Flight Patterns - Part 1/4: Pull Thousand
Apr 19
Written By Gabriel Donaldson
Somewhere between the Arctic circle and southern fringes of the Mojave desert between March and November of every year, a plane orbits over a wildfire, passes over it at two hundred feet AGL (above ground level) with a crew of smokejumpers, all wrestling to capture a view of their next project. Could be two, could be eight, could be more, that end up jumping and putting the fire out. Could be in the pinon/juniper, black spruce, sage, maye up in the mixed conifer, but certainly not in a convenient place. Between the low pass at 200’ AGL, the plane continues its left hand orbits up to 1500’ for streamers/wind indicators and then on to 3000’ AGL to prepare for the “jump”. Straps are tightened, three-rings are checked, pockets are cinched, mouth guards are chewed and helmets are buckled.
Forced into a hunch after tightening their own handmade harnesses and arranging over 110 pounds of gear between their leg pockets, chest mounted parachutes, personal gear bags and main parachutes, they waddle towards the door of the aircraft, yelling over the engines. Laughing, flipping each other off, high-fiving. Beneath the entourage of gear are knee pads, elbow pads, Kevlar suits, Nomex clothes, and all array of puncture protection throughout the suit that protects the jumper from all the stubby things rapidly coming up from the earth below. Homemade, again, in a “loft” back in Boise, or Fairbanks or West Yellowstone, or Redmond, the suits, the parachute bags, the trusty “drogue”, these are all built in-house, repaired in-house by FAA qualified “riggers”.
A series of calculated, consistent steps ensue, with yes or no questions, hand gestures, and finally a command: “Get in the door”. In many ways this is liberating, soon to be clear of the Jet-A and the stench of the fuselage, and out into the woods, brush, grass, on a map in the middle of nowhere. In many ways, it’s dreadful, but on that spectrum, if you are a Smokejumper, most of the time, you jump out of the plane when you are directed to do so.
A “Spotter” micro-adjusts the final path before exit by communicating small changes in trajectory to the pilot through an aircraft helmet. They make tilting corrections to the aircrafts wings: left or right. As final adjustments are made, and the path is cleared, the Spotter, connected to the inside of the plane by webbing and a harness, yells: “GET READY!” . . . . . and with a long or slow pause the jumper waits to slapped on the back.
No longer in the care of the aircraft, no longer under the guidance of the Spotter, now it’s the Smokejumper, time and space. It takes between 4 and 6 seconds to deploy the parachute after leaving the aircraft, some count fast, some count a little slow, but in either case it’s a five count process: jump thousand (aggressively push away from the aircraft in a tucked position), look thousand (look down and to the left and identify the bright green drogue release handle), reach thousand (reach for and grab the green drogue release handle with your right hand), wait thousand (ensure you are prepared to release the drogue parachute) and finally, on the fifth second, pull thousand (swiftly pull the drogue release handle and begin canopy check procedures).
Five seconds, or so, falling towards the earth, with the scant guidance of a 15 square foot drogue parachute flickering above their heads, and attached by a thin, yellow, plastic chord, holding the three ring mechanism together. All of this engineered through time and space and accidents and fatalities, all of this engineered, all the time, to protect lives who are in the pursuit of wildland fire suppression efforts. Five seconds of nothing but fast air, slapping nylon, slow breathing, and the dwindling sound of Twin Otter engines drifting away above them, before they “pull thousand” and prepare for the canopy to either open, or not.
