Wildfire fight relies on keen eyes

LEAVENWORTH, Wash. – It’s an hour’s drive up a winding dirt road to the old tower. Wendy Carney, the resident fire spotter, can see you coming long before you reach the top.

The breeze is crisp and gusty at 6,000 feet elevation, the top of Sugarloaf Peak. The lookout tower overlooks an eerie clearing of fireweed, shrubs and the ashen ghosts of trees burned long ago.

High above the snags, the square, lantern-like building rests atop a mass of basalt. A short staircase leads to the one-room lookout.

All four walls are windows, and Carney’s main job is to look out of them all, scanning the ridgelines for smoke. The 360-degree view stretches from the Enchantments to Mount Baker and the North Cascades, to Stormy Mountain and the Chelan area, to the Waterville Plateau.

“Right after the rain has come through or the wind, it clears out all this haze,” Carney said. “I can see everything. It really is incredible and I can’t stop looking. This is God’s country. How could you not take it in?”

As a fire spotter for the U.S. Forest Service, she’s the main pair of eyes watching for fires between Leavenworth and Entiat. Storm after storm threatened the dry terrain of north-central Washington over the last two weeks.

Every 15 minutes, Carney walks the lookout’s narrow wraparound porch. Binoculars up, she scans every section of forest, side to side, top to bottom.

“These bad boys are so high-powered I can see over the other side of the Columbia,” Carney said, binoculars in hand. “I can essentially see the farmers working on the Waterville Plateau.”

Inside the tower, the lookout is furnished like a studio apartment, with a small bed, a desk, a mini-fridge and a stove. There is no running water.

Thursday was the last day of her third 10-day shift at the Sugarloaf lookout. She lives in the lookout for 10 days with four days off. Most days she works 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., monitoring the forests, the skies, the wind and humidity.

In the middle of the room is a large, compass-like firefinder, a tool which helps her calculate the exact location of potential fires.

“You really need to zero it in so the fire engines, rappellers, the engines, whoever is coming in, can find that as soon as they can.”

As of Thursday, lightning had sparked about 125 fires in the Wenatchee-Okanogan National Forest this season.

Fire crews contained two fires, both less than an acre, near Sugarloaf two weeks ago.

On Wednesday morning, Carney spotted a small column of smoke rising from behind Roaring Ridge, which turned out to be a small sleeper fire – her first confirmed fire of the season.

A fire crew contained it within a few hours. On the way to Roaring Ridge, a reconnaissance plane spotted another small fire on the other side of Gold Ridge, out of sight from the lookout.

Within 20 minutes, a helicopter bucket drop and four rappellers had controlled the blaze.

“We kept most of our fires under an acre, and I’m really proud of that,” Carney said. “Considering the fire danger and red-flag warnings, everyone’s done a tremendous job.

Since her first day on the job, July 3, Carney has been caught in at least five electrical storms. The dry, fire-starting kind began a month ago, she said.

“In the middle of the night, I’ll see lightning flash cloud-to-cloud over me,” she said.

Aside from radio chatter and weekend visitors, Carney’s world is typically quiet. She reads a book, goes hiking or talks to family in her free time, she said.

“I do feel like a caretaker of the forest.”