Chapter 2 - Can you say Trailbusters?

Sacramento Hotshots Help With Search & Rescue in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

The Sacramento Hotshots, based on the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico, are clearing portages on a search and rescue effort on the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. Some of the hotshots made camp at Cummings Lake on the evening of Tuesday, July 13; their 5-man squad cleared over a mile of storm-ravaged portage during the day.

The four squads of hotshots are 30 or 40 miles apart from each other in the wilderness. "We can't talk to each other directly," said crew superintendent Bob Wright. "But we have radio contact through the incident command post. We've been working through downed trees that are stacked up to 20 feet high as we clear the portages. There's spruce, maple, red pine, white pine -- a lot of pines. There's blowdown that's bent over, with thick chokey brush and nasty bracken-like undergrowth. It's tough going."

"In some places, the downed trees were stacked up like that for acres," said Ralph Bonde, the incident commander. He explained that all 854 campsites within the affected area would be checked; there are 2178 campsites in the entire wilderness area. Wright says the aftermath of the July 4th storm -- which may be the biggest thundercell on record for the area -- is just overwhelming.

Ridge Watson, above, and Daren Dalrymple, right, clear their way across one of the tangled portages. Wright's squad cleared a mile and a half of portage on July 13; that evening they scouted by canoe what their next day's work would involve. "It looks like we've got one portage tomorrow of about 100 feet," said Wright, "and another one that's over two miles long." Cutting passage includes dealing with upturned rootwads and downed trees of 18-inch diameter or more. "A lot of the trees broke off near the top and are bent over," he said. "They're 80 or 100 feet tall, and most of them are heavy green trees full of water."

Tim McKenzie, one of the wilderness rangers, flagged lines for the hotshots as they cleared passage on the portages. "A lot of it I was either on my belly or 12 feet up on the deadfall," he said. "There could very well be someone buried underneath it -- this blowdown goes on for hundreds of yards on the portages -- and someone could be clobbered under there."

McKenzie says the hotshots are working in 80º heat, but it cools to about 60º at night. McKenzie estimated that it might take four or five days to clear the longest portage ahead of them, depending on how thick it was when they got in there. "Some of it we worked through today was thick enough that I kept a pretty close eye on my flagline," he said. "It's just an incomprehensible area when you're crawling through it trying to locate what's left of a trail."

Estimates on July 13 -- after aerial survey -- indicated that 386,000 land acres (total of 478,000 acres counting water) of the 1.1 million-acre wilderness area were affected. Most of the water areas are not too badly affected; incident team reports indicate that there is far less debris in the lakes than was expected. On July 13, of the 909 portages in the wilderness area, 546 had been checked by ground crews. Of those, 88 percent were passable.

Bryce Berklund said it was tough going on clearing the portages. "We cut one portage today that was 60 rods (990 feet) of pure blowdown. Others were barely touched by the storm." He said crews are also dealing with dramatic weather changes, and packing extra supplies like gas and oil. "Our chains on the saws go bad so fast -- this is not normal cutting by any means. It is the hardest work I've done with a saw."

Last year over 200,000 people from throughout the world visited the Boundary Waters. Nearly 800 campsites, 80 miles of portages, and over 130 miles of hiking trails were damaged. On July 14 U.S. Forest Service Regional Forester Robert Jacobs authorized limited use of motorized and mechanized equipment to clean up storm damage on portages and campsites. He said the authority was limited to situations where the use of non-motorized and non-mechanized equipment would place wilderness crews in unsafe working conditions.

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