The Misery Whip

 Another story from my days working on the Orleans District of the Six Rivers National Forest from 1971-77.    Hope you find these entertaining during these uncertain times.

In the fire warehouse at the Orleans Ranger station hung these large white canvas backpacks on the wall.   They were called lightning fire packs and contained a gallon canteen of water, sleeping bag, first aid kit, falling wedges, hand axe, files and meals ready to eat, better known as MRE’s or rations.   Over the top of these packs was a misery whip blade bent over the top and attached to the sides of the pack.   It was a two man crosscut saw for falling trees.   These packs must have weighed 60 to 80 pounds and just the sight of them would make us break out in a sweat.    Being on the timber crew we always thought those packs were reserved for the fire crew during any initial attack on a wild fire in a remote area.    In the summer of 1972 we learned differently after a thunder storm wreaked havoc across the Forest.   The fire crews were dispatched on many lightning fires on the roaded areas of the Forest where fire trucks could access many of the fires, along with hand crews.  A fire was reported in the upper watershed of the South Fork of the Smith River on the Gasquet Ranger District which was north of our District.   This area was road less, except for an old jeep road that crossed the Siskiyou divide between the Klamath River drainage and the Smith River drainage.   (Today this is all part of the Siskiyou Wilderness Area)  Six of us, including the pre-sale forester on the timber crew were told to respond to this fire.   The pre-sale forester was assigned as our crew boss and given a two-way radio.   We loaded up our personal gear in back of the 4x4 crew truck and noticed those dreaded white packs, along with an assortment of hand tools and few extra canteens of water were in the bed of the truck.   By the time we reached the jeep road we could see the smoke way down a brushy ridge leading into a side creek of the South Fork of the Smith River.   There was not a foot trail or even a deer trail going down this ridge as we made our way down toward the smoke through the brush.  The going was slow, it was hot and those packs seem to get heavier with each step.   In addition to the packs we all carried a hand tool and some canteens.   When we got near the fire it had consumed an acre or two as we started cutting a fire line around it with our hand tools.   There were a few snags that had caught fire and needed to be felled and this is when the misery whips were brought in to action.  I don’t remember how much time was spent trying to get them on the ground, but there was lots of swearing and sweating.    As we pushed and pulled on these saws we could imagine how loggers had to use these before the days of power saws and why there were no such thing as a fat logger. 

When the sun started setting we grubbed out a camp site within the burned over area, ate our rations and fell asleep.    Usually a box of rations contained a can of meat stew, a can of mixed fruit, crackers, utensils, chewing gum, some kind of candy and the best part of all, a can of pound cake.  You haven’t lived if you have never eaten pound cake from a can.  Now imagine eating this stuff three times a day.   We were on this fire for four days and three nights.  By the end of the second day our drinking water supply was about to run out and we had no water to mop up all the hot spots within the fire line.   A helicopter was called in that dumped a net full of canteens, bladder bags of water to extinguish the hot spots and more of those delicious rations.   On the fourth day we called in the fire as dead out.   We were told to construct a heliport and place all our equipment, including those white packs with the misery whips in the net for the helicopter to fly it all out.   We walked back up the ridge to our vehicle without having to carry anything, except some canteens of water.   After arriving back in Orleans we had only one thing on our minds—drinking a beer or two and extinguishing any thoughts of those white packs.