ELY — Jumping out of airplanes into mountains, timber or swamps is old hat for the Rova family, where the legacy of protecting the outdoors runs deep. “It's so cool to be like, yeah, I come from a ...

First, the smell: Inside the jump plane, it’s Jet-A fuel mingled with stale sweat and fresh chewing tobacco. Then, the fire: 1,500 feet above the forest floor, cramped between Kevlar and parachutes, ...

Fire is arguably the most important natural process in the West — our ecosystems can’t live without it, yet our communities struggle to live with it. For decades, firefighters have wrestled with this ...

Northwest Montana Posse of Westerners history organization presents a program titled “History of Smokejumping – A Continuing Saga" (Part 2 in a series) by Fred Cooper of Missoula, Monday, Sept. 19.

Are we in the age of megafires? Many scientists think the era of megafires is upon us, and not just because of the massive fires Russia suffered this year. Three of the eight worst forest fire years ...

Alaska is heading into wildfire season, and firefighters are gearing up to be ready for it. That includes smokejumpers, who parachute in to fight some of the most remote fires, often providing the ...

Nick Hampe has worked seven years in wildland firefighting, and remembers while working on an engine crew in Montana seeing smokejumpers arriving on a fire by air. “I was just kind of sold on maybe ...

The July 7 story, “ Children carry on Ely father's smokejumping legacy,” provided a good introduction to the profession of forest-firefighting smokejumpers. In the summers of 1953 to 1956, while ...

As part of her annual spring training before another summer of parachuting out of aircraft to tend to fires in remote wilds around the West, Martha Schoppe had a choice. The Coloradan could opt to run ...

MISSOULA – Earl Cooley, a pioneering smokejumper who took the Forest Service’s first leap into a flame-riddled wilderness, died Monday in Missoula. He was 98. Cooley made the jump into the Nez Perce ...

1917 — The U.S. Forest Service started using aircraft in California for fire detection. This was the first use of aviation in fire management. 1929 — Supplies for firefighters were first dropped from ...

WINTHROP, Wash. -- Red-faced and sweating, 10 recruits at the North Cascades Smokejumper Base gasp for breath as they drop for push-ups in the middle of a country road, just midway through their ...