This is a Smokejumper story.\u00a0 A few months ago Rod Dow, an old Smokejumper buddy contacted me.\u00a0 He was writing a book and wanted to know if I could remember a fire on the Innoko Flats of Western Alaska in 1972.<\/p>\n
I have vivid memories of that fire.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, I dug out my old notebooks and found I had detailed notes of the fire but not the names of the jumpers who fought the fire.\u00a0 What I remembered the most was the Muskeg.<\/p>\n
Most people have never heard of muskeg.\u00a0 Muskeg is a bog.<\/p>\n
In the warm sub-arctic summer the snow, ice, and upper permafrost melts. \u00a0 The flat lands are covered with a layer of water from a few inches to many feet deep.\u00a0 Random spits and islands of land covered with grass, brush and scrub spruce rise above the water. \u00a0Together with the tundra, this kind of land is known as the “Taiga” in Russia.<\/p>\n
From the air it is a vast forest of small trees punctuated by a million bright green meadows filled with streams and oily dark ponds.\u00a0 The bright green meadows are muskeg; sphagnum moss a few inches to a few feet thick, with occasional tussocks of grass.\u00a0 It grows and floats on the ice water.\u00a0 Muskeg is tightly woven and thick enough in many areas to support the weight of animals and people.\u00a0 Much of it will only support the weight of very small animals.\u00a0 The water under the muskeg is often shallow; sometimes it is deep.<\/p>\n
There is no way to know the strength of the muskeg or the depth of the water by looking at it.<\/p>\n
Walking on muskeg is tedious.\u00a0 Like walking on a huge water bed; occasionally breaking through to the water and permafrost below.\u00a0 It is cold, wet, deceptive, and dangerous.<\/p>\n
In the summer, the long hot days dry out the trees and moss above the water line.\u00a0 Lightning starts fires that run through the dry vegetation with the wind.\u00a0 The fires are natural and the flats are uninhabited.\u00a0 They are usually left to naturally burn out.\u00a0 When the fires threaten an active caribou migration, settlements or military assets, they are fought.<\/p>\n
Smokejumpers are careful not to land in the muskeg.\u00a0 They steer their parachutes for the small spruce and high ground.\u00a0 Air cargo and fire packs sometimes disappear in the muskeg.\u00a0 If lucky, the cargo chutes are lying on the surface and the wet gear can be drug out of the bog.<\/p>\n
On July 13, 1972, at 1845 hours we left Talkeetna, Alaska on a Fire Call to the Innoko Flats.\u00a0 We were in an old C-47 jump plane leased to the Alaska Smokejumpers.\u00a0 At 2045 hours, nine of us\u00a0 jumped fire number 7819, located at 63\u00ba 17\u2019 N; 153\u00ba 59\u2019 W.\u00a0 Dick Jeppson, a McCall Idaho squad leader, was Fire Boss.<\/p>\n
The fire was running when we jumped and the smoke was against the ground.\u00a0 Visibility deteriorated to about 200 yards by early morning.\u00a0 We had made good progress and were getting hungry.\u00a0 I volunteered to go back to the landing zone for some food.\u00a0 I found our tracks back to the gear in low visibility.<\/p>\n
I filled a rucksack with \u2018rats, C rations, and put on a GI mosquito head net I found in the gear.\u00a0 I was new to Alaska.\u00a0 Never before had I encountered mosquitos of the number and ferocity of those on the Innoko Flats.<\/p>\n
As I returned to the crew there were numerous game trails through the muskeg that crossed our tracks.\u00a0 In the dense smoke I followed the wrong trail.\u00a0 Before I knew it I was about 250 yards out on a bog.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t concerned when I broke through.\u00a0 The water under the muskeg had heretofore been shallow.\u00a0 I expected to quickly hit a shallow bottom and step back up on the surface.<\/p>\n
It was pure luck that as I went down in deep water, I reflexively spread my arms out to the side on top of the moss and sod, holding it open as my head went under.\u00a0 I was in trouble.<\/p>\n
If the sod closed over me there would be no air.\u00a0 I was able to grip the sod and kick my way back to the surface through the hole I had made, and get my head out.\u00a0 With my clothes, pack, boots and gear, it was all I could do to keep my head above water.<\/p>\n
It took forever to shed the pack without sinking below the surface.\u00a0 I had to find the buckles on the shoulder straps and loosen them until they separated.\u00a0 By then I was exhausted.\u00a0 I could not shed my boots or clothes.\u00a0 Nor could I climb out onto the sod or make way through it.<\/p>\n
The best I could do was slowly tread water, keep my head up, and try to stay warm.\u00a0 I was getting very cold.<\/p>\n
After several lifetimes I heard voices discussing the fact that that it was Bastille Day.\u00a0 Soon I saw jumpers coming out of the smoke.\u00a0 I hollered forever before they heard me.\u00a0 It took them a while longer to see me.\u00a0 With the mosquito net, I looked like a grass tussock sticking out of the bog.<\/p>\n
I remember Jeppson telling me to quit screwing around.\u00a0 I told him that I was drowning and needed help.\u00a0 He scoffed and started out on the bog to pull me out.\u00a0 He broke through and barely got out.\u00a0 That got everybody\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n
They rapidly cut Black Spruce, laying a mat of small trees on the bog out to me.\u00a0 In the smoke they looked like ants at work.\u00a0 Jeppson eased out and pulled me up on the mat.\u00a0 We were a long time crawling back to solid ground; my arms and legs were so cold they didn\u2019t work well.<\/p>\n
It took me several hours hunkering over a smoky fire with a lot of coffee and brandy to warm up and regain my strength.\u00a0 Meanwhile our fire burned into another nearby fire and more jumpers were called.<\/p>\n
The Alaska Smokejumpers had a tradition of giving each other nicknames; often disparaging ones.\u00a0 Thereafter I was known as the Beekeeper.<\/p>\n
I never again wore a mosquito net.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a Smokejumper story.\u00a0 A few months ago Rod Dow, an old Smokejumper buddy contacted me.\u00a0 He was writing a book and wanted to know if I could remember a fire on the Innoko Flats of Western Alaska in 1972. I have vivid memories of that fire.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, I dug out my old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=329"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/329\/revisions\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tagesuppe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}