Ashley Smith

Smokejumper Training

Ashley Smith, a photojournalist for the Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon, previously served as chief photographer for the Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho. At the Times-News, Smith used his skills as a photographer and journalist to vividly capture the training and tasks of smokejumpers, who parachute into remote areas to fight wildfires. Smith’s story about smokejumpers, and his accompanying photographs, appeared in the newspaper on September 30, 2013.

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Their hands were clean. Months from now, they would be covered in ash, their white fingernails contrasted by burnt earth ground into their fingers. By August, the only memory of today’s clean hands would be the lines where sweat cut through the grime of days on the fire line.

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But for now, 18 smokejumpers stood around a long, red table doing safety checks on the harnesses that their lives would depend upon in just two days. They spent the winter cast around the country, playing with children, surfing or working odd jobs. Six months is long enough to forget. So, on that first day on April 8, they run their hands along every stitch of the harness, checking it for damage but also using it as an exercise to bring themselves back.

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Fire season has begun.

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On April 10, his first jump of the year, Justin Brollier took in the view of snowy mountains around Mountain Home as he fell through the air, his parachute catching.“I really get nervous, keyed up as the jump approaches, thinking of all of the bad scenarios, double checking things,” Brollier said.“It’s a little claustrophobic° in the airplane. It’s choppy, noisy and sweaty, like the roller coaster tick tick to the top. Then you jump and all of the fear goes away. It’s quiet. Peaceful for the soul, a sense of calm.

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5

“You have a great love for life. . . . You don’t think of bills or other problems.”

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This year’s wildfire season saw more than 80 structures burned in Idaho, saw evacuation of some of the most visible pieces of the state, saw hundreds of thousands of acres burning in U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management areas.

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As Idaho and the West burned, national preparedness was declared at Level 5, meaning 80 percent of U.S. wildfire resources were being used, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. . . .

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Smokejumpers battle the fires you rarely hear about—fires too remote for TV cameras, and too small to register on the national radar. Without their early intervention, those small fires could explode into devastation.

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On Aug. 5, after spending the day at the Twin Falls airport, eight smokejumpers were called to fight the Black Warrior Fire.

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It was a hot summer day with temperatures hanging in the 90s. The firefighters were sweating inside their heavy Kevlar° suits.

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The Black Warrior Fire was burning at 8,500 feet in a remote corner of the Sawtooth Wilderness.° By the time the smokejumpers arrived, it was still a small fire—10 acres. They were there to stop it before it spread.

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The flames jumped from island to island of Douglas fir and spruce. The winds were blowing 8–10 mph out of the west, fanning the flames.

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Though they do it for a living, it’s not easy to jump safely out of a plane toward a burning forest. Smokejumpers develop a set of mental calisthenics° to get themselves out the door.

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Brent Johnson has terrible air sickness, but hates the drowsy feeling he gets from taking Dramamine.° Johnson got so sick on a flight in 1996 that he could not make the jump. After that, he thought about quitting until a friend told him about the Air Force using a spinning chair to combat motion sickness. Johnson found one of the spinning chairs and used it to train his mind.

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These days, during flights, Johnson concentrates his gaze on one rivet in the Twin Otter to keep himself from getting sick.

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Johnson still has the chair. He keeps it at the base in Boise. He calls it the “puke chair,” and now he pulls it out to help other people with motion sickness in what he calls “puke school.” . . .

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For the hours they are in the plane—a heavy, round-nosed Twin Otter—the smokejumpers trust their lives to the pilot. Diego Calderoni, a BLM smokejumper pilot, grew up hearing stories about flying. His grandfather and great uncle flew during the 1940s, one in World War II and the other in commercial jobs. . . .

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The Twin Otter is the John Deere° of planes, Calderoni said, great for carrying a lot of weight and flying slow.

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The job demands flying through canyons in the Rocky Mountains and dropping smokejumpers at 11,000 feet to battle flames, which he says keeps you on your toes.

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“Nothing’s the same,” he said. When flying near mountain ranges or through canyons, where you look out both sides of the plane windows and see rock shooting up, he’s always expecting something to go wrong and always has an escape route. What if he loses one of his two engines? He’s mentally prepared for that. . . .

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Smokejumper Justin Reedy stands at the door of the plane looking down at the landing zone for the Black Warrior Fire. In the distance, jagged shadows cast over the Sawtooths in the early morning light. With a firm hit on his left shoulder from the spotter, Reedy plunges out of the plane and begins a five-second count. The count, so ingrained in him from training, is second nature to smokejumpers.

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Jump, thousand. Look, thousand. Reach, thousand, Wait, thousand. Pull, thousand.

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The chute catches with a snap. Reedy floats to the ground, surrounded by 125-foot trees. He is still a mile and half southwest of the fire. He begins a hike with more than 80 pounds on his back, across steep terrain to face the fire by hand with his Pulaski—a firefighting tool with an axe on one side, a curved blade on the other.

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As he gets closer to the fire, he can already hear the echo of chainsaws from firefighters already on scene.

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Today, approximately 450 smokejumpers are at nine bases across the West and Alaska. The majority of smokejumpers are with the U.S. Forest Service. The Bureau of Land Management has bases in Boise and Fort Wainwright, Alaska. Each fire season, more than 70 members of the BLM Great Basin Smokejumpers fan out from their base in Boise across the West and stage at smaller airports in Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, including Twin Falls.

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Before smokejumpers can join a unit, they have to pass rookie training that starts in the late spring and lasts four weeks.

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They have to perform grueling marches that include two pack-out tests, one carrying 110 pounds of gear over flat terrain in no more than 90 minutes, and an 85-pound pack carried over 2.5 miles of hilly, broken terrain. . . .

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Each season, before a smokejumper makes the first fire jump, he or she has to go through a recertification process.

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On April 8, the process began in a weight room with state flags lining the walls. Everything is on the line that day. If they fail any in a series of tests, they don’t have a job.

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There’s nervous laughter as the smokejumpers wait to begin their physical training tests. It’s mandatory to complete pushups, situps, and pullups, as well as a timed 1.5-mile run to begin the season. . . .

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After the run, 18 firefighters line up around a 20-foot rectangle table with their parachute harnesses. Bright light shines through the windows facing the runway at the Boise airport, as planes pass by in the distance. . . .

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The second of the smokejumpers’ recertification training takes them to Lucky Peak, outside of Boise. They practice exiting a simulation aircraft, leaping off a 35-foot jump tower and practicing rappelling° out of a tree.

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Smokejumpers in their Kevlar suits move like the Michelin Man up the stairs. A jovial° mood fills the small space as smokejumpers cram into the top of the jump tower at Lucky Peak. The mood gets more serious as the spotter briefs the jumpers.

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The cable the smokejumpers slide down is about 100 yards from the top of the tower to where the jumpers come to a stop. Smokejumpers such as Matt Matush, of Springfield, Vermont, descend on the cable as an instructor barks out the names of parachute malfunctions they might experience in a real jump.

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“Horseshoe, horsehoe,” he shouts.

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Matush’s hands move fast as he solves the issue—15 seconds in all—then his feet are back on the ground.

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