As I've blogged before, we are doing training hikes every day. On Thursday we did our hike and on the way down the mountain we were discussing wind conditions during fires and how quickly fires spread. Sometime during this conversation the rookie decided to ask if it would really take that long to lay hose up the mountain side. At that point Eric decided that the best answer was to let him (and me) do it. The rookie was given the choice between two hike on which to drill, Hoopa (named after the street it's near) or El Diablo (Spanish for The Devil) The hike was named El Diablo because it was a bulldozer trail made for a fire break during the Paradise fire. Bulldozers can go straight up steep hills and clear all debris down to the sand. This hike has been known to make the most in shape hikers get dizzy before they reach the top. The rookie chose to do the progressive hose lay up El Diablo. We were dying after the first 50 feet. After we finished with training we were pretty much exhausted the rest of the day.
The start of our progressive hose lay. Jason is giving junior some pointers.
Part way up the first hill. It was 3 steps forward and 2 steps back in the sand. Junior is still on the nozzle.
Here I have the nozzle and Jason and junior are backing me up.
If you look up towards the top of this shot you can see us hiking the rest of the way to the summit. We had run out of water after punching in hundreds of feet of hose and we just wanted to see the top.
the THOUGHT of doing this hike makes me dizzy. The thought of doing this hike in full fire-dude gear makes me want to hurl.
ReplyDeleteYou guys are rockstars. Congrats on your two OT shifts by the way. ARE YOU INSANE!?!?!!??!
Actually all I did was trade some shifts. Next week I only have to go in for work on Thursday.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the hikes are concerned, we try, from time to tome, to out pace each other. That usually ends up with someone seeing stars and close to passing out.