Jumping Fire: A Smokejumper's Memoir of Fighting Wildfire

Copyright © 2000 by Murry A. Taylor

Afterword copyright © 2001 by Murry A. Taylor

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhco.com

Although the events recounted in this book are based on the author’s actual experiences, some names and events have been changed.

Frontispiece illustration by Davis Perkins courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

Map by Davis Perkins.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Taylor, Murry A.

Jumping fire: a smokejumper’s memoir of fighting wildfire/Murry A. Taylor.—1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-15-100589-3

ISBN 0-15-601397-5 (pbk.)

1. Smokejumping—United States—Anecdotes. 2. Smokejumpers—United States—Anecdotes. 3. Taylor, Murry A. 4. Wildfires—United States—Anecdotes. I. Title.

SD421.435 .T39 2000

634.9'618—dc21 99-087608

eISBN 978-0-547-54107-5

v1.0414

For the Smokejumpers

What we’re all really seeking . . . is an experience where we can feel the rapture of being alive.

—Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Prologue

The door of Jump 17 opens to an unnerving roar, swings aside, and reveals four hundred acres of fire crowning in black spruce. Orange tongues of burning gases lick high into the air. Coils of black smoke roll up from a flame front a mile wide. At the fire’s head, flames eighty feet high whip back and forth as if trying to tear themselves free from the earth. At fifteen hundred feet, we orbit and look down. The smoke column rises out of a blue-green landscape to tower above us, its lower third brown and black, its middle a marbled yellow-gray, its top a crown of sunlit silver.

Air rushes into the airplane—thin mountain air, sweetly laced with the scent of woodsmoke. The roar is so loud we can barely shout above it. Hitting turbulence, we bounce weightlessly, then slam down on the cargo. From the pit of my stomach nausea flows through the rest of my body. My breathing is rapid and shallow, tightly constrained by the chest strap on my jump harness. I struggle to my feet, grab the overhead cable, and make my way to the door. We have an eight-man load. I will jump first.

Jump 17 lines up for our initial pass over the jump spot. Dalan Romero drops the first set of drift streamers. Banking into a turn, we watch the streamers—one red, one blue, and one yellow—flutter brightly against the backdrop of the dark forest, then suddenly waver, tumble end over end, and sweep in toward the fire. We make a second pass to drop another set. They do the same.

I watch through the door as the fire crests a ridge that drops into a valley containing a log home, a barn, and several outbuildings. From the fire to the homestead it is less than half a mile. Horses circle in a large corral. A bulldozer is shoving trees back away from the main house. There is a forty-acre barley field and a rough airstrip.

Dalan’s head is out into the slipstream looking forward under the belly of Jump 17 again. I pull on my helmet, snap the chin strap, drop the heavy wire-mesh mask down over my face, and pull on my Nomex gloves.

Dalan pulls his head back in. Grave, but apparently satisfied with what he’s seen, he shouts over his headset to the pilots, Take us to three thousand.

Dalan turns to me, holding up two fingers, and I step closer to the door and brace myself, being careful not to get sucked out by the slipstream. Kubichek, my jump partner, takes his place inches behind me.

Looks like about five hundred yards of drift, Dalan yells. The winds are tricky down low. Stay wide of the fire. The jump spot’s in the shadow of the column there in that little meadow just north of the barn. Do you see it?

I nod yes.

Again Dalan’s head is out the door and looking forward under the plane. I hear the pilot over the intercom. We got three thousand, Dalan, we got three thousand. Dalan says something back into his headset, and then his eyes are back on me.

OK, two jumpers, he commands. Are you ready?

I nod yes.

Get in the door.

I drop into a sitting position, my legs hanging out into the slipstream. Kubichek is close behind, waiting. Sitting there in the door, even though the fire is more than a mile away, I can feel the heat on my face.

Again Dalan’s head is out and looking. My field of vision fills with a panorama of the Alaska Range. The land below runs in a flat incline, rising east to the cloud-shadowed foothills of the Toklat River Valley. Beyond the hills, thrusting up out of the earth, is a world of jagged black peaks, blue ice walls, and massive snowfields—the heart of Denali National Park, a stronghold left over from the Ice Age, at once forbidding and magnificent.

Dalan pulls his head in, shoots me a quick glance, then raises his arm behind my back. Get ready!

The slap comes down hard on my shoulder, and I propel myself forward with all my strength. In the next instant I am out and counting.

Jump-thousand, look-thousand . . .

The earth and the sky revolve in a blur of tilted horizons, aircraft wings, greens, blues, and rushing noise. My body pitches sideways to the right as I watch my boots fly higher than my head. I fall downward at ninety miles per hour. The forest, the fire, and the mountains rotate in a spin below. I look up as Kubichek clears the door—he, too, becomes a dark silhouette tumbling in the blue.

Reach-thousand . . .

My right hand reaches for the green rip cord. My fingers curl around it tightly.

Wait-thousand . . .

I am aware of what hangs in the balance of the next few seconds. Resisting the temptation to pull early, I wait out that odd, warped moment when time stretches, then begins to tear.

Pull-thousand . . .

My hand pulls right across my chest and shoots out to the side. I feel myself tilt forward, then a tugging sensation across my shoulders, and the chute is off my back and struggling to open. Tossing my head back, I watch, and there it comes, billowing into a gleaming rectangle of brilliant orange and white. In the aftermath of the roar there comes a startling silence.

I check the rear corners of my chute for tension knots, then reach for my steering toggles, pull down left, and come around into the wind. I look down. The head of the fire has temporarily halted along the crest of the ridge while the ground fire spills down into the valley.

Kubichek lets out a long, whooping yell. He, too, has just opened. I yell back, then turn and try to orient to the jump spot.

The smoke column rises high overhead, casting an ominous shadow far over the land. Facing into the wind, I try to locate the jump spot. I feel my gut tighten as I watch the ground pass below, appearing to surge one way and then the other as the chute rocks back and forth. Pulling down on the left toggle, I begin moving closer to the wind line. Still, I can’t make out the jump spot. I yell at Kubichek that I can’t see the spot. He yells something back and starts laughing.

Lightning arcs down out of the top of the smoke column and strikes the ground between me and the fire. Thunder cracks loudly, trailing off in a rumble. Sunlight streams down through a hole in the smoke to pool green and gold upon the land as it might on the floor of a cathedral. A small sunny meadow appears. Kubi and I yell out in unison. In that moment I feel as if I can fly on and on forever, sailing high above all the great forests and wilderness on earth, out beyond the farthest horizon, into the infinite darkness to drift among the stars.

1

April 29

Fairbanks, Alaska

Spring was arriving in the far north at its usual fast pace. A thin blue sky brushed horsetail clouds against the Alaska Range a hundred miles to the south. To the north, Birch Hill lay gray and lifeless. In two weeks green-up would begin, but as yet, despite the sunny weather, the land itself still slept under the gray-brown blanket of arctic spring. Ice and snow, left over from a record 144-inch snowfall, lay in mounds in the dark shadows of spruce woods. Little streams ran along the roadsides, shining in the morning light. Thirty of us piled out of the vans and started milling around the starting line.

OK now. Listen up, Jim Kelton yelled. Flags are tied on the left side of the road every quarter mile. Mel will call out your times at the one- and two-mile points. I’ll be at the mile and a half, and back here at the three-mile finish, he said, displaying his big Cheshire cat smile.

When the van pulls away, be ready! Start when you hear the horn honk. Any questions?

Couldn’t we just go bowl a few lanes instead? Al Seiler asked in a low moan.

Good idea, Rene Romero said. Or just go down to Pike’s, get a pizza and a couple beers.

Those of us ready to run looked down at the ground and pawed the dirt nervously with the toes of our running shoes.

I understand, Kelton said wryly, that they still have a couple positions available rolling sleeping bags over in the fire warehouse. Nobody laughed.

As training foreman of the Alaska smokejumpers, he would see to it that we all passed the PT test fair and square.

Run for your job, that’s what we call the PT test. It’s the first anxious moment in every jump season. And even though everyone usually passes it, there are times, due to past injuries, that some don’t. In the annual newsletter sent out during the Christmas holidays, Rodger Vorce, our base manager, had put it this way:

With the fat season just ending and the dreaded PT test looming on the horizon, I would encourage everyone to put down the fork and pick up the pace. Every summer a few jumpers attempt to test the axiom that failing the PT test really means the end of your job. Let me assure you—nothing has changed! Who is it going to be this year? YOU? If you should be unfortunate enough to embarrass yourself and your friends by not making it, you’ll have one week to pass. So much for the serious stuff. It’s Christmas! Go ahead—have some more pumpkin pie, and we’ll see you in the spring.

You know the rules, Kelton said. If you can’t hack it today, pass it in one week or turn in your gear.

Same old shit, Mitch Decoteau grumbled, flapping his arms to keep warm.

Kelton checked his watch, turned, and headed for his van. There was a little last-minute stretching and running in place, then the group drew up to the line and took a long look down the road. The van roared to life, and as it rolled away, the horn honked and we bolted after it.

I immediately fell into last place. For the previous three months I’d dreaded that very moment. An old injury in my left knee had been aggravated during spring training, and I wasn’t sure it could take the pounding of a three-mile run. Would the aerobic capacity I’d developed on the stationary bicycle get me through? Or would I get partway and feel the knee loosen and give out? Being fifty years old and carrying an old injury made it particularly disheartening to so quickly fall behind. Needing, however, to focus mentally and establish a proper pace, I dismissed the hard chargers as cowards stampeding in the face of a summer spent rolling sleeping bags in the warehouse. One step at a time, I told myself. Listen to the rhythm, and press on.

But try as I might, I couldn’t silence the voices in my head. The possibility of losing my job was a miserable distraction. Suspended between fulfillment and failure, aggrieved by an odd dance of hope and pain, still, I had twenty-two minutes and thirty seconds to run three miles. No exceptions. No excuses.

At one mile I was maintaining pace and working my way up through the group, passing Trooper Tom and Gary Dunning. My knee didn’t hurt too bad. My heart and lungs had settled down. My time at one mile was 6:56. At the mile and a half I moved up alongside my buddy Fergy. My time was 10:26. The year before it had been 9:10.

At the two-mile mark I pulled off my T-shirt and tossed it to Mel Tenneson, who grabbed it on the fly, glanced down at his watch, and yelled back, 14:29—lookin’ good.

The road got pretty lonely after that. Each minute, waves of pain and aerobic stress surged through my body. The voices wanted to know. How smart was it to be smokejumping at fifty? Had my ego tricked me into thinking I could keep up with these younger and, no doubt, stronger jumpers? Had their words of encouragement simply been offered as customary smokejumper decorum, their doubts having been shelved out of respect?

How much longer are you going to keep doing that? friends outside of smokejumping demand. "Quit while you’re ahead. For god sakes! You’re too old."

My father tells it like it is. Old Toots Taylor thinks his son is a damn fool. He shakes his head and lets fly.

You can’t live up in those mountains in a wheelchair, you know, he says. Give it up while you can still walk.

And then there’s mother. Even though her support has been unfailing, I know that inwardly she fears for me more than anyone. Well, honey, she tells me, you’ve always been one to chase after your heart.

I’ve injured both knees—the left one twice. I’ve broken my right collarbone. I’ve been knocked out three times, and my hands and forearms are covered with dozens of small scars from years of tearing through the woods. I went blind with cataracts in 1984; surgery, inter-ocular lens transplants, and $12,000 restored my sight to near perfect.

I returned my attention back on the road, back to the task of running for my job, fighting against fear and doubt. I thought to myself, Just shut up; you’re not the only one hurting.

I pulled up alongside Mitch Decoteau. Mitch hates the PT test, too. Not because it’s that difficult, really, but somehow combining physical distress with the threat of losing your job produces an inordinate amount of anxiety. Mitch was panting hard and soaked with sweat. I felt my pace falling off. Even though I was still ahead of several others, I knew I had to pick it up. Listening to my feet strike the ground, I concentrated on maintaining the rhythm and not on the pain building in my left knee.

My chest felt like it had been hit by lightning. I had visions of my oxygen-starved body diving into a snowbank. But there was nothing to do but just keep on running. Then around the corner appeared a lovely sight—Kelton in his cool, hot-pink T-shirt, the van, and the finish line. Jim’s eyes were glued to his stopwatch as he called out the time. A wave of pain and nausea rose up inside me as I ran past. Taylor, he yelled, 22:05.

My vision pulsed with a matrix of black dots, and my lungs gasped for more air as I watched Mitch and Fergy come in. The fatal 22:30 came and went with ominous finality. A couple of old veterans barely missed it. They crossed the finish line, then crumpled in disappointment. One was Trooper Tom, a veteran of two combat tours with the marines in Vietnam and twenty-two seasons smokejumping. At forty-six, Troop had more fire jumps than any other jumper in history. He also had two injured knees and a hip he’d fractured in Montana in 1989.

The other was Gary Dunning, the second-oldest jumper in the fifty-two-year history of smokejumping. In 1986, on a windy jump east of Fort Yukon, he’d suffered a smokejumper’s nightmare, when a spear-pointed black spruce punctured the middle of his left thigh, leaving him skewered thirty feet in the air. A gust of wind grabbed his chute and toppled jumper and tree to the ground. Gary was unconscious when the other jumpers found him. Last year he had extensive surgery on his left foot. Like most old-timers, our beloved Secret Squirrel, as we called him, had a pair of jumper knees as well.

When Troop and Dunning failed to meet the time limit, no one said a word. Side-glancing at Troop I saw a pleading sadness in his kind, brown eyes as he looked over at me. To a man we all felt defeated. Their loss was ours.

You can be strong. You can be dedicated. You can have run thousands of miles down those long country roads in the winter cold just before nightfall, alone, hurting, pushing, with no one to notice, no one to care. Run in the rain, run in the snow, against the wind and with it, through the injuries and pain. A smokejumper’s commitment to physical fitness is year-round. It has to be. I’d run more than eight thousand miles to remain a jumper; Troop and Gary probably more. You can have done it all in the best of faith and still the day will come when you will no longer be able to keep up. On that day your life as a smokejumper will end.

2

May 1

Fairbanks

Mike Tupper, manning the operations desk for the day, stepped up to the magnet board and scanned the jump list.

Roll call, he yelled, turning to face the chaos of the ready room. Over sixty smokejumpers quieted.

Welcome home, boys! It’s good to see everybody again. Hope you had a great winter—I sure did! Couple things here before we get started. First off, there’s going to be a class on grizzly and black bears given by a field biologist from State Fish and Game. It’ll be your basic bears are unpredictable and have big teeth stuff, so if you’re interested, let me know. Also, there’s going to be a weapons certification class for those planning to carry guns. Same rules as before—nothing smaller than a .357 Magnum. BLM’s policy remains the same. Don’t shoot ’em unless they’re eating you. Check the sign-up sheet on the bulletin board. That’s all I have. Welcome home! Mike stepped back, smiled, and offered his hand palm up in the direction of squad leader Buck Nelson.

Right after roll call, all ram-air refresher jumpers get your gear and meet in the loft, Buck announced.

Jim Raudenbush, another squad leader, stepped up. "All rookies—Outside now! he yelled. Roll call is for real smokejumpers, not wannabees." Bush’s words came out hard like a dog barking bricks.

Jim Olson joined in the fray, his eyes bulging with enthusiasm. Ram-air rookies, meet in the lounge right after morning PT, and we’ll check out the video of yesterday’s jump.

After my quiet winter living in the mountains of Northern California, the intensity of the ready room added credence to the theory advanced by some nonjumpers (particularly women) that smokejumpers are the outcome of some secret government testosterone experiment gone bad.

Anything else? Tupper shouted.

One more thing, Tom Boatner said, as he stepped in front of the operations desk. Boatner was the crew supervisor. The room quieted again.

I’m with Tupp. Smiling. "It’s really great to see everybody back again. It’s always good when this time of year rolls around. Yesterday I talked to Charlie Thomas up at Fort Yukon. He says he can’t remember seeing it this dry so early. That’s from a man who’s lived there sixty years. We had record snow here in Fairbanks, but it was just local. Most of the interior had considerably less. We’re looking at one of the driest and warmest springs ever. Same goes for Bettles and out west. Fuel moistures on the Kenai Peninsula are running record lows. For those of you already jump qualified, have your gear on the speed racks and be ready. The state picked up a half-dozen fires down around Anchorage this weekend. It may not look like it here, but statewide it’s beginning to look like we could be in for a bust-ass fire season. Our first call could be anytime. So be ready. Be thinking fire. And again, welcome back. We missed you."

Any more announcements? Tupper yelled. OK then, roll call.

Firestone. "Here."

Romero. "Yo!"

Fergy. "Morn—ning."

Quacks. "I don’t think you missed me."

Tupper turned from the magnet board and stared at Quacks. Well, look who’s here? It’s the smokejumper from the shallow end of the gene pool.

Here we go again, I thought, as Mike continued down the list. The stage is set; Alaska’s drying out. Members of the cast are taking up their roles. Scanning the crew, I noticed some of the faces missing. Troop and Dunning were nowhere to be seen. A season without two of our finest warhorses hardly seems possible.

Seiler. "Here."

Taylor. "Yeah."

A few minutes later a dozen of us gathered in the loft for a review of the Bureau of Land Management’s parachute malfunction procedures. BLM smokejumpers in Alaska and the Lower 48 use square parachutes similar to those used in sport parachuting. Both the main and the reserve are called square parachutes, although their actual shape is rectangular. The BLM system requires a three-foot-diameter drag chute, known as the drogue. The drogue deploys automatically as the jumper leaves the plane. The main canopy, however, must be deployed by the jumper himself after falling under the drogue until he has attained a stable feet-down, head-up body position. The deployment sequence is activated five to six seconds after leaving the plane, approximately 400 to 500 feet beneath it.

By comparison, U.S. Forest Service smokejumpers use a round canopy system—both main and reserve. The round main deploys by static line and opens automatically after the jumper has fallen 150 to 200 feet. The round reserve must be deployed manually.

In the loft, everyone gathered around Mitch Decoteau. Mitch had spent part of his winter in Spain, where he is co-owner and instructor at the Costa Brava Skydiving Complex. As a small boy Mitch became fascinated with a man known as Jump Jackson, a stunt jumper who traveled with barnstormers. From that time forward, Mitch knew beyond a doubt that he wanted to spend a good part of his life parachuting. In 1982 he was a member of the American four-way team that took first place in the World Parachuting Championships. Renowned among international sky divers, Mitch was awarded his diamond wings in 1990 for being one of the few sky divers to have ever clocked seventy-five hours of free fall. Mitch organizes international skydiving competitions around the world during the winter months and spends his summers jumping fires. He rookied at Missoula in 1978 and then transferred to Alaska in the early 1980s.

Mitch was wearing a T-shirt with BOOGIE IN BALI—’89 written in electric blue and green across the front. It’s good we had Mitch. Mitch provided an experienced perspective on malfunctions. I asked him once how many he’d had in his nearly five thousand jumps.

Thirteen, he said. Thirteen where I had to use my reserve. If you don’t have to use your reserve, it doesn’t really count as a malfunction; it’s just maybe like a slow opening or something.

Unlike Mitch, the BLM counts all malfunctions, whether you have to use your reserve or not. The year before there had been three among the Alaska jumpers: two total malfunctions and a partial. Fergy and Slasher had had the totals. The partial—a tension knot—had been mine.

Fergy’s mishap, thought to be deployment-bag lock, occurred on a practice jump over Birch Hill. When he pulled his drogue release handle, the main chute flew free from his back but didn’t open. When he looked up, all he could see was the deployment bag and a blur dancing at the end of his suspension lines. Some of the canopy was partly out, but the rest was knotted in a ball. Falling near ninety miles per hour, Fergy didn’t waste any time. He simply pulled his cutaway handle to release the main chute. Fergy’s reserve opened fine, and he flew it in without further incident.

Slasher’s malfunction was on a fire just south of the Yukon River, thirty miles west of the Alaska Pipeline. Like Fergy, Slasher hadn’t delayed but had gone straight for his cutaway clutch and his reserve rip cord. He, too, thought his looked like bag lock, but, as with Fergy’s, the real cause remains unknown. Malfunctions that remain mysterious are not something smokejumpers take lightly. Each one gets a critical evaluation, some to the point of absurdity.

My malfunction occurred on a fire jump near a string of rocky crags in Alpine Lake Wilderness in the Wenatchee National Forest of central Washington. After an exceptionally hard opening shock, the chute flew normally for a few seconds, then dropped off to the right in a tight spin. I pulled down on the left steering toggle to correct the spin, but the canopy flew forward only a short distance then stalled backward. A suspension line was knotted around the right rear corner of the canopy. I released the left toggle and, with both hands, yanked fiercely on the right rear riser, hoping to free the knot. It didn’t budge. The chute fell off into another spin. I straightened it out again and got ready to cut away. I looked down between my feet. I’d drifted away from the jump spot into the area of granite spires and cliffs. Desperately I tried again to free the canopy, promising myself that if I failed I would immediately cut away. Time was running out. I yanked hard three or four more times, eyed the cutaway clutch, then reached for it. Instantly the knot snapped free, and the canopy flared into normal flight. I turned around just in time to clear the cliffs, sail back over the fire, and land just up the ridge in a small clearing filled with weathered logs and wildflowers.

Malfunctions are categorized into high-speed and low-speed malfunctions. Fergy’s and Slasher’s were high-speed and more life threatening. Mine was low-speed in that I had more time to try to fix it. It might have taken as much as a minute to reach the ground if I’d been able to keep it out of a spin. Landing, however, would have been perilous. Had I lost control of the canopy below five hundred feet, I wouldn’t have had time to deploy the reserve and thus would have impacted at killing speed.

While we categorize malfunctions for evaluation’s sake, we treat them all the same when it comes to preventing them. When training jumpers how to rig parachutes, we hold to strict standards. Smokejumpers constantly maintain and check their harnesses and gear. All aspects of our parachute program are under continuous scrutiny by the parachute loft foreman and loft staff. During the winter, loft personnel from all the jump bases meet to evaluate each incident and make recommendations.

Still, after all the analysis, the jumpers themselves must bear the main burden of coping with a malfunctioning parachute. In one instance, where a jumper fell fifteen hundred feet and just barely got his reserve out in time to catch into a tree and be thumped roughly to the ground, he immediately crapped his pants. He spent the rest of his afternoon walking in circles around the standby shack, mumbling to himself. Later that night he resigned. After several years, he came back and jumped a couple more seasons. Smokejumpers rarely quit because of close calls. Usually, they’re eager to get back in the air, make some successful jumps, and put the past behind them. A few have made all their preliminary preparations to jump, but when the moment came to step out, they froze in the door. Once a jumper freezes in the door, his jumping days are over.

After two hours spent in the loft mulling over the various ways a parachute can scare the hell of out you, we finally filed out the back door, gear bags over our shoulders, and headed for the training units.

Successful completion of refresher training is required of all returning jumpers. Once it’s over, we are fully qualified to go on the jump list.

The units are located along the Chena River, just north of the east end of the Fort Wainwright airfield. To support its arctic warriors, the U.S. Army has built a small city, including a steam generation plant, a hospital, several large hangers, a half-dozen aircraft maintenance shops, an area of officers’ housing, and several large, mostly empty barracks. At one time a lot of people lived on post. Now most of the three thousand army personnel live and work on the south side of the field. A few hundred share the north side with us. To the west of our training units, separated by large open lawn areas and a soccer field, stand three two-story army barracks rented from the army by the BLM. Respectively, these house the jumpers and jumper pilots, the hotshot crews, and the fire service specialists. (In Alaska the hotshots and fire specialists make up the remaining core of on-line firefighters. Unlike jumpers, they are not primary initial attack forces. Usually arriving by helicopter, their task is to put out large fires that have escaped the initial attack effort.)

At the edge of the runway from east to west sprawl the helicopter staging area, the air tanker base, the retardant bombers, the smokejumper standby shack, various support buildings, and the BLM fire cache and warehouse. Just north of the warehouse sits the head shed, or the Alaska Interagency Fire Coordination Center, where all the fire managers, fire dispatchers, and subordinate staff have their offices. BLM’s fleet of fire aircraft sit parked in orderly rows on the aircraft ramp—three helicopters, three air tankers, six jump ships, two Air Attack lead planes, a heavy air transport, and another half-dozen small fixed-wing ships. In total, the area is about eighty acres and stretches a half mile by a quarter mile.

The training units themselves are two acres of grass surrounded by a chain-link fence. Inside stands the jump tower with its cable trolleys and receiving berm, the letdown cable assembly, the roll simulator, a gutted-out old Twin Beech fuselage, and an obstacle course.

As we spread out our jump gear, the rookies passed by on their five-mile run around the airstrip. Raudenbush and Seiler were in the lead, repeatedly shouting, What do you wanna be?

Smokejumpers! the rookies yelled back each time.

I recalled sitting on the ground at the edge of a group of Redding rookies, high up on Squaw Ridge, fifteen miles north of Shasta Lake. It was early May 1965. I’m leaning forward, legs bent, forearms resting on my knees. My head, supported by a skinny stalk of a neck, holds a mop of hair soaked with sweat. The entire back of my shirt is wet. I’ve just finished lugging a 110-pound pack eight miles uphill. My shoulders have been rubbed raw by the narrow, unpadded straps of an army elephant bag. My 145-pound body is wracked with pain. I sit there embarrassed, inadequate, pitiful. I’m convinced that I’ve failed, that I’ll be washed out, dropped from the program, and that the trainers are secretly waiting until the end of our twenty-seven-mile pack out to give me the news. Earlier that day another rookie and I had fallen behind the main hiking group. At one point we’d stopped to compare our muscle cramps. Our knotted thighs quivered and twitched like small animals under our Levi’s. Never in my life had I dealt with anything so difficult and humiliating. In the raw, untamed wilds of Squaw Ridge, I was nothing but a stinking rookie and a weak one at that. Head hung in shame, I didn’t realize that the coming week would be one of the most influential of my life.

Rookie training is not at all like refresher training. Rookie training lasts three weeks, involves blisters, Ben-Gay, muscle relaxers, murderous PT sessions, first jumps, crutches, and the constant threat of being washed out. Each winter over two hundred applications are received from the best fire crews in the nation. Only one out of twenty-five are selected for Alaska rookie training. Of these, half wash out. Former marines who have become smokejumpers all agree that Alaska rookie training is tougher than anything they saw in boot camp.

Refresher training, by comparison, lasts only a week and is mostly procedural review. On the units we were split into groups of ten and scheduled to move from place to place for instruction in landing rolls, letdowns, the jump tower, suit-up practice, and emergency aircraft procedures.

My group started at the letdown area with Eric Pyne in charge. Landing in the tops of big trees requires a firm understanding of the procedures and mechanics of rappelling. In Alaska this rarely happens, but in the big timber of the Lower 48—most years we jump fires there, too—you might hang up once or twice every fifteen jumps or so. Thus, when you find yourself dangling a hundred feet up in a tall Douglas fir, it’s best to have your letdown procedures down pat.

For practice, jumpers are suspended from a cable stretched between two steel towers. Gathering at the bottom of the towers, we watched as Tyler Robinson was hoisted twenty feet up.

OK, let’s get started, Eric said, glancing at his clipboard. Letdowns are an important skill. They’re not that difficult, really. But, like so many other things we do, if you screw up, the penalties can be extreme.

Extreme is right. Jack Deets, a Missoula smokejumper bounced five feet in the air after falling out of a large pine in 1985. Jack had mistaken part of his harness for his parachute risers and unknowingly tied off his letdown rope to himself. When he cut away he fell eighty feet, first through branches, then into clear airspace. Hitting with a sickening thump, Jack flopped over and lay motionless with a broken back. He recovered to further pursue his career fighting fires, but the fall ended his years as a jumper.

Keep your head, Pyne went on, remain calm, and think each situation through. The standard procedures may not always apply to your particular problem. Look things over carefully. See what you’re looking at. Make your decisions accordingly. I know this is old hat to some, but we’ve had too many people screw up and end their careers. That’s why we have refresher training.

Eric looked up at the jumper suspended above us, his arms dangling.

Let’s talk Tyler through one to refresh everyone’s memory. Then the rest can do some. Can everyone see? The jumpers moved in closer, craning upward and shading their eyes against the morning sun.

OK, the first thing to remember is that when you’re coming into trees, if there aren’t any openings, steer for the smallest ones.

Two jumpers at the back of the group were grab-assing and not paying attention. One of them was Quacks, a second-year jumper who had earned his nickname by having a laugh that sounds like a duck.

Hey, Quacks, Fergy said. Shut up! We’re trying to learn something.

That’ll be tough in your case, Quacks responded. Fergy ignored him.

When you’re initially coming down into the trees, don’t reach out and try to grab anything, Pyne continued. You don’t want to get hung up in a tree with a broken arm.

Once you’ve hung up, what do you do next? Pyne asked.

Check and see how well you’re hung, Don Bell answered.

See how well you’re hung? Quacks whispered loudly. Fergy does that every day. That’s why he’s so grumpy all the time.

Pyne lowered his clipboard and looked to the back of the group.

I’m sorry, Quacks snickered. Sometimes I’m so clever I amaze myself.

You know there’s a lot of comedians out of work these days, and you might soon be one of them, Pyne said, looking sternly at Quacks.

Now then, once you’ve stopped falling, check your chute and try to determine if you’re securely hung. If you’re not certain that the chute will hold during your letdown, consider tying off to the tree directly.

Tyler Robinson looked up as if he were checking to see how securely he was caught in a tree.

The problem with tying off is that once you’re on the ground you can’t pull your chute free, so you have to climb back up for it. Pyne hesitated a moment, then glanced at his clipboard again.

Next, lift your face mask and carefully check for loose lines around your neck. Take your time. Make sure. Remember what happened to Arden.

On a practice jump near the University of Alaska in 1964, Arden Davis had hung up in a black spruce just four feet off the ground. A jumper yelled, asking him if he was OK. Arden yelled back that he was. Apparently thinking he would save himself the trouble of doing a letdown, he released the harness attachments to his chute and dropped away. An unnoticed suspension line caught around his neck, and by the time the other jumpers found him, he’d hanged to death, his feet just inches from the forest floor. From then on the policy was changed so that jumpers don’t respond OK until they are fully on the ground and clear of all their rigging.

You better pay attention, Fergy, Quacks chortled, or you’ll wind up with a stretched neck.

All right, Pyne grumbled. Let’s get on with this. Once you’ve made sure there are no lines around your neck, close the face mask and undo the right side of your reserve. Let it fall away to the left. Do the same with your PG bag. (Smokejumpers wear their reserve parachutes across the front of their chests, with a personal-gear bag attached just below the reserve at belt level.)

Once you’ve cleared the area in front of you, reach down and grab the end of your letdown rope. (The letdown rope is coiled in a large pocket sewn to the outside of the right leg of the jump pants just below the knee. Most jump pants have two leg pockets—one on each side.)

Take out about six feet of rope, leaving the rest in your leg pocket.

The reason for leaving the rest in the pocket is that you might accidentally drop the rope before you’ve tied it off. Stuck in a tree in the vicinity of a forest fire with no letdown rope could prove to be a regrettable predicament.

Pass the end of your letdown rope through your two D rings. (About where a belt buckle would be on most pants, jump pants have two D-shaped rings attached by heavy nylon webbing.)

Loop the rope through both rings from right to left, and pull about four feet past the rings with your left hand.

We watched as Tyler, wiggling above us, completed the loop, and then pulled the rope back and forth, making sure it traveled freely through the rings.

"Now it’s time to tie off to your risers. Remember, always tie off to your tight riser."

Parachute risers are the two straps that connect the suspension lines of the parachute canopy to a jumper’s harness. When hung up in a tree, one riser will most likely be tighter than the other. Tying off to the tight side minimizes the sudden jerk on the canopy when you finally release the cutaway. The less violent the jerk, the less likely you’ll break out. At one time or another all jumpers have experienced the horror of cutting away only to suddenly hear breaking branches and feel the initial helplessness of an uncontrollable fall.

One hot August afternoon in 1965, ten miles southeast of Mount Shasta, California, I found myself a hundred feet up, hanging off the end of a limb in a wolfy old ponderosa pine. The limb, a mere two inches in diameter, bowed low, ready to snap. To make matters worse, the tree was a leaner, suspending me out into open air with nothing around to tie off to but the poorly hung chute. The wind shifted and the head of the fire turned and started coming my way. I noticed my hands trembling as I prepared to cut away and slide down my letdown rope. If the branch broke, my chute couldn’t possibly reopen. It was too tangled. A pullout would mean falling all the way to the ground, where there was nothing but lava rocks and manzanita brush.

At the time, Forest Service 5A round parachutes were packed on a piece of quarter-inch plywood. I decided to keep the pack tray strapped to my back rather than drop it as we had been instructed to do during normal letdowns. I wanted the extra protection if I went into the rocks. I tied off to the tight-side riser, and took my rope out of my leg pocket and dropped it to the ground. As I released my tight-side harness attachment, my anxiety was nearly unbearable. I supported as much weight as I could by pulling up with my left arm while releasing the attachment with my right hand. When the snap released, I suddenly dropped a foot, fully expecting the branch to give way. But it just bowed low, held, and bobbed me up and down, leaving me so scared I could hardly think. By the time I finally got to the ground, I’d used 125 feet of the total 150-foot rope. I unsuited quickly and was hustled out of the area by a couple of other jumpers. When we went back in later, the bottom of the nylon letdown rope had melted and the parachute was ready for the trash can with over a hundred burn holes.

Our group watched as Tyler, under Pyne’s direction, rigged the rope through his tight-side riser and tied it off with three half hitches.

Now, reach and take out the rest of your letdown rope and drop it to the ground. Tyler’s rope hit the ground with a thump.

Next, grab the left rear riser with your left hand, and pull yourself up with a one-arm pull up as far as you can. At the same time cinch the rope up tight through your D rings with your right hand. Once you’re up as tight as you can get it, check again for lines around your neck, then release the cutaway clutch slowly with your right hand.

Tyler fell free from his risers.

Stop! One final check for suspension lines around your neck. Now start down . . . slowly at first in case you’ve missed one.

Tyler followed Pyne’s instructions, then descended smoothly, regulating his descent by increasing or decreasing the friction of the rope against his leg.

OK, that’s it, Pyne said. Just remember: Make sure you’re seeing what you’re looking at. For damn sure don’t mistake your harness for your risers. There can be branches, leaves, all kinds of junk in your face—stobs and limbs rammed under your harness. Take your time. Think it through. Basically, what I’m saying is that you have to be smarter than the tree. For some of you, I realize, that might be pressing it.

After the letdown tower we moved to the sawdust pit and jumped off a platform to practice rolls—to the left, to the right, some forward, some backward. Smokejumpers do a modified PLF (parachute landing fall), similar to that performed by U.S. Army paratroopers. Landing with knees slightly bent, the jumper must immediately unweight to the left or right as soon as the feet hit the ground, twisting slightly to the side, and letting the momentum of the fall carry the body around onto the buttocks and back. In this manner, the impact force is distributed over a maximum surface area.

By the time we left the sawdust pit, my head ached from banging it against the ground, and it occurred to me that a summer in the warehouse rolling sleeping bags might not be all that bad. Especially when I pictured some of the places we’d be jumping into in the Alaskan bush and the Pacific Northwest.

Weighted down by our gear, we next waddled over toward the jump tower. Jump gear consists of a helmet, a parachute harness, a jump jacket and pants (the jumpsuit), a pair of high-top boots, and a letdown rope. Modern jumpsuits combine fire-resistant Nomex and bullet-resistant Kevlar outer layers over half-inch, closed-cell foam padding. The Kevlar protects from being punctured by broken branches and stobs. Fully suited, with the harness leg straps tight, it’s impossible to stand up straight or bend clear over. Constrained somewhere in between, the resulting walk is an awkward shuffle burdened by sixty-five pounds of gear. Our helmets are like those worn by motorcycle riders but fitted with a heavy wire cage that hinges down from the brow line and snaps tightly into position over the face.

Except in emergencies, no one touches anyone else’s jump gear. This is something every jumper understands. A smokejumper knows where his jump gear is at all times. He inspects it and maintains it constantly. When the unavoidable happens, and you come crashing down through trees and brush, if it’s not skill or luck that saves you, it’ll be your jump gear rendering its faithful service, stopping spear-pointed branches, treetops, and sharp rocks.

Under the jump tower we met another trainer.

All right, gather up and pay attention, you brush apes, he said. Let’s get started. What do you do if you have a horseshoe?

That’s good luck, Chip Houde replied. I’d probably head for a topless bar.

I’d throw it at Fergy and send his fat ass packing. Quacks again.

The trainer looked up unamused. All right, then. What about a drogue in tow?

The drogue is attached to the back of the jumper’s harness about midway between the shoulder blades. As