Recent content by Sierra_rider

I was lucky in my volunteer days, in that most of the guys I worked with were in pretty good shape. Some of the paid guys would kinda make fun of the average age of that group, but there were some 60 year olds that could out-work some of the 18 year olds. Even at the volunteer level, we did the...

Yep and you gotta prepare yourself the best you can. My crew probably gets annoyed at times with how much we PT and train, but I want us to be absolutely dialed. We're safer when prepared like that and you can better do the "cool" things on fires.

Early in my career, I was involved in series-accident structure fire. I escaped without injury, but one of my partners suffered serious burns...without going into too much detail, it was a structure that we shouldn't have made entry on and it flashed on him. This is a lesson that I've carried...

Nice spring mtb ride here in the mountains:

It's still a bit too wet for us to do broadcast burns, we're just prepping plots to burn in a month or 2. It can be tricky to find the "perfect" time of year here to do prescribed fire. It's too wet right now, but give it a couple months, and torching trees, spots, and slops will become a real...

Generally speaking, any cancer is my main concern. Some of the other stuff, namely heart disease, I'll be extremely unlikely to get. Between a good diet, copious amounts of exercise, and semi-regular health screenings, I'm not too worried about a lot of the stuff that can get us. Cancer is the...

Ha...I initially misunderstood this to mean what tool you like to go inside of a structure with. 🤣 We usually don't have to force doors, if someone isn't home to report it early, it's usually one of those surround and drown sorta deals for us. If we can go inside, it's because the homeowner left...

Around here, they're just "creek fires." Usually caused by urban campers/crackheads/*s-wordbums or as the PC police call them, "unhoused individuals."

I'm kinda similar. The fire stuff is what pays the bills and puts a roof over my head, but I would be bored if that's all I did. I've got my brands in other fires as well, I'm not getting rich off of those other things, but it breaks it up enough to keep my head on straight for the fire stuff. I...

Career guy for 10 years now, on the wildland side of an all-risk department. I was a volunteer for nearly 10 years as well, but that was too much fire-stuff in my life once I went full-time. I've done both, but I'm definitely a wildland guy first and foremost...I've always loved forestry and...

IMO, a tree balanced tree of that size is about as straightforward as is gets. Not so big that you're having to cut around from the offside or dealing with big weight, yet big enough to have room for driving wedges if need be. IIRC, I actually did wedge that tree a bit, but it fell out before it...

Thanks, I was more worried about a bad bounce than actually getting it to go where I want. If that tree had a pistol butt or some sort of crook/bend in it, I likely would've climbed it. However, it was almost perfectly straight, so just getting it to land softly was good enough.

I generally avoid climbing if I can, but I'll resort to it if I'm unsure about fitting a tree into a certain spot. I'll fall some trees that a lot of guys think are too risky to not climb...I'm a faller first IMO. My weak link is probably the broad trees, I'm not as good at reading lean, weight...

For ropes, I put most of mine in bags. I've got a couple of static lines/bull ropes that I don't have bags for and I just gasket coil them. One of my bull-ropes is in a daisy chain right now, as my shoulders didn't feel up to the task of coiling it, the last time I used it.🤣 My throwline is...

I'm not a bunch of help with the gaffs, but I have a set up that works well for me. If I'm wearing gaffs, I climb with my Nick's logger-style boots with the tall heel. They ride nicely in the climber. I also run the lower straps that have the ring, I hate the ringless style...they're either way...