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| Locks on entry gate |
Today will be something new
for me. I will be putting in the first day of training for a new
lookout volunteer. Each lookout volunteer is put through a minimum of
two days of new lookout training. Today will be about general skills.
These include radio skills, map reading and using the Osborne Fire
Finder. Hope I do not damage this new lookout too much.
Then it is off to Park Ridge Lookout. Part of the training is just getting into a tower. In this case, there is a gate to a service road. He passed the easiest of tests-opening the gate. Then driving in, we stopped at Manzanita Point and looked down on Wilsonia to get an overview of where things are-you get a different perspective looking straight down on the village. Finally we arrived at the tower.
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| Overcast skies to the east |
Once inside, I show him how we “take the weather”. The important parts of that is how clear it is-not very, what is the relative humidity-good, wind-low, and visibility-moderate. Then we go into service. I coached the trainee on the words to say: “Porterville-Park Ridge Lookout-Inservice”. And then what he will hear. He does well on both the Forest and Park-no radio fright here.
We do a scan and then it is time to listen to the weather and staffing. I show him a minor cheat-use the recorder on his phone to record the weather. He makes good use of it. It does take him a while to get the weather down. But this is a bit unnerving when you first hear the weather. While he does this, I do a scan or two.
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| Dismal looking sky to the west |
We go through more stuff with the radio-how to switch scan’s and priorities. There are cards in each lookout on how to do this. Also showed him how resources are called out for a fire-there are “run” cards for each area. These are who get called for a fire depending on the conditions.
The trainee also got to hear what the forest does on a “typical” day. Things like removing a rattlesnake from a campsite, tracking a helicopter, and how the various personnel get moved around. I think it was enough there to give a taste without being overwhelming.
And then we got some attention. Ash Mountain Fire inquired about the weather. I responded with overcast, no lightning and only a few sprinkles. I then had the trainee change call Delilah because he thought he was seeing some smoke or haze over towards Cherry Gap. We worked through the location. Then he called and Delilah and the Trainee worked through what it possibly could be. A good real life situation where he got to use some of the skills. Buck Rock also got into the weather game with reporting that they were starting to get some precip.
Around 1730, the Trainee went
home. Shortly after that Sherri came up. At 1800 we went out of
service with Ash Mountain Fire, but Porterville was having extended
hours. So Sherri and I were still on duty. We did have our lasagna
dinner. But we did not have a corkscrew to open Sherri’s bottle of
wine.
At 1837 Porterville called out a Bald Fire in Miramonte close to Sand Hill Creek Road. We looked, but no visible smoke-so we reported that. Shortly after that the Forest was called off of this incident. Then it was a quiet rest of the day. We went out of service at 2000.
The evening light was quickly drawing to dark. We put things up for the night. By 2115, we were tucking ourselves into our sleeping bags. A lot cooler than Fresno-we appreciated this.
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| Sunset |
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| Sugar Pine Sunset |
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