Rob & Katherine's new home in West Virgina. Great time with the family!
tharin

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

I've been told no one is reading the blog entries they just look at the pictures. I respect that. So I'll keep it to short captions. These images where taken on a road trip around NM. Starting in Truth or Consequences then to Cooks mt then Silver City & Gila cliff dwellings then Glenwood & The Catwalk ending in Reserve & Negrito.

IDAHO fire video

Road trip around NM ---- Cooks mt

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.

BIG SKY

IMG_3019, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Spike camp - sunset

IMG_2991, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Montana Sunset - spike camp

IMG_2998, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Griding for spot fires

IMG_3012, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Montana

IMG_3010, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Erin thinks she's funny...

IMG_2964, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.

Big sky country

IMG_2976, originally uploaded by stevempassmore.