Malheur Rappel Crew

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They shuck into 50 pounds of gear, adjusting webbing and checking their ropes and Sky Genies. The sun beats down on the flat mesa, frying the cheatgrass and the rappel crew. Two at a time, they adjust helmets and double-check harness connections and hardware. They queue up and watch as their buddies, two at a time, drop from the skids of the Bell 206, shooting down the 250-foot rope to the stickery grass below. Those who are done and those whose turns are yet to come watch and critique each rappeller's drop. "He's double-braking!" rings out as one crew member flies down the rope. Those who sail are chided for pushing the speed limit.

As they return two-by-two to the ready room, crew members tell the others how it went. They coach each other and collect compliments or teasing for each run. It's a point of pride to make a fast drop without going too fast. They joke about being boot-banged on the head by a speeding partner from above.

How fast is fast? A well-tuned rappeller can drop 250 feet down a 1/2-inch rope in about 15 seconds, depending on the day's conditions and the bulk of the rappeller. A weight of 180 is about perfect for a rappeller; a small person has to feed more rope, and it's hard to get going. A heavier rappeller can feed once and go. "I always go slow," says Jeff "Over" Wilcox, who weighs in at a trim 220. "If I get going too fast, I'm gonna splat." The heat -- at 80 in the shade -- makes for faster ropes and a quicker rappel. "In this heat, I was thinking I was going to cook down that rope," says Mark Parker. "Two big feeds and I went."

Pilot Tom Sharp swings the L-III back around toward the helipad, and the next pair of rappellers finishes a final buddy check and moves out through the rotor wash for their turn. Each member of the Malheur crew will make eight certifying rappels and another 13 during proficiency training, and the crew does PT seven times a week from the beginning of the season in early June, rain or shine. Crew members live in the community, and spend a minimum of 40 hours a week at the helibase, where the Forest Service leases ground at the state airport at John Day, Oregon. The helibase employs two people year-round and 19 rappellers in the summer, plus contract pilots, fuel truck drivers, and call-when-needed ramp crew. The helibase is currently expanding from two buildings to three, adding a communication center, expanded crew area and locker room, and a new classroom. The recent addition of a universal gym will augment the mile-and-a-half runs, rope jumping, hiking, and free-weight conditioning of crew members. Most of the members play on a city league softball team sponsored by Ferdinand's, a local restaurant, but because they spend more time at rappelling and conditioning than they do at softball practice, their record was pretty dismal early in the season.

Base aircraft include the Bell 206 L-III provided by Air Resources of Newport Beach, California on a three-year contract. Sharp is the pilot part of a package deal that includes a fuel truck with driver. "He's a very skilled pilot," says helitack foreman Brad Gibbs. "He's one of the best I've ever worked with, not only with his flying ability, but also his attitude. He's worked a lot of fire in the past and has flown other rappel contracts. This is not new to him." Precision flying -- stringing power lines or doing seismic work -- and a lot of long-line work makes for a good rappel pilot. Sharp is neither reckless nor a risk-taker, according to Gibbs, and isn't out there trying to have fun flying too fast or too low. The air base is also equipped with a SEAT -- an Ayres-S2R-G10 Thrush, on its third year of a three-year contract with Pierce Aviation of Buckeye, Arizona. It's piloted by Carl Dolbeare.

"Carl broke the record here last year," adds Gibbs. "He and Bill Shriner put out over 58,000 gallons of retardant with the SEAT. The gallonage in 1994 ran over 57,000, but they beat that last year."

"I ran nine or ten loads the first day I stood duty," says Dolbeare. Last year he notched up 58,675 gallons on 128 drops over 42 incidents.

Gibbs, who was assistant foreman for six-plus years on this crew, had people out on 38 rappel fires last year. "In 1994, we staffed more rappel fires than anyone in the nation. We had 142 people on 51 fires. Last year we put people on 38 initial attack fires and supported six large fires. We were busy with the Wildcat and Summit fires here on the Malheur, and Kevin and the gang spent 10 weeks out of Grand Junction, Colorado on a call-when-needed basis."

The Malheur crew tallied 1873 rappels between 1991 and 1996, including initial attack, training, and proficiency. The crew numbers 19 this year, with eight rookies chosen from more than 100 applications. That's more rookies than the crew usually recruits. "We generally run in three-year cycles," explains Gibbs. "We'll go a year or two adding three or four people each year, and then we'll have a year with six new rookies. Most people last three or four years. There's not a lot of advancement possible from this point, and people get done with school or whatever and move on. We'll probably never get rid of Ron, though."

"Why would I want to go anywhere else?" says squad leader Ron Sevey. "This is the best job in the Forest Service."

"We're really well-stocked with folks this year," adds Brown. "We have a good mix of skills; we've got an environmental engineer, an artist, a writer, two or three with forestry degrees and one with a degree in range biology. Tim Lynch is an ex-jumper from Redmond. He was in dispatch and wanted to get back into aviation -- we let him, even though he was an ex-jumper." There's a bit of competition between jumpers and rappellers, similar to the friendly competition between jumpers and Ashot crews.

The Malheur crew is one of five regional rappel crews -- others operate from Chelan (Wenatchee NF), Sled Springs (Wallowa-Whitman NF), Merlin/Grants Pass (Siskiyou NF), and a new base at Ukiah (Umatilla NF), which has had a long-time helitack crew and now has a first-season rappel crew. Not so many years ago, rappel crews were rare. "It's just exploded in the last five years," says Brown. "People have realized what an effective initial attack resource a rappel crew can be."

Why would anyone want to bail out of a helicopter and zip down a string to a fire below? "It's inherently hazardous," admits Gibbs, "but we try to drive home the safety message all the time. It's always heads up with this crew. We push hard on risk management, and have an impressive safety record. We've never had anyone injured on a rappel -- zero injuries since 1991. We've had a couple bruises, but that's usually on the tower and not the rappel sequence. People get complacent now and then and have a hard landing, but no one's been dinged up. We had a bee sting recently, but that's about it for injuries here."

"It's always an adventure," says Gibbs. "My favorite fire was my first rappel fire on the Wenatchee in 1994. Pooh Meyerholz and I went out, and Delcie Proffitt from the Chelan rappellers went in with us. We needed more help, and we got a 10-person crew, two with experience and a bunch of green ones. We were doing night mop-up and working with those kids and teaching them tricks. It was a lot of fun -- they hadn't seen rappellers before and thought we were some kind of gods. They even wanted to pack our gear for us."

Mark Parker and André Ruoti remember a not-so-fun rappel -- on the Myrtle Fire out of Chelan. "They found this humongous pile of hose out there," says Parker. "They rappelled us in to get it. There was one huge mess of hose there, and we were supposed to get it into a sling. It was way too big to roll into a sling, so they told us to pull on it, stretch it out, and get a choker around it. That took a while -- it was 5100 feet of hose in a pile. Well, we got it done. The choker was rated for 10,000 pounds, but that pilot didn't get a mile away before the choker snapped. It was spaghetti mangle in the trees -- it just made a godawful mess."

This article is © 1997 Kelly Andersson and may not be reprinted or distributed without written permission. email Kelly Andersson for information about reprint rights.

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