chasingfire.com – A Blog…

Well, I have made it a month here in Sonora, CA. The job is going well, mainly just wading through the mountains of paperwork and computer-work that are part of getting and keeping a Forest Service job anymore. The folks I work with are all pretty cool, and the location of the base is hard to beat. The commute to work is a bit longer than I would like, but it’s still not bad at 20 miles.

The thing that is taking the most to get used to is the elevation difference between Sonora, where I live, and Bald Mountain, where I work. Sonora sits at about 1800 feet above sea level… Bald Mountain sits at about 5700 feet. Quite a difference, especially since Sonora is usually right below the snow line. It’s a little strange to leave for work in the morning in the “spring” and be into winter by the time I’m halfway to work. There’s no snow at Sonora, but by the time you get to Bald Mtn. there’s around 2 feet of it. On most days it’s t-shirt weather in Sonora, and coat/jacket weather at the helibase. Makes for great fun in getting dressed in the AM.

And some images from the past few weeks… Bald Mtn. and Yosemite NP.

Yosemite Valley

Half Dome

Sunrise at Bald Mountain.

Alrighty, I am officially relocated to Sonora, CA. Work at the new job starts on Monday, and I for one am very grateful to have a job in this economy. It was pretty rough to see some of the local (Missoula) area jobs get cut this year, especially the pulp mill at Frenchtown, which put roughly 400 people out of work when it shut down a few weeks ago. While I wish I could have stayed in western Montana for a job, I just couldn’t find anything that would give me the same wages as I could get in CA. So here I will be, until I can eventually work my way home… We’ll see how long that takes.

In the meantime, Happy New Year!

Updates… I finally buckled down and accepted a full-time perm job with the Forest Service in CA. I was offered and accepted a GS-6 Squad Leader position on the Stanislaus NF, on the Bald Mountain Helitack crew. I’ll be starting there in January, and can’t wait to get working with my new crew!

Well, the remnants of the SWLO helitack crew are still at work, although we haven’t flown a fire in nearly two weeks. Our last significant fire was roughly three weeks ago, but we’re still staffing as conditions are very dry, and can be windy at times. So, the summer continues…

88M and Mules