JAMESTOWN, N.D. - Being a smokejumper is one of the toughest jobs. There may be only one job that's tougher - being a smokejumper's mother. "I started crying right away when I heard," said Barb Hill, ...

MISSOULA, Mont. – Fighting wildland fires is grimy, exhausting, dangerous and impressive. When smokejumpers do the work, parachuting in to wage the initial attack on fires in remote, rugged places, ...

REDMOND, Ore. (KTVZ) -- Central Oregon is home to one of seven US Forest Service bases in the country—where smokejumpers convene and set out to be the first line of defense against wildfires. A ...

Somewhere deep in the North Cascades, lightning strikes a parched mountainside, igniting a wildfire. Someone spots the blaze and calls emergency services. The tip gets routed to a U.S. Forest Service ...

Hiker Sarah Brandt wandered into the past when she arrived in southwest Oregon’s Siskiyou Smokejumper Base where wildfire fighters once parachuted out of airplanes into blazing forests. Brandt, who ...

Smokejumpers are an elite group of wildland firefighters trained to parachute out of planes and into remote areas to fight blazes. The hope is that if they can quickly stop the fire at its source, ...

When dispatch calls in a new wildfire, Cole Siemion and the other Great Basin Smokejumpers are trained to suit up and be ready to board a plane in two minutes. Smokejumpers are highly trained wildland ...

The yellowing pages fill binders packed into cardboard boxes at the Missoula Smokejumper Base; they contain almost a century of profound but niche history: every jump made by every smokejumper there ...

BOISE, Idaho • Their hands were clean. Months from now, they would be covered in ash, their white fingernails contrasted by burnt earth ground into their fingers. By August, the only memory of today’s ...

It was with a mix of awe and angst that my husband David and I reveled in the rugged and remote beauty of the Siskiyou Range as we drove eastward from Crescent City. I was pondering the majestic realm ...

WINTHROP, Okanogan County — Somewhere deep in the North Cascades, lightning strikes a parched mountainside, igniting a wildfire. Someone spots the blaze and calls emergency services. The tip gets ...