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96-17NC
Forest Service Packer Note Card
This scene shows a woman Forest Service packer with a string of mules and horses in the Willamette National Forest of Oregon in the 1980s.
She kept busy packing for Forest Service workers, trail crews, fire lookouts in their lonely towers, and firefighters, etc. When she was packing, the days were usually very long; 16 to 17 hours - sometimes 7 days a week. In 1987, when the smoke from Oregon's Silver Complex forest fire was so thick that helicopters were grounded, she and another packer worked 36 straight, grueling days packing food and other supplies to isolated firefighting crews. On one of those days she and her horse tumbled off a narrow ledge trail above a 300-ft. slope after her mount was stung by a wasp. The animal rolled over leaving her near the top of the slope with a broken rib; the horse went all the way to the bottom of the canyon.
Alone and in pain she walked her string of mules to a safe spot and tethered them. Then she picked her way down the slope, found her horse dead, packed her gear and a radio back to the top and called for help. She took a day off and headed back to the fires.
Stationed in the McKenzie Ranger District of the Willamette National Forest, she operated from the historic Fish Lake Remount Station off Highway 126 where she lived in a 75-year-old log cabin during the fire season.
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