Fire on the Rim. Stephen J. Pyne
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hope; then the thrust of the loader depresses its own wheels down through the surface crust. The dump has not been lifted; the loader has been sunk. Wildly Dane tries to free the loader, but each attempt only buries it more deeply. Water and mud ooze over its axles. The loader coughs to an ignominious death. It will take two weeks until the ground can dry sufficiently to liberate the vehicles. In the meantime, we so improve the detour that everyone agrees the temporary road is superior to the old one.
The prescribed fire is postponed indefinitely.
We open the roads in a traditional sequence—some for their importance, some for convenience, and always relative to the mud condition. The Walhalla roads are usually the first to dry out. Despite some notorious swamps, W-1 is usually drier sooner than Sublime with its lengthy traverse of high meadows. For access to Swamp Point and the Saddle Mountain Turnaround we simply rely on Forest Service roads. E-1 is almost always opened last. When maintenance brags that it can handle the Elephant Trap, the R&T crew promptly sticks a road grader in the bog, then watches helplessly as a dump truck, filled with gravel, sinks up to its axles. The Sublime Road is closed for weeks.
Joe and Henry Goldtooth show up in the white powerwagon; they have paused at the store to pick up some candy bars and Cokes. We will be at the site all afternoon. After an hour of futile labor it is apparent that we will not return by 1700. We debate whether to leave the truck until tomorrow or stay with the project. Overhead the sun bears down; mosquitoes germinate spontaneously out of the ooze; the mud, like brown tar, washes over the axle; the doors can no longer be opened. We pause for a break, chew on candy bars and tins of crackers, and debate strategy.
Wil and Joe recall episodes from previous seasons. Nearly all the worst mirings have been the result of administrative decrees that—conditions be damned—such and such a road would be opened by such and such a date. When Captain Zero, North Rim manager, demands that W-1 be cleared within a day so that visitors can travel to Point Sublime, we protest and are told to remember our place. Our place, apparently, is in the mud. On Crystal Ridge we stick all three vehicles within the space of thirty yards on a road that resembles a slow stream of chocolate pudding. We work individually—each crew to its vehicle—for an hour, then realize that our only hope is to treat the problem collectively. We scratch out drainage ditches to carry water off the road, dig out wheels, stuff rocks and logs into the enveloping ooze, cut small green trees to make fulcrums and levers. We free one truck, then another; the last we abandon for a week. The ruts and drainage ditches are visible for years afterward.
I recall when Kent and I were sent to clear W-1E and had only to cross Lower Little Park to finish when we sank up to our axles and spent four hours winching and digging and plowing the pumper around the perimeter of the meadow, a passage commemorated by a line of scalped, plucked trees. When we finally arrived at the cache, the white pumper had a swath of mud on each side halfway up the doors. The winch was cluttered with grass and wildflowers. That night I woke abruptly, as from a nightmare, and stared around uncomprehending; the lights were on, and The Ape, Booby, and Swifter stood around my bunk and watched while in my sleep I furiously wrapped an imaginary winch cable around a bedpost.
The fire is a sleeper, about half an acre in size and no more than two hundred yards from W-1D-B. Alston, Achterman, and a SWFF, Billy Begaye, flag a route into the fire from their pumper.
It is nearly sunset. The fire spreads poorly, smoldering in deep pine duff and flaming in downed logs. Quickly the crew cuts a line around the fire; but dirt is scarce, and without water mop-up could last for days. The situation calls for water, lots of water. Alston proposes that they bring the pumper to the fire.
Already darkness grows around them, and towering pines cast shadows over nightfall. Achterman issues headlamps; the group spreads out and walks slowly back to the pumper. Alston drives, while Achterman and Billy swamp. Achterman drags away some downed logs; then he and Billy cut through a small sward of reproduction, while the pumper’s headlights cast bold, eerie shadows through the woods. There is one moderately steep hill to negotiate—steeper than they anticipate—and they winch the pumper up the last thirty yards. No need to flag: the tire tracks will not last long, but they will survive the fire.
Late that evening Alston returns to the Area to refill the slip-on and announces slyly that the fire will be called the Double A fire in honor of him and Achterman. All three sleep on the fireline, happily supplied by the pumper. Early the next morning they leave a dead fire. They propose we keep their route open as fireroad W-1D-B-AA.
Then there was the time when Captain Zero decided that the stream at North Canyon on the Kaibab National Forest was the solution to the North Rim water crisis and arranged to meet Forest officials there. The Forest Service refused to drive across the Crystal Springs road. This was the Forest’s road, but Captain Zero insisted that his boys would drive everyone to the trailhead. Becker does, and mires the vehicle up to its door handles on his way out. Because Zero’s party will rendezvous with another truck on the other side of the trail, Becker is on his own. So far from the Park, his radio does not work. He walks out to Highway 67 (about five miles), hitchhikes a ride to the entrance station, and calls for help. Our other engine promptly sticks next to his. Both vehicles are in a broad meadow where their winches are useless. We call for the water truck. Fully loaded, it can either pull us from the mud or act as an immovable object from which we can winch. With the mechanic for a driver, the water truck gets lost on Forest roads, and we have to arrange for another vehicle to help locate the water truck. By 1800 hours we have two terminally stuck pumpers, eight people, and a thousand-gallon war-surplus water truck ensconced in the mud at what has become known as Becker Bog. By winching one truck against another, we make a little progress. But much more collective power is needed. In desperation we decide upon a grand gesture, a do-or-die scheme that will either liberate the vehicles or terminate our careers in a quagmire of accident reports. With chains and cables we join all three vehicles into a single complex knot. The two pumpers face opposite directions. It is nearly 2200 hours; everything is done by headlight, headlamp, and not a little moonshine. The parade spins, tugs, sloshes. But at any time at least two vehicles have some traction, and the tiny convoy slides ungainly out of the mire. The next morning Captain Zero describes the wonderful meal he had at Jacob Lake Inn after his hike. He refuses to authorize overtime for the crew at Becker Bog. He refuses to reward what he dismisses as an error of judgment.
Farther west, it is not going so simply. A fire is burning in some snags near Lancelot Point, but the nearest fireroad, W-4A, is more than two miles away and ends at an unnamed point. Dana, Tim, and I are clearing roads when the smoke report comes in.
The forest is relatively open and will probably become more so as we approach the Canyon. I send Dana ahead with instructions to line the fire and wait for us. Then Tim and I plot a route. There is a shallow ravine separating us from the main peninsula to Lancelot Point, so we cross it and steer into the woods. The going is remarkably easy, and the clearing marginal; I walk ahead and select routes. Suddenly I halt, dead in my tracks. To Tim, blinking over the hood of the pumper, I point out a log that has a center section neatly sawn out of it; the width of the cut is exactly the size of a truck. Later we discover another log, cut the same way; there is a blazed tree; crossing a shallow depression, we think we can detect the ruts of ancient wheels. We have uncovered an old fireroad. It is taking us to the Grail fire.
When Dana arrives at the fire, it is nearly dark, and the flames are subsiding. He corrals it with a scratch line, but mop-up will be a mess; there is more smoldering fire than Recon 1 reported. We decide to request an additional pumper, and today that means the Forest Service—always happy to oblige. One of its ground tankers, a model 20 commanded by General Tom, has been hovering around the Shinumo Gate like a turkey vulture. “Take W-4A to the orange flagging,” Tim tells the General. “Then follow our tracks.”
When they catch up with us, we are about a third of a mile from the fire and continuing to crawl delicately through the woods. Their swamper arrives clothed in brush turnout gear, more suitable for the chaparral of the Angeles National Forest than the North Rim. I point out the evidence of the ancient road. They are astonished at our labors. “We never go to this much work,” the Angeleno remarks. “The Forest would never have abandoned the road,” says General Tom. “The Forest would