Guns and smokejumpers

If it weren't so obvious that there's not an ounce of fat on them, it would be tempting to call Washington state's North Cascades Smokejumpers well-rounded: how else to describe men who not only leap from a small plane to parachute into dense forest wreathed in the smoke from a wildfire, but can also execute a nifty bit of top-stitching on the sewing machines back at base? They have to make their own jumpsuits in this service because there are only 400 smokejumpers in the whole of the US and there's not much call, commercially, for yellow Kevlar boiler suits with capacious pockets, weighing more than 80kg fully packed. Standard equipment includes a rope for rappelling down out of trees and a knife to slice through tangles, making sliding down a pole at the station and getting into a truck look like fire-fighting for wimps. Employed by the US Forest Service, these men - and women - see themselves as the equivalent of the Army's Green Berets, an elite force who survive a rigorous five-week boot camp to become tough, self-sufficient members of the team...more