July Cover Story:
A Little Story About Backcountry Airstrips
Story by Mike Strasser

The summer of 2003 turned into a big fire season for everyone. A lot of the heavy air tankers were still shut down due to two fatal mid-air break-ups the previous year, so helicopters were pretty much the name of the game. At the time I was flying an AS350 B3 AStar for Bridgeport Heli-tack.

Fire fighters call the "Interagency Helicopter Rappel Crew," the heli-tack crew for short. What this means is that we have very well-trained aerial firefighters on board who can rappel from the helicopter close to a fire in case the helicopter is unable to land at a reasonable distance from where we need to work.

This rappel capability landed our heli-tack crew on the "Hot Creek Fire" in July 2003. The fire was raging out of control through the Boise National Forest just an hour north of Boise, Idaho. Our primary mission was to rappel into tactical locations in the forest and cut out helispots for other helicopters to land and bring in firefighting crews and supplies. When we got there, the fire was "sleeping" due to a small amount of rain that had fallen following the big push the fire had made just the day before. The fire was an approximately 20,000-acre monster threatening the town of Idaho City and the township of Atlanta, Idaho. Cabins and campsites in the area had already been evacuated before our arrival.

The first thing I noticed on arrival was that there was no place to land. In Nevada where I spend a lot of time fighting fires, there isn't much in the way of vegetation or trees so there are plenty of places to land. It's a shocker to me every time I fly up to Idaho or Montana to find so few suitable places to land. When flying a helicopter, you're always looking for a place to go in case something goes wrong, but here there was nothing but trees, lots and lots of tall trees... (Which explains why it's called a "National Forest," I guess?)

We landed at a small airstrip in Idaho City (U98), which had been converted to a helicopter base by the Forest Service. There we joined five or more ships already on the scene that were heavily involved in the firefighting effort. Two or three days later we moved the helibase to another airstrip close to Atlanta (55H) because the fire had taken a turn in a different direction and was now threatening the houses in that community.

I have to say, these backcountry airstrips are rugged, and I really admire my fixed wing colleagues who are skilled (or crazy?) enough to land at these strips. They had two strips in Atlanta; one of them appeared to be a private strip belonging to a lodge. Even though I was flying a helicopter, it still required careful planning for my approach and landing. I can only imagine what my "stuck wing" friends do. I was fortunate enough to meet some of these guys in Salmon, Idaho at a fire later in the season and watch them work. If something goes wrong in a helicopter out there, we are prepared to take the aircraft into the trees, hopefully straight down and with zero forward airspeed, but for these guys, the occasional backcountry strip seems to be their only option.

The fire made three more big pushes the following week until a rainstorm finally helped us out... or so we thought. After the fire had burned all the vegetation, the rain triggered numerous mudslides thundering down the mountain, which took out the only decent road to our camp and the township of Atlanta. We were more or less cut off from civilization. There was only one small, old logging road winding its way through the backcountry, but it seemed too small to get any big fuel trucks or other heavy fire equipment in or out of our base. We were told it would take months to repair the damaged road. I have seen some good fires before in my career but this one had me feeling like I was on the show Survivor. No phones, TV, air-conditioning, not even sodas, but instead plenty of bugs and bears. The fact that we were out in the boonies, cut-off from civilization with the roads washed out caused us to feel just a little different. The absence of cameras following me around brought me back to reality that I was not on television this time.

After a couple more days the helicopters started running out of fuel, so we made the decision to refuel at another backcountry airstrip called Weatherby (52U) since it was down river from the mudslide and fuel trucks could get there. We had to bring in additional fuel trucks since most of ours were trapped. My crew was lucky since the truck of our sister ship had been in Boise getting fuel at the time of the mudslides and could now supply us with fuel until my truck would meet up with them later to pay them back.

I never found out how they got all the big trucks and equipment out of there after I left, but my mechanic told me they made some improvements to the old logging road and with a one-way system in place they could get a certain number of vehicles in or out every day. I did have to wait a whole day for him in Boise after we were released from the fire.

Without being able to utilize these backcountry airstrips, the historic town of Idaho City (an old gold-mining town built between 1862 and 1863) and the little township of Atlanta could have been lost forever. I believe most of these strips are owned by the forest service so they might not be threatened to be shut down, but I was merely trying to tell a true story of what happened to me and what could happen in the future. It's something to keep in mind the next time somebody feels the need to close an airstrip down, no matter where they are. The airstrips were put in for a reason; let's leave them where they are. It's my personal, humble opinion that the environmental impact is minimal and definitely far less than the common campsite.


Mike Strasser is a helicopter pilot and co-creator of "Chicken Wings" Aviation Cartoons). www.chickenwingscomics.com


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