Here's one way to find out whether you qualify for work as a wildland firefighter. Stuff what you think you need for a week into a backpack, making sure it weighs at least 50 pounds. If you don't need to carry that much food, add rocks to your pack till it weighs at least that much.

Start hiking cross-country, and make sure you're going at a good clip for at least 10 hours per day on steep slopes -- and make sure you're awake for at least 20 hours per day. If you see big movable stuff, such as rocks and logs, pick them up and move them. The bigger they are and the farther and faster you move them, the more it counts. Fall down a lot, and bang yourself up on rocks and roots as often as possible. Thrash around in the brush, get good and scraped, and go without food and water as much as possible.

Practice sleeping while standing up. This is critical. Practice it enough to where you sort of get to like it.

Try to attract as many mosquitoes and yellowjackets and bees and flies and snakes as possible, and get bit by as many as you can in as many places as possible. Get as wet and muddy as possible, and get as hot and dusty and generally filthy as you possibly can. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T BATHE.

Keep this up for a week. If you're still alive, and if you think you're having a good time, you may just make it as a wildland firefighter. If you're genuinely having the time of your life and you want more of this, someone may want to hire you.
Sounds like fun :bigthumb:

sounds hardcore as all hell

i'm pretty sure i would die

I think you're just in it for the not having to shower thing...

I know a few firefighters, mostly structural. They love what they do. One guy I know in class here got to go with bruce willis to a concert of his in Iraq for the troops as a firefighter.

Whatever you do... it's gotta be better than working for family...

Whatever you do... it's gotta be better than working for family...
:werd:

are u going to do things to keep ur job exciting?

forest firefighters do other things too--

some parachute into the area where the fire is, depending on how hard it would be or how long it would take to insert by land. Smokejumping...sounds like a blast...

One of the things they do plenty of is creating firebreaks--they cut down trees ahead of a fire so that there is a strip of land where nothing is left to burn. This can slow down the advance of a fire.

a hell of a lot of hard work....kudos man if this is your thing, really. I have known some of these guys and they have balls of solid rock.

That sounds like a fuckin blast.

forest firefighters do other things too--

some parachute into the area where the fire is, depending on how hard it would be or how long it would take to insert by land. Smokejumping...sounds like a blast...

One of the things they do plenty of is creating firebreaks--they cut down trees ahead of a fire so that there is a strip of land where nothing is left to burn. This can slow down the advance of a fire.

a hell of a lot of hard work....kudos man if this is your thing, really. I have known some of these guys and they have balls of solid rock.
no shit?


;)

I know. The big "draw" to become a FS firefighter rather then a Hotshot or something is you can be sure you won't have a "slack" summer. A friend of mine thats looking at this was Airborne in 'another life' and has already been looking at becoming a smokejumper. Guess if I drop 40 pounds I could qual for smoke jumper too after a year or two on the line.

Quite a few of the guys I work with on ski areas are either current or former wildland firefighters, I have no illusions about the glamor of this job. But as Animal already stated, it will be better then working for family.

for real....and then, there are the backfires...a controlled burn, they basically start a smaller fire on purpose. It burns up the fuel so that there will be a dead spot where the larger fire cannot keep spreading.

So you can jump out of planes and burn things?

Sign me up.

So you can jump out of planes and burn things?

Sign me up.
Its a little tougher then that :)

There is a monument up in montana on the shores of a lake I can't remember the name of that commemorates the lives of like 20 smoke jumpers that burned to death because they jumped onto the wrong side of a fast moving fire and they couldn't outrun it or fight it.

Do it Chad. Good luck.