Ruana has a fixed blade called the Smoke Jumper. It has been around for several years , sometime in the 1930’s . MG2
MNOSD 0002 / Do more than is required of you . Patton
Nothing makes earth so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.
Henry David Thoreau
"In 1942, permanent jump operations were established at Winthrop, Washington, and Ninemile Camp, an abandoned Civilian Conservation Corps camp (Camp Menard) a mile north of the Forest Service's Ninemile Remount Depot (pack mule) at Huson, Montana, about 30 miles (48 km) northwest of Missoula. The first fire jumps were made by Rufus Robinson and Earl Cooley at Rock Pillar near Marten Creek in the Nez Perce National Forest on July 12, 1940, out of Ninemile, followed shortly by a two-man fire jump out of Winthrop. In subsequent years, the Ninemile Camp operation moved to Missoula, where it became the Missoula Smokejumper Base. The Winthrop operation remained at its original location, as North Cascades Smokejumper Base. The "birthplace" of smokejumping continues to be debated between these two bases, the argument having persisted for about 70 years."
Smoke Jumpers are crazy people who jump out of perfectly good aircraft, into middle of forest fires. Then try and put out fires.
These guys are the best and bravest. In California, we have Heletack where the best and fittest wildland firefighters arrive in minutes to keep the fires as small as possible. Sometimes they go in several fires a day. California has a lot of grass and those fires can spread quite fast and time is of the essence. There is a type 2 AKA hotshots that often get a helicopter ride and dropped off to attack the fire directly with only hand tools and chainsaws. I did that once where we got dropped off and we got stuck in a bad predicament where they had to call off all aircraft due to smoke due to weather and extreme fire behavior so we could not get extracted. Fire went pretty wild and our escape route was cut off so we had to sit in an undersized safety zone for a few hours while all around us, the whole mountain burned away then hike out through the night out of the mountains. These guys are the best and love their jobs. They (pilots included) unfortunately are underpaid heroes that don’t get the attention that they truly deserve. They literally put their lives on the line on a wench out of a helicopter to do rescues and save homes and lives. I am proud to have worked with them and know them. I hope the Wildfire knife gets made and put into the hands of these people. One heletack firefighter used a spyderco Autonomy just in case he needed to cut the 1/4” steel cable that attached him to the copter if things went south.
Mule Team Army 001
MNOSD 008 Stable Mules; Z-Max, Z-Wear, Magna Cut, SRS13, Rex 76, Rex T15.