Montana Journal

So Charlie and I started our next volunteer hitch as fire lookouts today -- we're up at Cyclone Lookout, just west of Glacier Park, and we'll be here for the next week.

Drove up this morning from my sister's house, stopping in Columbia Falls for groceries and then heading up to Polebridge to pick up the lookout key and radio from the previous volunteer. A quick stop at the Polebridge Merc for baked goods, and then we hit the trail. Made it to the lookout about 12:15.

Four hours later, I looked across the valley into Glacier Park, and saw this:

A new forest fire, over on the slopes of Numa Ridge, and I was the first lookout to see it. Got a quick azimuth reading on it, and then called my boss, who's staffing the lookout just to the north of me. He confirmed the sighting, got a second azimuth from his location, and the resulting triangulation allowed us to pinpoint the location very precisely. Since the fire is in the National Park, we contacted the park's Incident Commander as well as Kalispell Dispatch, and within minutes there was a helicopter heading for the smoke. The helicopter was able to put out most of the fire with "bucket drops" of water scooped up from Bowman Lake, which is just to the right of the smoke in the photo. They sent a ground crew in, as well, to handle some of the mop-up; the crew worked till dark, and will be hiking back in at 0600 tomorrow.