Fires started by lightning often erupt in very remote, mountainous parts of the state, far from any roads. Sometimes the only way to get fire crews to them is to have them jump out of planes. It takes ...

Hiker Sarah Brandt wandered into the past when she arrived in southwest Oregon’s Siskiyou Smokejumper Base where wildfire fighters once parachuted out of airplanes into blazing forests. Brandt, who ...

Here’s the smokejumper workout that Alaskan firefighters use to get into the elite team, aka the Navy Seals of firefighting in Alaska. Over the last 25 years, photographer Mark Thiesssen has been ...

We spoke with photographer Mark Thiessen to find out what it was like capturing Alaskan smokejumpers doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Being an Alaskan smokejumper might be one of the ...

Somewhere deep in the North Cascades, lightning strikes a parched mountainside, igniting a wildfire. Someone spots the blaze and calls emergency services. The tip gets routed to a U.S. Forest Service ...

When dispatch calls in a new wildfire, Cole Siemion and the other Great Basin Smokejumpers are trained to suit up and be ready to board a plane in two minutes. Smokejumpers are highly trained wildland ...

MISSOULA, Mont. — Fighting wildland fires is grimy, exhausting, dangerous and impressive. When smokejumpers do the work, parachuting in to wage the initial attack on fires in remote, rugged places, ...

Flying 3,000 feet above desert scrubland in New Mexico, Nick Stanzak taps the first smokejumper on the shoulder to signal it's his turn to leap from the twin-engine plane.In pairs of two, the team of ...

As a young firefighter, Jason Ramos was drawn to the mystique and skill of smokejumpers, a gruff and taciturn breed of firefighters who didn’t boast about their unusual job — they just did it. “As ...

For most of us jumping into a fire would be the stuff of nightmares. But for Jason Ramos, author of Smokejumper: A Memoir By One of America’s Most Select Airborne Firefighters it’s a job and way of ...