then another; the last we abandon for a week. The ruts and drainage ditches are visible for years afterward.
I recall when Kent and I were sent to clear W-1E and had only to cross Lower Little Park to finish when we sank up to our axles and spent four hours winching and digging and plowing the pumper around the perimeter of the meadow, a passage commemorated by a line of scalped, plucked trees. When we finally arrived at the cache, the white pumper had a swath of mud on each side halfway up the doors. The winch was cluttered with grass and wildflowers. That night I woke abruptly, as from a nightmare, and stared around uncomprehending; the lights were on, and The Ape, Booby, and Swifter stood around my bunk and watched while in my sleep I furiously wrapped an imaginary winch cable around a bedpost.
The fire is a sleeper, about half an acre in size and no more than two hundred yards from W-1D-B. Alston, Achterman, and a SWFF, Billy Begaye, flag a route into the fire from their pumper.
It is nearly sunset. The fire spreads poorly, smoldering in deep pine duff and flaming in downed logs. Quickly the crew cuts a line around the fire; but dirt is scarce, and without water mop-up could last for days. The situation calls for water, lots of water. Alston proposes that they bring the pumper to the fire.
Already darkness grows around them, and towering pines cast shadows over nightfall. Achterman issues headlamps; the group spreads out and walks slowly back to the pumper. Alston drives, while Achterman and Billy swamp. Achterman drags away some downed logs; then he and Billy cut through a small sward of reproduction, while the pumper’s headlights cast bold, eerie shadows through the woods. There is one moderately steep hill to negotiate—steeper than they anticipate—and they winch the pumper up the last thirty yards. No need to flag: the tire tracks will not last long, but they will survive the fire.
Late that evening Alston returns to the Area to refill the slip-on and announces slyly that the fire will be called the Double A fire in honor of him and Achterman. All three sleep on the fireline, happily supplied by the pumper. Early the next morning they leave a dead fire. They propose we keep their route open as fireroad W-1D-B-AA.
Then there was the time when Captain Zero decided that the stream at North Canyon on the Kaibab National Forest was the solution to the North Rim water crisis and arranged to meet Forest officials there. The Forest Service refused to drive across the Crystal Springs road. This was the Forest’s road, but Captain Zero insisted that his boys would drive everyone to the trailhead. Becker does, and mires the vehicle up to its door handles on his way out. Because Zero’s party will rendezvous with another truck on the other side of the trail, Becker is on his own. So far from the Park, his radio does not work. He walks out to Highway 67 (about five miles), hitchhikes a ride to the entrance station, and calls for help. Our other engine promptly sticks next to his. Both vehicles are in a broad meadow where their winches are useless. We call for the water truck. Fully loaded, it can either pull us from the mud or act as an immovable object from which we can winch. With the mechanic for a driver, the water truck gets lost on Forest roads, and we have to arrange for another vehicle to help locate the water truck. By 1800 hours we have two terminally stuck pumpers, eight people, and a thousand-gallon war-surplus water truck ensconced in the mud at what has become known as Becker Bog. By winching one truck against another, we make a little progress. But much more collective power is needed. In desperation we decide upon a grand gesture, a do-or-die scheme that will either liberate the vehicles or terminate our careers in a quagmire of accident reports. With chains and cables we join all three vehicles into a single complex knot. The two pumpers face opposite directions. It is nearly 2200 hours; everything is done by headlight, headlamp, and not a little moonshine. The parade spins, tugs, sloshes. But at any time at least two vehicles have some traction, and the tiny convoy slides ungainly out of the mire. The next morning Captain Zero describes the wonderful meal he had at Jacob Lake Inn after his hike. He refuses to authorize overtime for the crew at Becker Bog. He refuses to reward what he dismisses as an error of judgment.
Farther west, it is not going so simply. A fire is burning in some snags near Lancelot Point, but the nearest fireroad, W-4A, is more than two miles away and ends at an unnamed point. Dana, Tim, and I are clearing roads when the smoke report comes in.
The forest is relatively open and will probably become more so as we approach the Canyon. I send Dana ahead with instructions to line the fire and wait for us. Then Tim and I plot a route. There is a shallow ravine separating us from the main peninsula to Lancelot Point, so we cross it and steer into the woods. The going is remarkably easy, and the clearing marginal; I walk ahead and select routes. Suddenly I halt, dead in my tracks. To Tim, blinking over the hood of the pumper, I point out a log that has a center section neatly sawn out of it; the width of the cut is exactly the size of a truck. Later we discover another log, cut the same way; there is a blazed tree; crossing a shallow depression, we think we can detect the ruts of ancient wheels. We have uncovered an old fireroad. It is taking us to the Grail fire.
When Dana arrives at the fire, it is nearly dark, and the flames are subsiding. He corrals it with a scratch line, but mop-up will be a mess; there is more smoldering fire than Recon 1 reported. We decide to request an additional pumper, and today that means the Forest Service—always happy to oblige. One of its ground tankers, a model 20 commanded by General Tom, has been hovering around the Shinumo Gate like a turkey vulture. “Take W-4A to the orange flagging,” Tim tells the General. “Then follow our tracks.”
When they catch up with us, we are about a third of a mile from the fire and continuing to crawl delicately through the woods. Their swamper arrives clothed in brush turnout gear, more suitable for the chaparral of the Angeles National Forest than the North Rim. I point out the evidence of the ancient road. They are astonished at our labors. “We never go to this much work,” the Angeleno remarks. “The Forest would never have abandoned the road,” says General Tom. “The Forest would have built a real road,” says the Angeleno. If this were a Forest Service fire, a Cat, not people, would be swamping, they declare. We walk by the glimmer of our headlamps, searching for evidence of the old road or new routes. Then we sight the fire, a huge orange glow against the Canyon.
Dana shouts a greeting, and Tim and I loudly congratulate ourselves on getting the pumper in to the fire. Never has anyone in the Park driven so far in to a fire. Never, the Angeleno confides, has he been to a Forest Service fire to which he has had to walk so long.
The problem is not the springs but the fact that they cross fireroads, which means that they intersect matters of policy. The fireroads are opportunistic, and often arbitrary. The Forest Service recognizes the character of the Plateau and constructs its roads along ridgetops, but the Park puts them wherever it can, mostly through or across ravines. Many Park “fireroads” are nothing more than easy routes through the woods during the dry season; some simply traverse meadows; nowhere are there provisions for drainage. But all the roads emanate from the crest line, and since the early-season fires gather at the points, which dry sooner than the interior, access by road demands that the higher, wetter elevations be breached first. The Plateau’s geography of water will not be joined easily to the Rim’s geography of fire. Where they intersect, there are bogs.
The fireroads are means that are no longer reconciled with ends. What may be opportune at one time, when the surface is dry, can become a bog at another. The fireroads cannot be repaired and they cannot be traversed with vehicles adequate to their state of disrepair and they must be crossed, as often as not, in defiance of the curious hydrology of the Plateau. Yet crossed they must be, by administrative decree. The Park will neither repair the roads nor close them. The reason the fireroads were constructed—access to fire—is no longer compelling to the Park, yet the Park does not want to give up access to the backcountry entirely. It wants the means, though it cannot decide to what ends they should be put.
Joe and I propose to try a double-winch arrangement, and Wil recommends that if that fails, we use the white powerwagon as a fixed point from which to attach a snatch block. The two SWFFs nod indifferently. Whatever
