Grouse Creek Burn

Wednesday night we got a call that they were going to try and do a prescribed burn out at Grouse Creek Friday. They had to wait for a burn index clearing to be able to do it. We packed all our gear, put together our packs, made arrangements for Kennedy and packed the truck just in case we got the green light. 

 We got the go ahead and headed out to Grouse Creek bright and early Friday morning. We needed to be at the fire station there at 8:30. Its about a 2 1/2 hour drive. They have a huge area that on an agricultural grant they came through and railed about 3-4 years ago. Basically they come through an area and knock down trees and bushes. They let them sit for a few years to dry out and die and then they get burned and reseeded. The land we were burning had been very thickly overgrown with cedar trees. It creates soil and feeding problems for the farmers. They run so many cows on their land and the more cedars that grow the less feed the animals have and less grazing area. So the State puts out grants and projects to help deal with it. With it being a grant that the landowners got they were able to be a part of the burn. They were out lighting with us and telling us what parts they wanted burned etc. The landowners in our group were super awesome

We had a good group of people volunteer to come out and help. We were divided into 3 divisions. Ours was the Red Butte area. They had railed the area and some of the dead trees/bushes were pilled into large bunches to help burn better. It was COLD out. The highest it got for the day was 40 degrees. We were mid 30's when we started. We took an area and lit it on fire with our drip torches. A drip torch is a big canister filled with 3 parts diesel and 1 part gasoline. It has a wic on the end that you light on fire and a little spicket where the fuel mixture is dripped out and lights on fire as it comes out of the can. The RH (relative humidity aka the amount of natural moisture in the air and in your weeds, trees grass etc) was higher that day. We had strong winds at our backs but with a high RH the fire didn't spread at all. It stayed contained to the piles we lit. It didnt even hardly burn the grass around the piles.

There were 6 of us in our group. We spread out in a line and started hiking and lighting on fire. We kept the winds mostly at our back and lit so the fire followed a certain path.

 Ryan (landowner)

 There was a lot of hiking. We had draws we had to walk up. We had to stop about every 40 minutes or so and hike back to the truck to refil our drip torches. We had a lot of thick piled areas we needed to light. 

 We had to stay somewhat in a line so that we kept everyone even and safe. Sometimes we would have to stop for a minute for everyone else to catch up so we kept our line.

 Cyndi (Brigham Fire)

 Jeff

 Max (landowner)

I wore my new gear I had just got from the grant this year. Which included new boots. I tried to break in my boots before we left but didn't have much of a chance. My feet were rubbing some but not bad. Then all of a sudden I felt a blister on my heel. We were still ok and then it popped. Damn that hurt. Thankfully Chris had moleskin in his bag and I took off my boot on the side of the hill while he cut me a square and then I was good to go!

 We burned til about 1:30 and then we stopped for lunch. We had brought sandwiches and trail mix. We just sat on the ground and had our little lunch and it was back to burning again.  One of the drip torches had stopped working. They asked me to be lookout so I let Chris take my torch. My job was to hike up to the top of the hills we were on and keep an eye on everyone. At least the top half of the people. Not everyone had radios so they tried to place a radio at the top of the hill, one in the middle and one on the end. I needed to make sure I could keep a headcount of those on my side and that we had no problems and to stay hiking ahead of them. Cyndi took this picture from where she was on the bottom end of the fire. I was clear at the top and had to hike out with everyone when they ran out of fuel and hike back up and ahead of them when we started up again.

Dusty who was the manager over this whole burn (who also is Chris's cousin) came out and played with us for a little bit towards the end. 

 It was still windy and cold. We had dark clouds rolling in. The temperatures started dropping. It was nice to be able to stay closer to the fires to keep warm!

 See all those little patches of railed trees, each one had to be lit on fire separately since we had no fire running.

We burned until dark. We lit the last bit of fire at 6pm. By then it was 35 degrees. 

 The winds had shifted. The clouds dropped and the temps changed which socked the smoke in. 

Dusty and Chris in the smoke

We packed up everything and headed back to the station to refuel our gas and diesel cans and regroup. We had 3 different groups out. Our group burned about 200 acres. We stopped by mom and dads trailer to say hi. Dads teaching an EMT class for Grouse Creek so they've pulled their camp trailer out so after class on the days he teaches he can just crash there instead of driving 2 1/2 hours back home. We had our AAR (After Action Report) where we talked about how the burn went and then we headed for home. There is a short cut up over a mountain range called Cotton Thomas. We followed Dusty over that and it brings out out in Naff Idaho and into Snowville UT. We got to Todd and Janas house to pick up K about 10pm.. She was crashed out on the couch. 

The burn went great and was a lot of fun. Did I mention we got paid to do it?