Another Rescue

For the second time this year we have had a medical emergency in the park that has required the assistance of the Grand Canyon Flight Crew and their "short-haul" capability. I thought I would share a couple of pictures.

The above photo is of the MD900... a NOTAR helicopter. NOTAR stands for No Tail Rotor. It is a very expensive and fairly rare helicopter, at least in the utility industry. Grand Canyon has a year round contract that is through the local company Papillion Helicopters. The MD900 was purchased special for the contract and is painted in the Park Service colors and with NPS painted on the helicopter.

Short haul is a technique where the helicopter can long line a paramedic (or other specially trained individual) into a location where landing would not be possible. The Paramedic can then conect the injured person or the litter to himself / herself and sling out with the victim. This can be seen in the picture above... the paramedic is extricating the victim using a rescue triangle.

They are then lowered to a crewmember or two who will "shag" the line... they basically help to catch the load and secure or support the victim, as seen above. Zion Helitack is not short haul qualified, however at the request of Grand Canyon Flight Crew... we will assist at the helispot to shag the line... That is one of our crewmembers in the black helping to shag.

Last year Grand Canyon Helitack did 1/3 of all their short hauls out of Zion N.P. Years previous have seen as many as half of the total short hauls that Grand Canyon does, being flown out of Zion National Park. It begs the question... are we to the point where Zion Helitack should look towards gaining the short haul qualification... hmmm.

For now... Zion Helitack will focus on Cargo Let Down and Rappel... Training starts on Tuesday!

Cheers,

Overnight Campout...

Well we finally took our overnight trip. It was a good oportunity to bond as a crew over some really good "Dutch Oven" cooking. Thanks to Thayer and a bunch of novice food preparers... we had plenty of chicken, steak, fish, potatoes, etc. etc.

This is a good picture of Iceman and BT doing what they do best, sample food. The Alaskan caught Halibut and Salmon was wonderfully cooked and made us long for more as it quickly disappeared... "Thanks Thayer"
Shannon spent some time relaxing after BT had taken the crew on a little run in the woods for an afternoon PT. Following the PT some of us cooked food and some went for fire wood. We allowed a couple of our trainee sawyers to try their hand at cutting and gathering wood... actually, lets call it what it is... non of the crew really wanted to collect firewood... so we turned it into a training opportunity.

Of course the biggest hastle with collecting the wood is cleaning the saw afterwards... so once again our 1st time sawyer to a stab at a good field cleaning... Bevans did a wonderful job. We may be able to turn him into a good sawyer after all...

The night ended with a good conversation around the campfire... where we learned a little more about one another as we listened to Bevans strum a little on the guitar, and the Jazz get whipped for the final game of their road to the playoffs... okay, that was a little disappointing... but the rest of the night was a success and a whole lot of fun. Tomorrow, we will wake and take a little hike to the Devils Den fatality site...

Cheers,

Here We Go !!!

May has come and nearly gone, and I haven't yet posted on the blog. I have all the excuses in the world, but its meaningless to spill them now. The crew is all on but one... and she will join us by the weeks end. We have been spending our days at meetings and trainings. Most of you know how the first few weeks go... training, meeting, training, more training, meeting, etc...

We had our first RX of the season. I thought perhaps I would share a couple of pictures I took of David Brothwell falling a snag with fire in it. Not a particularly menacing snag... but it sure was stubborn about coming down. I will post a few more times over the next few days to catch you all up on the things happening with Zion Helitack.

The Season Is Here...

Every year I wait for that tell tell moment when I know that the season is just around the corner. It usually begins with the arrival of the 1st crewmembers. Iceman started today! I guess that means the season is just around the corner.

I am off to Boise for this next week in order to teach an M-410 Facilitative Instructor class. This will be my 4th this winter... I am personnally about "burnt" out on teaching people how to be good instructors. I typically love teaching this class, but like I mentioned this is my 4th time this winter... and with so much more happening this time of the year, well lets just say I would rather be here at the base getting ready for the fast approaching season.

Ritzman will take his leave from the crew officially this next week. I think he will be through on Thursday or Friday in order to finish up paperwork then its off to California for him to start his new job. We wish him well, we know he will enjoy his new job and will exceed expectations out there in Sequoia...

I'll update the post in a little over 10 days...
Cheers,

Another Day At The Office!

What a wonderful project that myself and several members of the Zion Fire Use Module got to participate in just recently. I was wishing that some of my crewmembers could have been on and available to help with this once in a lifetime opportunity. Unfortunately, the way that budgets and more importantly seasonal regulations concerning 1040 hours work... it was not possible to have the crew on.

The project - to remove a lot of vehicles from the Lake Mead recreational area... For a long time (probably since the late 50's or early 60's) people have been driving their old cars out to a particular cliff near the canyon just south of the Hoover Dam. Once there they drive / roll the cars off the cliff. The amount of cars present was nearly 30... most were old and in need of a funural, however others were brand new cars. The latest being a stolen Lexis that was rolled off the edge and destroyed. In addition to a lot of cars, there were over one hundred tires. Some belonged to the cars that were destroyed, but most were just old tires rolled off the cliff to see who could get the most distance out of them.

The project started with a KMax heavy lift helicopter equiped with a hydralic claw. This helicopter plucked as many of the cars and scrap metal off the hill as possible. Following that it was time for us to engage... a 20 person support crew and 6 helitack crewmembers went off the side of this rather steep and rocky hill. Our goal was to collect as much of the garbage as possible and fly it out. The tires were left to me... I went up and down the hill several times that day! It was steep and unstable... not your typical afternoon stroll. Others focused on filling and manifesting nets full of trash. All total we flew approximately 20,000 pounds of crap off the hill. That is not including the cars flown off the previous day.

It was a good project... a dangerous one, however no one got hurt and in the end it was executed well. I don't know if the pictures do justice to the terrain... but as you can imagine... it was as steep as it looks if not steeper.

Oh yes, and a side note... while we were on site and had the ability to do so, we were asked to do another project for Lake Mead N.P. We rigged and flew a building off of a repeater site. I did not get pictures of this... I got video! I am working to compress and edit the video as we speak and hope to have this wonderful footage of a very unique long line operation. I have never had to climb to the top of a building to connect the apparatus to a remote hook... it was a first for me!

Enjoy the pictures... more to come soon!

Cheers

A New Idea!!!

Hello everyone, it has been a while since my last entry. I am swamped getting ready for the crew to come on. Leads are showing up in a little less than a week, and the crew will be on in a month. I was given an idea today, and I wanted to run it by everyone that visits the site.

If you were given a location (i.e. a blog page), where you could advertise your old fire equipment / clothing that either no longer fits or has become excess... would you take advantage of it? I know that for many of us in the business, we have collected small caches of our own at home... I am not saying you should sell the stuff that somehow ended up in your basement bought on the government dollar (that is theft). I am talking about those of us who have purchased our own fire gear, pants, and other equipment because we wanted something better than what was offered to us by the government.

If you had a place where you could buy/sell/trade such items... would you take advantage of it? I'll post a poll to the right where you can give your answer... Let me know!

Cheers,