Jump Point - Ophelia Sexton Page 0,1

tools.

With only one road leading in and out of the park, they had been critical in reaching the remote location of this fire.

Once the fire had been extinguished or controlled, the smokejumpers would pack up all their equipment. Heavily loaded, they were expected to "pack-out" in an arduous hike to a rendezvous point for pickup and transport back to base.

Everything that had come with them needed to go back with them, since all firefighters in national parks operated under the guideline for Minimum Impact Suppression Techniques, or MIST.

Though helicopter flights were restricted within wilderness boundaries, the authorities had made an exception in this case, because of the exceptionally rugged conditions in Denali.

A helitack crew had dropped cargo nets to carry out the majority of the smokejumpers' heavy equipment—chainsaws, cubies of drinking water, bundles of spare tools, and all the trash generated during nearly two weeks of intensive effort.

Mike and his teammates had kept their sleeping bags, hand tools, and the small amount of food they had left. They had jumped to the McKinley Fire with three days' worth of food and water, which had been supplemented by an air drop of additional rations and cubies of water.

Now, ten days later, the fire was finally out, and most of the food was gone.

With the satisfaction of another fire successfully knocked down, Mike and his teammates had begun their pack-out.

At their final incident briefing, his former teammate Carl Jensen, who was working for the Alaska Smokejumpers this fire season, had warned all the smokejumpers that this pack-out would be exceptionally long and strenuous. For starters, it was a two-and-a-half-day hike from the fire's location to their pickup point along Denali Park Road.

He had cautioned all the smokejumpers to carry bear spray and to make sure that they knew how to use it.

He had also warned them to run like hell from moose—which he described as "the most dangerous animals in Alaska"—but never to run from a wolf or bear. This was something that all the shifters present knew, since their beast halves were predators of various kinds, but Ordinaries needed to be reminded not to act like prey items when confronted with wild predators.

Without making eye contact with his former teammates, who were mostly bear, wolf, and big-cat shifters, Carl had finished his briefing with, "And for God's sake, stay at least twenty-five yards away from all wildlife, except for the bears—you'll want to put a minimum of three hundred yards away between you and a bear. Grizzlies can run 35 miles an hour, and they like fresh meat when they can get it."

At that, Mike had traded smirks with Thor Swanson, the other bear shifter on his team. Any grizzly who tried to pick a fight with them would be in for a big surprise.

Now it was time for the smokejumpers to load the cargo nets with all the equipment and supplies for helicopter pickup, to clean up the campsite, and to pack their personal gear.

Mike had always enjoyed packing out after a mission. At that point, he'd usually been busting his butt for days, working long shifts doing intense physical labor like cutting brush, digging firebreaks, and smothering flames with dirt, all of it in filthy, smoky, hot conditions.

But once the job was done, it was customary for jumpers to split up and hike to the pickup-up spot at their own pace.

With his shifter strength, the usual pack-out backpack, that weighed a hundred pounds plus, was no big deal. And the rendezvous schedule usually gave Mike time to stop and go for a swim in a pristine lake or river or to do some fishing and berrying.

Mostly, he considered it well-earned free time when he could let his bear out to enjoy itself and take a break from his daily routine, as long as he made it to the pickup spot on time.

The Ordinary smokejumpers considered pack-out the hardest part of a mission, since hiking to a pickup point through unfamiliar territory sometimes took twice as long as their briefings led them to believe, and it set them against natural obstacles not mentioned in those briefings. On rare occasions, the jumpers were able to use an existing trail, which made for an easier hike. But that didn't happen very often in the remote and mountainous areas where they normally operated.

And of course, there was always the danger of getting lost, even with compasses and GPS. Dense woodland interfered with signals, electronics' batteries failed, and even analog compasses tended to behave