Jordan Moede, Wildland Firefighter

Where there’s smoke, there are firefighters, including members of the elite (and accurately named) hotshot crews that take on some of the most demanding tasks in wildland blazes. Eagle Scout Jordan Moede is one such firefighter. He joined the Carson Interagency Hotshot Crew last spring and quickly got a baptism by fire, so to speak, during an eventful fire season across the American West and Southwest.

According to the National Interagency Fire Center, 58,083 wildfires burned nearly 8.8 million acres of land in 2018. While both those numbers were down from 2017—the costliest fire season on record—several fires stood out for their scope and devastating impact, notably the Carr, Mendocino Complex, and Camp fires in California. And few in Scouting circles will soon forget the Ute Park Fire, which burned more than 36,000 acres on and around Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico.

A native of Appleton, Wis., Moede actually came to the Carson Hotshots by way of Philmont. Although he never visited Philmont as a Scout—Northern Tier was his troop’s favorite high adventure destination—he jumped at the chance to join the ranch’s seasonal staff in 2010 after his freshman year at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Over the years, he worked as a conservationist, leading trail building projects with backcountry crews; as an environmental educator; a field coordinator; overseeing backcountry trail and conservation projects; and joined the newly formed trail design team.

Moede pursued several U.S. Forest Service jobs before he got the Carson Hotshots position in late February. By March 17, he was on the job at the team’s Taos, N.M., base, despite no formal training. “They had a good hunch from my work at Philmont and experience with backpacking, camping, and outdoor skills,” he says. “It ended up working out super well; I learned a lot very quickly.”

Wildland firefighters work a lot differently than those in cities or towns. Their goal is largely to contain fires by getting ahead of them and creating fire lines. “The saw crew will go in and clear a path, almost like in trail building,” Moede says. “They’ll cut a corridor, then we’ll come through and put in a handline, digging all the way to bare ground.”

Much of that work is done with hand tools like the Pulaski, which combines an ax and an adze on one handle. And it’s done in

close proximity to the fire. “They always say, ‘One foot in the black and one foot in the green,’” Moede says. “That’s actually the safer area because you’re always able to run into the area that’s already burned.”

Hotshot crews generally work 16-hour shifts. But last summer, Moede’s crew pulled two or three 24- hour shifts and one epic 32-hour shift. Depending on conditions and

Moede also fell right into his first major fire, although it felt far from comfortable. On May 31, his crew was called out to battle the Ute Park Fire that was threatening Philmont. They were among the first groups to arrive and among the last to leave two weeks later. He spent much of that time in areas where he’d been building trails just months before. “I knew the area like the back of my hand,” he says. “It was weird seeing it burned, but it was really useful in helping plan out what we were going to do.”

After the Ute Park Fire, the Carson Hotshots stayed in the Southwest until monsoon season reduced local fire dangers. They then traveled to Montana, Idaho, and California, where they spent two weeks on the Carr Fire. This offseason, Moede returned to Philmont to help with ongoing recovery and fire prevention efforts. He hopes those efforts, along with a wetter winter than last year, will reduce fire dangers this summer.

But if there’s another fire, he’ll be ready to return. “I’m really thankful that I got the experience I have working at Philmont and was able to come back and use that to help Philmont out,” he says.