
We fed the emaciated horse all the apples we had from the lunches sitting at our buggies and cut open a Cubee to let it drink. We called animal control and rolled out of the Gila. For the next hour, instead of talking about how shitty the hike out was or complaining that we didn’t get a flight, the conversation revolved around the ways we would torture the individual who left that horse to die.
Was a flight necessary that morning?
Did we need to hike 85+ lbs each over 5 miles of terrain and streams?
It was perfect flying weather, and I’m sure Helitak wanted something to do, and I bet the pilots wanted to fly…
But the universe had different plans that day. It wanted us to experience something. Some would say it was Big Ernie… the fire deity, who operates in mysterious ways. But we all learned something that day.
From that time forward, I always kept an apple in my truck. If I saw a horse, I would make my way to it and give it that apple. It was calming for me and reminded me that somewhere on this Planet there is a lifeform that has it harder than I do.
Yeah, your relationship may be on the rocks; yeah, you might be tired and feel broken. But you have your family and crew around you, and no one has abandoned you at the end of a dead-end dirt road in the Gila to die alone.
I’m glad we didn’t fly that day.
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😂 headlamp moon!
Enjoyed the war story.👍 A full moon on a mountain top wildfire…what an unforgettable celestial encounter.🌕🌚 Whenever it was practical, I’d hike rather than fly. A choice generously offered to a single line resource. During my 35 year quest to remain on the line, in other words, away from camp. I learned it payed to save those risk chips, and guard my probability portfolio. A return that I believe kept me from cashing in early.