Mann Gulch Hike

[Caseknife]

My oldest sister was a career geologist for the FS and finished her career in Prineville, she was still there when the Prineville Hotshots were killed in the South Canyon fire and it hit the community pretty hard. Lots of management mistakes happened in that fire. I think I still have both of those books and will have to reread them.

 

[Straight Arrow]

Another intriguing smokejumper story is the survival of those firefighters trapped on Higgins Ridge in Idaho, with fire surrounding them. It recently aired on PBS. The remarkable aspect to me was the courage, determination, and great skills of the Vietnam veteran helicopter pilot who made several trips in and out with the unwavering goal of extracting them all.
He strapped some down on the "bubble" Bell helicopter's external litter platforms, told them to close their eyes and hold on! He rescued each and every one of them. What a daring feat and a great story!

 

[Deleted member 48080]

Another small factoid about Young Men and Fire- In the book Maclean talks about the work of Frank Albini, who was a research scientist for USFS in Missoula. Frank's son, Steve, ended up becoming a very successful audio engineer and produced records for The Pixies, Nirvana, Breeders, and Iggy and the Stooges.

 

[Nameless Range]

It has been nearly 30 years since I read it, but I recall the first half being very good and the second half dragging.

Though kids have slowed me down, I've read a lot over the years, and for me, it's the best nonfiction book I've ever read. "Best", being subjective on the level of music and food, which is different for everyone so it ain't objectivity against anyone else's preferences that I'm claiming.

I remember first reading the book when I was 16 or so, and every other page there'd be a sentence that would stop me in my tracks. I've read it many times since and still feel it. Most, having nothing to do with firefighting, which is an aspect of my life, but having everything to do with meaning and things I had felt and still feel in my own existence. I don't have the book with me, but do have a very small subset of those sentences in my notes on my phone, mostly from the last half of the book, and each being something a guy could spend a long damn time dissecting. A lot of them I feel like I should pay attention to.

-It is very important to a lot of people to make unmistakably clear to themselves and to the universe that they love the universe but are not intimidated by it and will not be shaken by it, no matter what it has in store. Moreover, they demand something from themselves early on in life that can be taken ever as a demonstration of this abiding feeling.

-It is the frightened and recessive grief suffered for one whom you hoped neither death nor any thing evil would ever touch. Afterwards, you live in fear that something might alter our memory of him and of all other things. I should know.

-Your best friend when you feel curious about what you are walking on is usually a good map.

-Just conflagration. What was happening was passing beyond legality and morality and seemingly beyond the laws of nature, blown into a world where human values and seemingly natural laws no longer apply. Such moments can occur the world over, sometimes even at home as well as on hillsides.

-I see better what happens in grass than on the horizon. Most of us do, and probably it is just as well, but what's found buried in grass doesn't tell us how to get out of the way.

-At the very end beyond thought and beyond fear and beyond even self-compassion and divine bewilderment there remains some firm intention to continue doing forever and ever what we last hoped to do on earth. By this final act they had come about as close as body and spirit can to establishing a unity of themselves with earth, fire, and perhaps the sky.

Here's and example of something I wrote in my phone notes:

In Young Men and Fire, Maclean wrote, “My guess is that my interest in this question of whether any good resulted from the Mann Gulch fire goes all the way back to a sentence of his (his father), which sounds as if it comes out of the Westminster Catechism but doesn’t. It is enough though, that it sounds like him, “One of the chief privileges of Man is to speak up for the Universe.” In A River Runs Through It he mentions quoting the Westminster Catechism and wrote "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever." I find it interesting that “chief end” has, later in his life and in writing YMAF, been replaced with “chief privilege”. A synonym for end is purpose for which a synonym is meaning. I think one can get a lot more mileage out of questions like, “What is man’s purpose” or “What is my purpose”, if we replace the word purpose, with the word privilege. This switch takes what some would say is the foundational question of it all: “What is the meaning of life?” And frames it with utility and gratitude: “What is the privilege of life?”, and Maclean follows it.


There's a lot of nuggets like this throughout the book. Maybe they don't ring with others the way the do for me and that's ok. The section about Gisborne, or even the beginning story "Black Ghost", are powerful. It is a technically challenging book, insofar in that to absorb much of it, you have to build a very detailed map in your head and know it well. The whole story is a map, of earth and tragedy.

The story of the book's genesis, is a story about deeper things too. Who in the arts, produces masterpieces in their 70s and 80s? Maclean died trying to understand what he could have been and what he was and who others were. I admire it. I hope late in this life if I'm lucky enough, I'm still capable of giving it my all.

" The problem of identity is not just a problem of youth, it is a problem all the time. Perhaps the problem, it should haunt old age, and when it no longer does it should tell you that you are dead.”

Perhaps he was just a pretty writer, but I feel like he observed and connected things. I could ramble on and on, but I'll quit and say if you haven't read it, you should!

 

[Irrelevant]

Like I said, I'll need to reread.

Who in the arts, produces masterpieces in their 70s and 80s?

Not many. McGuane is the only one I can think of, and masterpiece is definitely a stretch.

 

[Jwill]

“But first of all he is a woodsman, and you aren't a woodsman unless you have such a feeling for topography that you can look at the earth and see what it would look like without any woods or covering on it. It's something like the gift all men wish for when they or young-- or old-- of being able to look through a woman's clothes and see her body, possibly even a little of her character.”
― Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

“In 1949 the Smokejumpers were still so young that they referred affectionately to all fires they jumped on as “ten o’clock fires,” as if they already had them under control before they jumped. They were still so young they hadn’t learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe a tragedy.”
― Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire

 

[Southern Elk]

Though kids have slowed me down, I've read a lot over the years, and for me, it's the best nonfiction book I've ever read. "Best", being subjective on the level of music and food, which is different for everyone so it ain't objectivity against anyone else's preferences that I'm claiming.

I remember first reading the book when I was 16 or so, and every other page there'd be a sentence that would stop me in my tracks. I've read it many times since and still feel it. Most, having nothing to do with firefighting, which is an aspect of my life, but having everything to do with meaning and things I had felt and still feel in my own existence. I don't have the book with me, but do have a very small subset of those sentences in my notes on my phone, mostly from the last half of the book, and each being something a guy could spend a long damn time dissecting. A lot of them I feel like I should pay attention to.

-It is very important to a lot of people to make unmistakably clear to themselves and to the universe that they love the universe but are not intimidated by it and will not be shaken by it, no matter what it has in store. Moreover, they demand something from themselves early on in life that can be taken ever as a demonstration of this abiding feeling.

-It is the frightened and recessive grief suffered for one whom you hoped neither death nor any thing evil would ever touch. Afterwards, you live in fear that something might alter our memory of him and of all other things. I should know.

-Your best friend when you feel curious about what you are walking on is usually a good map.

-Just conflagration. What was happening was passing beyond legality and morality and seemingly beyond the laws of nature, blown into a world where human values and seemingly natural laws no longer apply. Such moments can occur the world over, sometimes even at home as well as on hillsides.

-I see better what happens in grass than on the horizon. Most of us do, and probably it is just as well, but what's found buried in grass doesn't tell us how to get out of the way.

-At the very end beyond thought and beyond fear and beyond even self-compassion and divine bewilderment there remains some firm intention to continue doing forever and ever what we last hoped to do on earth. By this final act they had come about as close as body and spirit can to establishing a unity of themselves with earth, fire, and perhaps the sky.

Here's and example of something I wrote in my phone notes:

In Young Men and Fire, Maclean wrote, “My guess is that my interest in this question of whether any good resulted from the Mann Gulch fire goes all the way back to a sentence of his (his father), which sounds as if it comes out of the Westminster Catechism but doesn’t. It is enough though, that it sounds like him, “One of the chief privileges of Man is to speak up for the Universe.” In A River Runs Through It he mentions quoting the Westminster Catechism and wrote "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever." I find it interesting that “chief end” has, later in his life and in writing YMAF, been replaced with “chief privilege”. A synonym for end is purpose for which a synonym is meaning. I think one can get a lot more mileage out of questions like, “What is man’s purpose” or “What is my purpose”, if we replace the word purpose, with the word privilege. This switch takes what some would say is the foundational question of it all: “What is the meaning of life?” And frames it with utility and gratitude: “What is the privilege of life?”, and Maclean follows it.


There's a lot of nuggets like this throughout the book. Maybe they don't ring with others the way the do for me and that's ok. The section about Gisborne, or even the beginning story "Black Ghost", are powerful. It is a technically challenging book, insofar in that to absorb much of it, you have to build a very detailed map in your head and know it well. The whole story is a map, of earth and tragedy.

The story of the book's genesis, is a story about deeper things too. Who in the arts, produces masterpieces in their 70s and 80s? Maclean died trying to understand what he could have been and what he was and who others were. I admire it. I hope late in this life if I'm lucky enough, I'm still capable of giving it my all.

" The problem of identity is not just a problem of youth, it is a problem all the time. Perhaps the problem, it should haunt old age, and when it no longer does it should tell you that you are dead.”

Perhaps he was just a pretty writer, but I feel like he observed and connected things. I could ramble on and on, but I'll quit and say if you haven't read it, you should!

He’s not just a writer, he’s an artist. I can’t remember any other book where I’ve stopped myself so many times and said wait, I need to go back and read that sentence again. A sentence in some random paragraph is perhaps better than anything some authors have ever written.

 

[BuzzH]

So, another thing I've never written about or mentioned to anyone, my friend Calvin, Lairds son and my best man, was a smoke jumper on the Storm King Fire.

After that fire, Calvin called me unexpectedly and said he was coming home to Missoula and if I could take a couple days off work. It was right in the heat of the 1994 fire season and IIRC, I had about 700 hours of OT by the time it was over, fighting fire all over the place in Idaho and Montana. But, I knew something must be up and agreed to take a couple days off.

I knew something wasn't right but didn't push the issue. We decided to head to the Bighole country and camp out and hike into a couple lakes we had fished in the past.

I learned while we chatted almost all night about what happened on storm king and his involvement. There's things we talked about that I'll never share. While doing some google searching I did find this, and was a bit surprised to find it:

"The shelters, which they call "shake and bake," protect only up to about 500 degrees Fahrenheit. A blowout can exceed 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The shelters protect from less catastrophic conditions, and did help some survive Storm King.

Williams then led 25 jumpers, including Laird Robinson's son, Calvin, to make the first organized search for bodies. They found 12. Calvin Robinson found Don Mackey, whom he knew from the Missoula base. He identified him by his belt buckle.


Williams didn't try to remove the bodies, knowing proper identification of their position and equipment would be vital to the inevitable investigation.

"I knew it was time to get off the hillside when a radio went off under one of the bodies," Williams said. "It was spooky. I said, `Let's get the hell out of here.' "

That same line cost lives at Mann Gulch when it triggered the general departure from Dodge's fire. This time it made sense.""

FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN

www.chicagotribune.com

By this time Calvin and I had each fought fire for 7 seasons and after a few days of fishing, drinking beers, and discussing what we had both witnessed, decided it was time to hang up the nomex and whites. We decided 1994 would be it, figuring we'd seen, done, and experienced just about everything in fire by that time. That included funerals, close calls, small fires, big fires, etc. etc. We also talked about how much more severe fires had become even in the 7 years we had been doing it.

We both finished out the 1994 fire season and haven't really talked about any of it much since. These things are tragic, and its worse when you know/knew some that were involved and killed.

 

[JLS]

We both finished out the 1994 fire season and haven't really talked about any of it much since. These things are tragic, and its worse when you know/knew some that were involved and killed.

Quite a story. I hope he has reconciled all that he experienced. I have a friend who was in an aircraft crash in the Bob during a fire just west of Benchmark. The story he told of the experience was something else.

 

[Phaseolus]

Hiking up to the spot where the Prineville Hotshots and the Smokejumpers died on Storm King is quite an experience. My Wife says I am too much of a stoic and don’t show my emotions enough. I was by myself when I hiked it the first time and burst into tears seeing where these fine young people died, they were so close to safety.

 

[thomas89]

Stopped by the library today and checked out both Young Men and Fire and Fire on the Mountain.

Not necessarily looking forward to reading about these tragedies, but the guys (some I’d classify as just kids) involved certainly deserve to be read about and known.

Watched the Montana PBS documentary about the Higgins Ridge fire this evening. Another incredible story suggested earlier in this thread.

 

[turbobrick]

Man, I've read all the books, and saw all the pictures of Mann Gulch, but I never saw it look so beautiful as your shots here. Most of the historic pictures are obviously post fire, so seeing it all green and lush is mind blowing. Wildland firefighters are some of the biggest heroes we have. Both Norman and John wrote great books about fire, John wrote several others not mentioned here.

 

[BigHornRam]

In 2001 I went on a sheep foundation summer picnic boat trip to Mann Gulch. Duncan Gilchrist was on that trip, and Laird Robinson did an excellent after dinner presentation about the fire and the fire fighters who lost their lives that day. Very interesting and informative trip my wife and I experienced.

 

[TheTone]

Buzz and Oak, thanks for sharing your personal histories around some of these tragedies. The personal impact of them is hard for me to think about.

I wish I had spent a season or two on a fire crew for the adventure, camaraderie and team work that it seems to come with. The danger shouldn’t be lost or minimized and I’m often at a loss for words when I think of the risk we place people in to protect trees, brush and grass in remote places

 

[Nameless Range]

"The shelters, which they call "shake and bake," protect only up to about 500 degrees Fahrenheit. A blowout can exceed 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The shelters protect from less catastrophic conditions, and did help some survive Storm King.

If I recall correctly, John Maclean's book, "The Thirty Mile Fire", really goes into fire shelter use and what they are good for. The four who died on that fire, who were essentially engaged in a mop-up op gone wrong, died in their shelters. Temps hit 1,600 °F where they made their last stand. Your lungs die and then you do.

I also believe that for the last few years, John Maclean has been writing a book on The Granite Mountain Hotshots. I have a feeling it may be one of his last, and the fact that he's been at it for many years (if I am correct) makes me think it will be a good book.

 

[OntarioHunter]

Buzz and Oak, thanks for sharing your personal histories around some of these tragedies. The personal impact of them is hard for me to think about.

I wish I had spent a season or two on a fire crew for the adventure, camaraderie and team work that it seems to come with. The danger shouldn’t be lost or minimized and I’m often at a loss for words when I think of the risk we place people in to protect trees, brush and grass in remote places

The thing that can be both exciting and frustrating is the unpredictability of fire behavior. Planning is always "flexible" because fire is flexible. But too often that can become an excuse for incompetence. It drove me nuts sometimes. It's kinda what I was gleaning from the conclusion to the official report. I'm not saying I blame the ones who died ... not entirely anyway. But I think mistakes were made and they should not be glossed over simply out of respect for those who died heroically. Then nothing is learned. For example, the Storm King report says no one checked fire weather conditions that morning. From my experience, that should have been done. Even the subdivision residents noted from their observation point that the fire didn't settle down during the night, a clear indication of lack of dew. Very important. Taking fire weather readings (weighing the sticks) would have told the crews they were dealing with fuels that would become drier quicker as the fire moved that morning. And winds from the cold front were coming to add to the usual updrafts. That was a given. Did the fire boss know it? Curious thing about that report is I could never tell who was the fire boss. There were BLM ground crew, USFS Hotshots, smokejumpers, helicopter, helitack ground crew, and bomber all involved at different "spots." Who was coordinating? No mention of someone calling the shots from a fixed wing spotter. Sure, I have been sent to fight fire when there was no fire boss ... put out lightning strike spot fires. By day three this was no spot fire.

As a squad boss I have refused orders when I knew the person who sent them didn't know what was going on at the line. The very first big fire I was ever on in 1977, we were burned over and deployed shelters (which weren't much back then). The blowup happened at night which is very dangerous (albeit rare) because visibility is worse for observers. It got hot but no one was hurt. The sound and the wind was something I'll never forget. Fortunately we had a large safety zone ... and a very sharp crew boss. He was no hot dog. Ran a thinning crew but lots of fire experience.

I liked the money. That's it. Fighting fire is dirty backbreaking dangerous work. Usually management was a large scale Chinese fire drill. Most of the time I was on pickup crews of USFS nonprofessionals (like myself). Usually we didn't stay together long enough for much comradery. Too busy working or sleeping. Last time the entire crew except crew chief and squad bosses came straight from the unemployment office. We put them through a five day shake and bake then off to the fires. That was the year Yellowstone burned. Our crew was the only one of more than a dozen trained to last more than two weeks on a fire. Somehow we only managed to get assigned one junkie and got rid of him quick.

 

[Straight Arrow]

I liked the money. That's it. Fighting fire is dirty backbreaking dangerous work.

And you really earned it! I flew fires in NW Montana in 1988 when Army Guard helicopters were deployed. It was impressive to see the backbreaking, risky, dirty, dangerous work of those firefighters. Made me feel guilty being airborne and out of the dirt. The winds, fire-generated weather, and other fire phonomena made flying risky and tricky, but worthwhile when the challenge succeeded. Pay for us was standard military ... but the benefit of the ample and really good chow was nice. An intangible benefit I'm sure you recognized was the close camraderie with those fellow firefighters.

 

[Blacktailbc]

As stated earlier in this thread by others, these events are life changing. Having been involved in a fatal fire event is something you will never , ever forget.
It is amazing to me how small, inconsequential decisions in these events can have dramatic impact on life or death.
Things have tempered a bit after this winter, but for the last 6-8 years it has been downright hazardous . Crazy fire behavior, and burn overs/ close calls almost becoming routine . I’m hoping we get more heavy winters in the west in the coming years.

 

[RobG]

Hers's a couple more pics from 2011.

Looking down the gulch from the ridge. Rugged to say the least. I was on some cliffs that would have blocked escape over the ridge.



River side of the ridge. The closest "eyebrow" rock outcropping is where Rumsey and Sallee waited after making the ridge and escaping the fire.

 

[noisy]

Nice job, Mann Gulch is a beautiful hike. Been a few years since I've been in there, I should put it on my list again.