Hiking for health

[nikeajax]

John, here ya go!

baynature.org/2021/03/04/disease-outbreak-appears-to-be-killing-bay-area-trees/

"Karen Paulsell and John Brega, volunteers with the group Friends of Sausal Creek, have documented stressed or dying acacias, eucalyptus, Monterey pines, coast live oaks, and toyons, as well as large stands of withered French broom and coyote brush throughout Joaquin Miller Park, Leona Heights Park, and Dimond Canyon. Mark Silva, a ranger supervisor with the East Bay Municipal Utility District, said he’s seen dying Monterey pines and acacias as well as hundreds of apparently sick California bay laurel trees in the district’s south watershed, which he said is the worst outbreak in bay trees that he’s seen in 32 years in the district. He says bay trees are ordinarily “bulletproof.” “Hopefully it’s not something serious that’s going to kill them,” Silva said. “I’ve never seen anything bug a bay tree.”

So those natives on the list are suited to chaparral, while not desert, is very-very-dry: they believe it's a fungus... I would love to see the others on the list die off completely in California.

There's a stand of old growth Big Berry Manzanita (Arctostaphylos glauca) in the South Bay that makes me afraid about this.

JB

[nikeajax]

John, when you were a smoke jumper, how often did you use orienteering. I understand the principals of it, but have never tried to actually do it.

Did you use the Scott Air-Pak SCBA while fighting forest fires, or were they not being used yet?

JB

[SeaRat]

Jun 4, 2021 11:07:47 GMT -8 nikeajax said:

John, when you were a smoke jumper, how often did you use orienteering. I understand the principals of it, but have never tried to actually do it.

Did you use the Scott Air-Pak SCBA while fighting forest fires, or were they not being used yet?

JB

JB,

We actually didn’t use orienteering much when firefighting as a smokejumper. The reason is that we had a visual on the fire before we jumped. We jumped on very small fires by today’s standards, usually only a tree or two that had be struck by lightning. In Alaska, we did jump on larger fires, but usually used the fire lines as our orientation. I did use orienteering as a USAF Pararescueman more than as a firefighter.

We didn’t use the Scott Air-Pak at all fighting forest fires. They were too heavy for use in the field. We simply “ate smoke.” I did use them at my last place of employment, Kanto Corporation, where we had an Emergency Response Team. I’ll add a few photos later.

John

[SeaRat]

JB,

I should add that orientation was used by the U.S. Forest Service before we had all these fancy high tech systems to locate fires on the land. We had manned towers on hilltops, with people in them watching. Inside, they had a map with a sighting arrangement/compass system which would allow them to sight a fire, and draw a line on the acolyte above a map showing the direction from the tower. By doing this with two or three towers in the same mapped area, they could pinpoint the fire for the plane to use to get to it. We would then fly over it, make sure it was a wildfire, drop a spotter parachute over it (or a weighted paper which would unfurl and descend at the same rate as a jumper’s parachute). We would then fly over the spotter chute towards the fire, counting up, and when over the fire count down the same number of counts, and release a second spotter chute. If that landed close to the fire, we’d use the same technique and drop jumpers with a steerable parachute to jump onto the fire.

I’ll talk more about orienteering a bit later, and bring it back to diving too.

John

[nikeajax]

I thought you were a "smoke eater", but I wasn't sure though My question was more to make conversation though, seeing as so many people refuse to post anything at all

I'm sure as a Scout you learned orienteering, but probably even more so in your USAF survival classes.

This weekend we're gunna watch this old video on how to use my older GPS:



The one I have is newer but the use of it is pretty much the same. Here's another one I think would be fun to own and use:



I do love me some quirky old tech!

JB

[nikeajax]

Jun 4, 2021 14:33:24 GMT -8 SeaRat said:

I’ll talk more about orienteering a bit later, and bring it back to diving too.

John

Hmmmm! Just posting anything is good right now

JB

[SeaRat]

JB,

Here's a photo I took at my old job, with our ERT (Emergency Response Team) suited up with a hose-line Scott system for entering an IDLH (Immediately Dangerous to Life and Health) environment, using not only the breathing system, but also Level 2 Haz-Mat clothing. Note the "bail-out bottles" on their waist. I found this system in the storage room, not being used, and put it back together, trained the guys on it, and they loved it. It is not so heavy to wear.

Kanto ERT by John Ratliff, on Flickr

Here's what I looked like in 1972, getting ready for a jump:

John Photos001 by John Ratliff, on Flickr

Here is one of our training jumps at the North Cascades Smokejumper Base, Winthrop, Washington.

Jumpfest1972-006 by John Ratliff, on Flickr

And, here's what we looked like when actually fighting a fire:

NCSB Evening Jump by John Ratliff, on Flickr
Larry Longly coming in for a landing, just missing a pine tree.

NCSB Jump001 by John Ratliff, on Flickr
Larry and I jumped on an actual fire in the Washingto Cascades, and Larry got a hang-up on a tree by his suspension lines. The plane thought he was hurt, as the wind blew him through three or four trees before this tree stopped him. We got down, and had to saw down a very old tree because it was still smoldering on the top, put the fire out, and then had to go back and get the 'chute out of the tree. I had signaled the plane that Larry was okay by laying out our ribbon in a "LL" formation, saying he was fine. They were about to drop the First Aid kit.

NCSB Jump008 by John Ratliff, on Flickr
Larry Longly just after a fire.

John Photos002 by John Ratliff, on Flickr

John

[SeaRat]

Okay, let’s talk about what you call “orienteering.” In my youth, it was called map and compass work. My Dad, Donald E. Ratliff, actually wrote a book titled, “Map, Compass and Campfire,” which was a handbook for the outdoorsman. It detailed how to use a map and compass in the field. Dad first showed how you needed to set the area declination on the compass. The declination is the difference between true north and magnetic north. If you have old maps, that needs to be updated as the magnetic North Pole changes over time. Once the declination is set, you can orient a map, and use triangulation to pinpoint your location. You do this by taking readings (using true north) of landmarks on the map, and drawing l along those readings on the map. Where they intersect is your position. Then you can look at the map, and figure out where you want to go. Finally you take a heading, find something along that heading to keep you on track, and walk to it (sometimes around obstacles). So that’s map and compass work.

For diving, it’s a bit more complicated. Diving compasses work on magnetic north, not true north. So to translate your location on the surface (you just surfaced from a wreck with a lot of silver in it), you find landmarks to use, take bearings, and write them on your slate. But when you get back, you have to translate those readings from magnetic north to true north to work with any shoreline map. Once you do that, your can draw your lines, and where they intersect is your location in the water.

Orienteering is a different thing though. My understanding is that this involves competition, using a map and compass (or now, GPS). In the earlier days, GPS wasn’t available. I think GPS satellites only came about in the late 1980s to 1990s. Now, it is very accurate, and can track me on my walks with my wife, or on my bicycle rides, painting a pattern on my Google Maps of my route. We had to do that by hand in the early days.

Now, about diving and the sport of underwater orienteering; this is a CMAS sanctioned international sport. In the 1980s I was Finswimming Director for the Underwater Society of America (USA), which is still the American arm of CMAS (the World Underwater Federation). There are international rules for sanctioned underwater orienteering competitions. And man, have the underwater orienteering swimmers changed over the years. I’ll show her a couple of videos of underwater orienteering, where a course is set, and the swimmers must swim underwater to markers, show that they have hit the markers, and proceed on a compass course to the next one, until the course is complete. Lowest time wins.







John