Camp Creek Fire

Yesterday was my first day of my current tour at work. Because of only getting a few hours sleep I woke up pretty out of it and very forgetful for I forgot my backpack and my camera. Thinking that it was too early in the morning to get a fire worthy of taking pictures of, I didn't think too much of it. Running by the house and picking it up during my lunch break seemed like a feasible option at the time. Around 0900 or 1000 we got sent to a fire near Kolob Canyon in the far northwest corner of Zion National Park. Between this fire being my first within the park's jurisdiction and the fact that I was flying that day, I was beginning to kick myself hard for forgetting my camera. The exit for Kolob is about 15-20 miles away from Cedar City giving us a 10 minute flight to the fire. The second we lifted off the ground at the air center we could see the smoke from the fire. The fire sat on a mesa top right up against a canyon wall. The canyon itself was absolutely goregeous. The canyon itself must have been at the very least 700-800 feet tall with sheer Navajo Sandstone walls. Myself and one of our lead firefighters were dropped off on an adjacent mesa top with a view that looked over the fire and down to the canyon bottom to see if there was any spotting to the canyon floor. The Camp Creek Fire, as it was called, was about 2 acres covering the entire mesa top which made it impossible (at the time) to land and put firefighters on it safely. Our job was to monitor the fire while the helicopters worked. While our lead firefighter watched and directed the helicopters, I went to work with our chainsaw clearing out a 90' diameter spot for our helicopter. This is where I began to get pissed that I forgot my camera. The entire time I was cutting helitanker 718, a Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane, was doing water drops on the mesa. The impressive thing about it all was his flight path was eye level with us as he descended below our mesa to reach the mesa in question. It was quite an impressive aerial show with a gorgeous backdrop. We spent the better half of the afternoon and evening on that mesa top until we flew in the park's Fire Effect's crew to watch the fire for the night and the next day. By the time we made it home it was near 2200. Today we spent the day at the helibase below the fire doing more bucket work on the spots the pilot missed the day before. We came home in the midst of a pretty big storm that dropped rain and a shit load of lightening all over the Cedar City area...primarily on the Dixie National Forest which currently has a lot of beetle kill sporadically spread across the ranger district just outside of town. We had been joking all this season about how the Dixie would go up in flames this year with the proper ignition. Tomorrow will tell us how much work we'll have on our hands for the next few days or so to come...