Guest commentary:

It was a beautiful big sky day as the chopper approached one of the higher Cabinet Mountain divides. The scenery from the ship was breathtaking. The sheer cliffs and rock faces, the cirque lakes and remnant glaciers showing their definition in the morning sun. The pilot and I hardly talked, although we had our headset communication mikes on. We had previously been discussing the wind gusts and vacuums up here.

Suddenly, we were caught in an aerodynamic phenomenon that to this day I still do not fully understand.  The craft listed starboard and we dropped what seemed like hundreds of feet. I was thinking, “this is it.”  The pilot, to his credit, kept his cool. This guy was the real deal. An ex-Nam veteran helicopter pilot is good at staying relatively calm. I did my best.

The captain regained control from our downward spin, and we regained altitude and passed through to the other side of the Cabinet Mountains. I had been swallowing hard, and finally realized my heart was no longer in my mouth.  Our only comments to each other were something to the effect of, “that was interesting.” After facing certain death one often thinks about how they got to this moment in their lives.

Life can be so ironic at times. In 1993, I was working at the old Libby Ranger Station in the wildlife department. My life was going great. In an outrageous and obvious act of nepotism, one of the senior members of the staff got his wife hired in wildlife. This woman had no experience or education in the field. NonetheIess, I was out of a job. It was disheartening but one marches on. Along comes an old forestry supervisor of mine, Al Corda. I can’t say enough good about this guy. Al hooked me up with a job supervising extensive forest inventory with a pay increase and a management position.  

During the fires of 1994, we all teamed up and contributed what we could to the firefighting efforts. It was a damn serious wildfire year. That was the year we lost those folks in Colorado. It hit all of us hard, especially those of us that were supervising crews, as we knew inherently that it could also happen to our crews we were sending out on the hill.

In memorial of those lives lost on July 6, 1994, the trail guide at Storm King Mountain near Glenwood Springs, Colo., puts it in realistic brevity:  “Between 4:14 and 4:18 p.m., the fire was below a crew of firefighters walking out to the west flank of the fire. Two minutes later the fire reached the ridgeline and overtook the firefighters. There were no survivors. Two more firefighters were .3 mile away working at a helispot. They also tried to outrun the fire and were overcome. A trail has been built on Storm King Mountain as a tribute to those 14 men and women.”

Enough said, right? Folks, it could be bad fire year given the circumstances. Please support our fire teams. Even just a thank you to a tired blackened face can be enough. They will appreciate it as will the pilots, drivers, dispatchers, fire fuels professionals, medical staff, security, camp crews and whomever I may have forgotten. We would do well to also support the Kootenai Wildland Firefighter and Firesafe Expo and the Northwest Montana Chapter of the Forest Fire Lookout Association at www.nwmt-ffla.org.

— Brian Baxter is an experienced woods professional and outdoor educator