Wildfire Smokejumper Trilogy

Chapter 8-1

Chapter 8

Out on the trail, Laura dismissed the first hint of the fire when she tasted it on the wind. Johnny often missed a spot during his shower, or wore his jump boots out to the cabin. He smelled like many things that were wonderful, but one of them that lurked about him as often as not was wood smoke.

Mister Ed rolled easily along the Skyline Trail, six tourists close behind on this easy section. It was fully melted out and was going to make a great two-day ride. The Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail, commonly called the PCT, ran from the Mexican border to Canada along some of the harshest wilderness that the Sierra Nevadas and the Cascades could hand out.

The PCT climbed from river to snowline and back down to river time and again in brutal elevation changes. She’d always meant to hike or ride its length. So far she’d covered all of the Oregon portion and most of Washington. California beckoned. Maybe she’d been unconsciously waiting for the right companion.

At Mount Hood the PCT followed the Skyline Trail that skirted the late summer snowline from above Timberline Lodge. It passed along the southern and western glaciers before wandering off towards the Columbia Gorge and the Bridge of the Gods. By adding in a loop with some great views on the first day, it made for a long afternoon’s ride to reach the primitive shelter at Paradise Park which was actually only a few lazy hours’ ride away. It allowed for a straight shot back after breakfast gave them time for a shower before lunch.

Sometimes Laura would extend the ride over to Burnt Lake or a sweet little meadow she’d found on Slide Mountain, but that took more skilled riders. Not this crowd.

This time she had two sets of newlyweds, all four of them game, but none of them up for anything trickier than an easy trot. The group was rounded out by a mother-daughter team who were celebrating their mutual graduation from college; mom had gone back to school for teaching marine science when her daughter had started in pre-med. They rode well enough, but were simply having too good a time together for the destination to be of any real importance, as long as they were doing it together.

Laura spent a while daydreaming about children. About her children. She’d like a girl. Not that there’d be any pressure, but she was an only child. If there was going to be a fourth generation of the matrilineal line of Jenson trail guides, it was going to be up to her.

She couldn’t resist the smile. There was a sure way to blow all of Johnny’s gaskets. “Hi honey. So how many kids do you want to have? Let’s not wait.”

“Poof!” she said it softly, the sound of Johnny’s brain exploding like a dandelion gone to seed moments before a hurricane hit. Yes, one thing at a time. First she had to wait for Johnny to—

Mister Ed slowed to a halt and dropped his ears back.

Laura didn’t try to force him ahead; he was a very trail-wise horse. She scanned the trail ahead for rattlesnakes. Very rare at this altitude in this area, but she looked. Bear were more likely, but she could hear no telltale crash and thump through the twenty- and thirty-foot firs that grew in the area; bears rarely moved quietly. The world was very quiet.

Mister Ed’s reaction was wrong for elk or deer; he was as likely to want to go play with them as anything else.

Then she caught that hint of wood smoke again. The lightest of afternoon breezes was cool against her sun-warmed face, slipping down off the glaciers in gentle wafts of ice-scented air. But there was…

The rest of the group had come to a stop behind her. She turned slowly in her saddle scanning farther afield for the cause.

Smoke.

A little thread of it. The fire was either small… No, she saw heat ripples to the south and the west. It was hot. So hot that there was little ash yet. The breeze shifted for a moment and she caught it again. Wood smoke.

Mister Ed snorted.

Laura pulled out her radio.

All she could pull in was static. She couldn’t reach the Lodge because there was now half a mountain between them. No rangers responded to her call either. Not even the ski patrol that would be high up on Palmer. They’d come too far around the mountain’s curve.

Maybe they’d come far enough.

Johnny had given her MHA’s direct frequency.

The voice that answered was harsh and rippling with static and squelch cutouts. She adjusted her own squelch setting and tried again.

“This is Laura Jenson. We have a fire on the west side of Mount Hood. It is around the five thousand foot level and climbing toward Zigzag Canyon.”

She thought the crackling voice said something about ten minutes. Laura tucked away her radio and turned back to the group.

“Okay folks. I’m sorry to do this to you, but… Can you see the smoke starting down there below us?”

They all turned to look the direction she was indicating. The fire had found enough fuel that the smoke was now starting to show clearly.

“It’s unlikely that it will develop into anything and I’ve already called it in. But for our own safety, I’m going to abort today’s ride. What we’ll do is turn around and head back toward the Lodge. The wildland firefighters are based just ten minutes away. They’re on their way to check out the smoke and will let us know if we should continue back to the Lodge, or if we can turn around again and continue our ride. So we may be doubling back and forth a bit, but better safe than sorry, right?”

Everyone agreed. It took a little doing as they were in a relatively narrow portion of the trail, but they got their horses turned around. Once they were all set, she led them back into the long vertical slice of a canyon that the ice and water had carved down the face of the mountain. The fire she could see was traveling along the ridge they had just departed, and she didn’t want to be anywhere near that.

The other horses in the group finally caught the occasional wind shifts of a sudden warm updraft laced with firesmoke from downslope. Ears went back, nerves went up.

She started teaching the group an old Brewer and Shipley song based on a Native American chant. It leant itself to a multi-part harmony that was easy even for the untrained. The song distracted the tourists and at the same time calmed their mounts.

Now if it would only distract her. They’d descended back into the trees and wouldn’t re-emerge for over a mile. She didn’t like riding blind with a fire so near.