Today the Forest Service took us to Storm King Mountain in Grand Junction, CO. There’s a memorial trail that leads to the site where 14 firefighters died in fighting a fire in 1994, the greatest number of fatalities on a single incident. It was a two-mile hike up to the crosses that marked where each firefighter died. We stopped at a few look-out points along the way and read the corresponding signs regarding wildland fire fighting and the mountain. There were two helitack firefighters who perished, along with nine Prineville hot shots and three smokejumpers.
We hiked with our packs on, partly to better understand what the firefighters were up against that day. Once we reached the memorial, there were old snags covered with t-shirts from other hot shot crews who had visited the site. There was also an AmeriCorps baseball cap. Each cross had lots of trinkets and firefighter items. People left everything from flowers to a cutting wedge and a scrench.
The most incredible thing was to realize how the firefighters had made it as far as they did, running up a line they had cut earlier in the day with their packs on. It was not easy country to hike and we were going at a casual pace. Even more astonishing was how the two helitack guys made it even farther, about a quarter-mile away from where everyone else perished.
After everyone took the time to appreciate the site, we hiked back down to the rigs, where we loaded up and went to a park nearby that had a memorial to the hot shots from Prineville. A similar memorial is also established in Prineville, OR, where the hot shot crew was from.
I wish I could say more about visiting the memorial, but it’s something that needs to be experienced. While hiking around the crosses, I could only try to imagine what was going through their minds. One of the hot shots, Bonnie Foltby, was 21, the age of two of our teammates. And until this visit, I had never realized the gravity of the work we’re doing. It was clear, from all of the things left by others, that the memorial on Storm King is truly sacred ground for wildland firefighters.
We had seen a documentary on the Storm King fire that explored how the firefighters perished, but it was interesting to actually be in the place and tie it all together. We all kept running through the speculated scenarios with each other, how they ran up the line, how they tried to escape, how the fire burned, how they fell, some so closed to each other and others farther apart. One hot shot, Scott Blecha, was so close to the top of the ridge that it’s heartbreaking to see. One of the smokejumpers was from the Missoula base that my crew visited on the way back from Oregon. It was strange to make that connection, since I had only been there a few days before.
As we hiked down, I turned around to look back up at the site. In the documentary, it zooms out to show all of the crosses on the hillside. But, with fourteen years gone by, a lot has re-grown and you can’t see the crosses anymore. What you can see, though, is a charred snag at the top of the ridge, overlooking the memorial. From a distance, the snag itself looks like a cross.
If you want to read more about the event, this website does a pretty good job on explaining everything, along with some pictures of the area. You can also read Fire on the Mountain by John Maclean.
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