Work and another Funk

Everyone knows the fire season is around the corner when the aviation resources start appearing at their summer homes. The SEATs have arrived at Cedar City!





Today, I finished up my Helicopter Crewmember class. I'm glad it's over now that I can start working on my taskbook. After class, hoping I'd be heading back to the air center to fly for the rest of the afternoon, I was "diverted" to the park to assist with a prescribed burn to kill off Cheat Grass in the park:





Despite how much I've been working and working out, I still can't shake off this slight depression or 'funk' I've been going through. I've been pretty anti-social the past couple of days. I have no desire or drive to do anything. The past 4 nights in a row, I'd get home, get changed, go to the gym, and walk past all of my roommates only to go to bed at 9 or 9:30 and wake up at 6:30. I feel pissed about something too. I don't know what but it's been affecting me a lot this past week. Hopefully I'll figure out what it is sometimes soon.

Our Helicopter Has Arrived....

...it actually showed up on Saturday but it's contract did not begin until today. The morning was spent getting the trucks ready to chase the helicopter. The afternoon was spent going over basics on being crew members and heading down to the park for a small project. I got my first taste of running a helibase: sitting on my ass for a couple hours only to get up and do something when the helicopter's refueling (when I say do something, I mean stand by a fire extinguisher). I did how ever get some interesting first photos of the helicopter for the season.






The way the crew flight rotation works, I won't be flying till either Saturday or Sunday (I normally don't work on Monday's and I'm in S-271/Helicopter Crewmember class Tomorrow through Friday). I've taught myself patience just due to the fact that I'll probably be sick of flying come September. Until then, I guess I'll just have to enjoy what it is I'm doing for a living...

A Day Off

When you only get one day off in between working, they feel like they're few and far in between. Today is my one day off before I work from Sunday (tomorrow) till Sunday (June 1st. I spent the morning sleeping in till 1100. Why you ask? Because I could. Even if I did go to bed at 1 AM. The early part of the afternoon was spent in Cedar Canyon which is about 14 miles outside of town. I had been searching for the way to the climbs within the canyon since I have been here but only recently with the purchase of a guide book on climbing in southwest Utah have I been able to actually get to the base of the climbs. With the book in hand, my roommate Rob and I headed into Cedar Canyon to check out the climbs. The routes seemed pretty high above our abilities and there weren't many trad routes either. After exploring the canyon, hiking, and some practice gear placements on the few cracks we found near the base of the rocks, we headed back into town in anticipation of a night of beers and relaxation. Not bad for a day off...

Hard Day with Good Pay!

Today, which was originally planned as a day of burning off a huge prescribed burn lot, was spent digging a 1/4 mile fireline down a steep-ass hill for several hours only to have the burn canceled on us. What made matters worse after we began our arduous hike back up the line we just made, it snowed it's ass off:









Driving seemed more treacherous than walking. At one point in time we couldn't see the other side of the 10 acre meadow we were driving across. So to recap, fireline dug that's not going to be used, freezing cold and snow, but 10 1/2 hours of overtime!

Another Day on the Job

Today was a slow day. As usual, the morning was spent in the gym with the crew followed by a 2.5 mile back to the base. As slow a day as it was, the morning was spent working on various projects around the base. My exciting project was labeling the recycling cans around the base! I actually like minuscule projects like that. They allow me some time to sit or chill by myself and think. You all know how I value my thinking time. After that, I drove over from the air center to the main fire center to take care of some of my certification issues as well as my Incident Qualification Card. After lunch, we started to have some fun. We were supposed to head into a canyon to do some saw work for a fuels project the BLM was going to do but because of the weather (raining and cold), we decided to do a project of our own:





Since the bushes around the helicopter pad can only be so high, our manager thought it would be a great training opportunity to unleash us with saws and cut as much sage brush as our happy little arms could bare. Afterwards, of course, we burnt the product of our "training". The rest of the day was spent talking about our schedules when the helicopter comes on. We start staffing the air center 7 days a week on Sunday. Sunday is a crew training day as Crew A works Sunday through Wednesday and Crew B (including yours truly) works Thursday through Sunday. On top of that, I'm in class all of next week (which I'm getting paid for) and most of the week after next. If you include that with what ever other overtime I could possibly get, my paycheck for this pay period will be looking pretty good considering the amount of debt I'm in for the month of May. Man I can't wait to start running fires...

What To Do and the Summer to Come

With complete boredom as my inspiration, I created a rather lengthy to-do list while sitting in a all-hands meeting in the park. A lot of it revolves around budget(s) for the summer, car maintenance, climbing stuff, things I want to research or look up because of interest (not necessarily out of necessity...), and a few other things. Most of my to-do list revolves around my deployment down to Antarctica. I'm starting to feel like a seasoned traveler because of all of the things I learned from last year/earlier this year (some I learned the hard way). The one thing I learned is plan a hell of a lot earlier than I did last year. I didn't start packing or even thinking about packing until about a week before I left. Surprisingly, I didn't do too bad of a job. This year, however, I'm trying to do a few other things after I get off the ice. I'm still looking to go to Morocco after my deployment. So far the only trip the guide company I've been looking at is offering starts on the 28th in Marrakech...3 days after my scheduled redeployment date back into the real world. Granted, I was scheduled for a 28 Feb earlier this year and I ended up getting scheduled for a 19 Feb redeployment date with an actual date of the 21st, I'm still hoping for a little more time in between redeploying to Christchurch before heading off to Morocco. Anyways, I beginning to plan this all out now so I won't have any logistical surprises come September.

This week so far at work has been pretty good. I spent another day at the park yesterday doing some required first aid training and attending an all-hands meeting. Even though we [Zion Helitack] aren't stationed in the park, just coming down into park and looking around...especially from our training site(s), is pretty awe-inspiring.





I mean, I'm not just a tourist or a visitor paying to come to the park...I work there. I get paid to not only drive into the park for various tasks, I get paid to fly over it as well. The ship comes on next Monday. Unfortunately, I won't be working Monday and I'll be in a class from Tuesday till Friday. I did, however, almost make it on the Potosi Fire right outside of Las Vegas. I'm assuming they got the fire under control because I'm sitting here writing this post. Regardless, with all this excitement right now and the excitement to come this summer and fall, I'm pretty restless right now...

A Funk

Ever since this weekend, I've been in sorta a funk. I feel bad about it to because it all stemmed around the hike we did for the Devil's Den Fatality Staff Hike. I feel really bad about it because I feel it takes away from the hard, emotional time that my manager and two lead firefighters are going through with the entire ordeal. I know I didn't know Spencer Koyle, but it still hit home pretty hard for me. Anyways, that's had me down for a few days. Today, while talking to my good friend William "Brody" Brotman I come to define my feelings for Cedar City and its people. I love the city itself. It's a beautiful, quaint little town. The people sorta scare me. Haha, I know that sounds bad but here me out. It seem that life is centered around getting married straight out of high school and settling down without the intention of straying far from their hometowns. With Cedar City being the ultra-conservative town it is, I see very little originality in some of the people. Very little uniqueness. I don't know…it's hard to explain. Speaking of which, I find it hard to explain what I do for work to some people because it seems too impossible for them. It seems too far-fetched, unrealistic, if not irresponsible to not work the normal 9-5. I guess that's where the scariness came in for me. I guess that's also what has me In this funk right now. I hope that makes sense to you…

A Walk to Remember

Thursday, I made it down into the park as an employee for the first time. We spent the morning going over basic fire operations in the park, the first half of the afternoon attempting a prescirbed burn, then the final half of the afternoon conducting a PT hike on the Angels Landing Trail.



This weekend has been a pretty good one. It has also been emotional for me. Friday morning at work was spent PTing. While everyone else was doing their pack test, since I had already completed mine, I was given the option to run the 3 miles. Considering that I really didn't do much running before I started working, 3 miles was definitely a workout. Surprisingly, I'm doing too bad keeping up with the PT. I thought I was going to be miserably out of shape but asides from the altitude, nothing has really stopped me from keeping up with the group. If anything, I'm usually near the front of the pack for runs. After PT. We got ready for our weekend camping trip. Our trip was two fold. 1) Friday night's camp-out was a moment to bond with one another and go over what Saturday had in store for us. The entire reason we were in that area of Fishlake National Forest was to conduct a trial one of a staff hike of a fatality site that occurred on the Devil's Den Fire in 2006. This proved to be an excellent experience for all of us. Our manager and both of our lead firefighters knew Spencer Koyle personally which made the entire weekend really emotional and hard for them. We as firefighter hear about the type of fuel, weather, and topography that consistently kill firefighters all the time. Every year. Box canyons, chimneys, accumulations of dead and down, droughts, low RH's, Low FMC, high probabilities of ignition, etc. Not every firefighter gets to hear first hand experience from other firefighters that happened to be there when someone was killed. It was powerful to see the terrain that got Spencer in trouble. It was powerful to re-create the conditions, to see the exact spot where his body was found, to see the memorial created by people on the side of the mountain; it became very over-whelming to me to the point where I started to think about my own father's death and the death of those I knew and loved. I too broke into tears just standing on the ridge looking down into the drainage where Spencer was killed.

Overall, the past couple of days have been a blast. I'm starting to love working for Zion Helitack more and more just as I though I would. Bring on the fire season...

A sample of Utah's Alcohol laws.

For those of you that have been inquiring about Utah's liquor laws.

This is an excerpt from Lonely Planet's Zion & Bryce Canyon National Parks Guide:

It's a misconception that you can't get a drink in Utah. You can get just as drunk here as anywhere in the US.

Understanding Utah's arcane liquor laws - now that's hard. After a while, you feel like you're listening to John Travolta in Pulp Fiction explaining hash in Amsterdam.

Grocery stores can sell only beer, and only beer that's no more than 3.2% alcohol. If it's over 3.2% it's called 'stout' or 'hard' beer and can be sold only in a state-approved liquor store, which is the only place to buy packaged wine and spirits to carry out. Most towns only have one such liquor store, if any, and they're usually in nondescript, unadvertised locations. You must be 21 to buy alcohol, and it's never sold on Sundays.

Depending on their liquor license, restaurants can sell wine, beer and spirits with their food, but you must ask to see the drink list; they're not supposed to offer it. A place with a 'tavern' license can sell only 3.2% beer, but you must order food to go with it; you can't have just a drink.

A 'private club' serves a full range of liquor, and you don't need to order food to enjoy it. But you must be a member to enter. Temporary, two week memberships are usually $5 and allow five guests; if you ask at the door, someone inside will often sponsor you as their guest to avoid the cover charge.

At any establishment, you can have only one drink in front of you at a time. Sometimes called 'Utah's slammin rule,' this means you must finish a drink before ordering another; in the case of pitchers of, say, margaritas, there must be three people present to order one.

And so on. And no, we're not makin this up...


I can't possibly make that shit up either...

Christmas in May!

As with any new job (especially in the fire service), one of the most exciting parts about your first couple days of work is the issuance of new gear. In the fire world, that gear can turn out to be a lot. I know a bunch of you back home were wondering what kind of equipment I work with on the wildland side of things so I've combine showing you my new gear with showing you the gear I personally added to my pack(s) to better my life on the fire line. First, the gear that goes in my line pack:



It seems like a lot but I'm able to cram it all into my pack and at a decent weight. Asides from what they issued me, I added to my pack a Fireline Handbook, the Appendix B to the Fireline Handbook (for advanced weather calculations), two pens, a sharpie, a small spanner wrench, duct tape, eye wash/drops, a couple of granola bars, a can of Vienna Sausage, an MRE, and a couple packets of Claritin. One thing I found that I like about the wildland side of firefighting is that a lot of what we do and what's mandated of us, can be found in small pocket guides. On top of a lot of policies and guidelines we have to follow, we also do a lot of writing on fires, hence:



On top of all of the "hardware" I've received, I received a bunch of uniform items:



And finally, what Zion National Park employee would be without:



On top of all of those goodies, I also received a tent, sleeping bag, bivy sack, space blanket, sleeping pad, and a few other things to survive out in the wilds for 14 days. I also have an employee pass into the park (I think) and a free membership to a gym that's open 24 hours a day. Asides from the PT and the elevation, this week is going to be pretty exciting...

"1st" day tomorrow

The weekend is almost over. Asides from my friend rear-ending me the other night everything went pretty well. I went to a small party of our neighbor's co-workers. I had planned on just staying in and reading a book but they ended up dragging myself and my roommate (who also happens to work for Zion Helitack) out. Saturday was spent doing very little. My roommate Josh and I went out a few times but otherwise, the evening was spent inside reading on studying some material for work. Today was spent much the same way as Sautrday: reading and studying. Tomorrow is the first day of the season where the entire crew, seasonals and all, will begin working at the air center which means more faces, more equipment I have to deal with, more classes, and more reading material I have to take to heart. I actually can't wait. I'm not exactly thrilled to see how I'll fair with the PT to come but I really can't wait to start working tomorrow.

As I said in previous posts, our helicopter will be at the air center on the 26th. At that point, we start staffing it 7 days a week during the day (our SOPs state that we have to be on the ground within 30 minutes after the official sunset of the day). I take S-271/Helicopter Crewmember certification on the 27th through the 30th. This week will be spent getting oriented to Zion Helitack and Color Country firefighting. We have a prescribed burn to conduct on Tuesday and possibly Wednesday. We'll spend all day one day next week in the park getting oriented to certain features we need to take to memory. We have meetings to attend within the park and we have several classes and training we'll be partaking in before the fire season gets into full swing. All of that starts tomorrow I guess...

End of the Week

The end of the week is drawing near. I'm done with my training at the BLM Fire Center. For the rest of my season, I'll be reporting to the Air Center starting tomorrow. I'm helping our helicopter manager with a class tomorrow all day which I'm actually looking forward to. Monday the entire helitack crew starts which means more faces to get to know and remember. My roommates are gone for the weekend which means I have the house to myself. Hopefully there will be something decent on TV Friday and Saturday night. With Red Flag Warnings for the Arizona Strip and Zion NP and Fire Weather Watches for the Cedar City area, I'm going to stay relatively close to the city to try to catch a fire on the engines before I become 100% property of the air center. I'm starting to like it here more and more. The people here are either incredibly friendly or 100% assholes. The assholes I can ignore pretty easily. The friendly people really make a difference here.

I finally have a place I can call home for at least a few months. I passed my National Registry exam on Friday which means not only am I a National Registry EMT, I'm an EMT with a current, non-expired license. I hung out in Yosemite NP to climb for the rest of the afternoon, camped out with a few class mates, then started my drive to Cedar City Saturday Morning. I got into town late Saturday night and met my 4 roommates...all of whom moved out by Monday Morning. Somehow, my neighbors knew me before I knew them because of my roommates which only reiterates how small of a town Cedar City is. The same went for work considering my supervisor had been talking me up to the rest of the fire center. So I have several people who's names I don't know that know mine.

I started work yesterday which began with our pack test. Considering how I barely passed last years pack test, I did pretty well finishing in 42:10. I spend the rest of my afternoons till 5 or 6 hanging out at the Air Center with the rest of my crew doing projects and what not. The fire season is definitely looking good. I'm on call all of this week for our engine module and I start next week on our helitack module. Also, this week marks the rush for me to get ready for Antarctica. My Captain is pressuring me to get Physically Qualified to get deployed. I'm getting emails left and right with paperwork and and deployment info. All in all, this week has been pretty busy and it doesn't look like it's going to get any slower this summer...

Last Night of Class

Today was our last day of class. I passed all of my practical exams without any problems. We had our last get together as a class tonight which was sort of a bummer. Even though it has only been a month, I've grown pretty close to my classmates as well as our instructors. This class has made me think about a lot with my past, current, and future life. It's made me look at myself as a firefighter and EMT with a keener eye. It's made me questions some of the things I've seen and done as an EMS provider and it has allowed me to open my eyes at what a better EMS provider I can be and what the future holds for my career. I'm looking to get my Paramedic and I'm looking to work on an ambulance in Mexico for a few winters. One of our instructors has worked in Ecuador and another instructor owns a house in Mexico so I at least have two sources of information to help with my dreams.

I've made some good friends in this class. I have new climbing partners, ski touring partners, canyoneering partners, and new friends in general. I have new personal and professional references. I have places to stay across the western US as well as the intention to provide a couch or whatever I can where ever I am to these people I've spent the past 4 weeks with.

Tomorrow, I take the National Registry written exam for EMT-Basic. After I leave the testing sight in Oakhurst, CA, I'm heading into Yosemite NP to climb and camp for the night and on Saturday morning, I start my drive to Cedar City. I've found a place to live...sorta...that's going to run me about $175 a month. The only thing holding me up is getting a hold of the Realtor to finalize my lease and tell me where I'll be moving in to.

On a final note, one thing I really enjoyed about the class was when former students or friends and colleagues of the instructors sent them letters or emails about calls they ran or emergencies they dealt with. Asides from just being interesting stories, they proved really educational given at the opportune times. I think I'm going to start posting summaries of incidents, calls, and emergencies I deal with in this journal....minding HIPAA laws of course. Another thing I'm going to start doing is anytime I list the name of a city in an entry, I'm going to embed a link to google maps to give you all an idea of where I'm talking about. Haha, apparently more people read this journal than I think.