About smokejumping: behind the scenes at the BLM Alaska smoke jumping base

When I wrote my April 15th post on smokejumping, I shared that I had been doing some reading. By coincidence, much of the reading to date has been about smokejumping. At the time, I had hoped that I might write some reflection pieces based on what I have been reading. For now, I have take that back as writing such a reflection piece does not feel right at the moment. Perhaps that will change in the future, and perhaps not.

Instead of a reflection piece, there have been various things that I have gotten interested in through my reading. Things that I wanted to check out to see what I could find. As I have read some on smoke jumping in Alaska and got curious. In addition, I was also curious about certain behind the scenes aspects of smokejumping such as the cubbies where the smokejumpers hang their jump suit and stash the gear, drying out and then repacking parachutes, the cache, weather forecasting, and aviation operations. And of course, the smoke jumping base itself. I got my answers to most of these questions in this video, just under 13 minutes, by Live Alaska. Live Alaska takes us on a tour of the Alaska BLM facilities.


Direct link to video on Youtube from Live Alaska