Published on July 2, 2026 03:48 am
Let me tell you a nightmare scenario: You go to the office every day, knowing that at any moment, you may be asked to pack and immediately go on an 18-day business trip. When you arrive, you will be dropped off at an unknown location, with no transportation, no way out, and no promise of rescue. Oh, and did I mention your destination is 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit and actively on fire?
That’s smoke jumping for you. When federal agencies get a call about remote wildfires, they break out the maps. If there are roads nearby, they dispatch ground-based hotshot crews. If there are no roads, no easy way out, and no easy way out – that’s when they send smokejumpers.
Jump crews are the nation’s first line of defense against devastating wildfires. Most operated from a handful of smokejumper bases scattered across the American West, ready to rapidly arrive at a disaster site at a moment’s notice. And speed they do. Within two minutes of the call, they are ready. Within ten minutes, they are on the plane. The crew – a typical group of six to eight firefighters – is dropped off in the middle of nowhere without any trucks or heavy equipment. Their job: to stop the flames with their hands. Only then do they start thinking of finding a way out.
In terms of work-life balance (non-existent) and physical difficulties (difficulty), it is one of the hardest jobs on the planet. Jumpers routinely carry 120-pound packs into steep, off-trail terrain. The work is seasonal, and the pay is poor. People often live out of their vehicles, work in restaurants on the coast, or move to Latin America in the off-season to further their savings.
The work is also dangerous. Just last week, three wildfire firefighters from the Colorado Helitack crew died fighting blazes in the western part of the state. Two more were injured. Smokejumpers have to contend with all the same risks, plus the danger of jumping from a plane – often in a parachute they have made themselves – into rocky, tree-covered terrain with no clear landing. Sprains, strains and broken ankles are not uncommon.
Additionally, federal funding cuts earlier this year cut nearly a quarter of the Forest Service’s workforce, decimating firefighting services at a time when climate change is lengthening fire seasons and making existing fires more destructive than ever. Shortages of staff can make fires worse—and the work more dangerous.
And yet, people who do say they can’t imagine doing anything else. here’s why.
gig at a glance
Work: smoke jumper
age: early 30s
Years in business: 9
Salary: $30,000 to $100,000 depending on fire activity
There are a lot of secure jobs out there. Why this?
I grew up in an area of the West where major fires are common. Sometimes in the summer, they would close the fairgrounds because they needed space for an event command post, and then we didn’t have a state fair. Fire was part of life for me.
“I never thought of it as a job,” he said. I was a small-time athlete, playing football and riding bulls. I applied myself to college rodeoing, but I was spending more money than I was making. Between the paycheck and the sense of purpose, Wildfire started looking pretty appealing. A few years later, I competed in jump events across the country. My first year of jumping, I was 23 years old.
How competitive is it to become a smokejumper?
It is extremely competitive. As a potential jumper, you apply to bases all over the country, and if you’re lucky, you’re accepted into a novice training program. The training is only six weeks long, but it is intensive. There are several hundred applicants to my base every year, and we usually only take 10 to 20. Then they have to complete it for the next six weeks. I have never seen a class where all the novice candidates have successfully completed the training. The decay rate is usually 50 percent.
What happens during training?
We keep it to ourselves. It’s our culture not to share what happens during those weeks. The mystery adds tension to the show. We want to see how novices do when they get into a situation where they don’t know what to do, because that’s exactly what they’ll be doing when they’re on the ground fighting fires.
What was your first jump like?
My first jump was in Alaska. It was a slow year in the lower 48, so they sent us there to help. I remember flying over the upper Yukon and looking down into the forest. There were zero roads, zero structures – only forest. As we got closer, we saw other planes falling into flames. We were next.
The thing about training is that it teaches you, without you even thinking, what to do and how to respond. Muscle memory simply takes over. I remember leaving the plane and then standing on the ground.
Then I stood there for a minute, looking around, waiting to be told what to do. But as a smoke jumper, no one gives you orders; You are expected to work independently. I was watching everyone opening up paracargo boxes and doing their thing, and I was like, “Okay. Now no one’s going to tell me what to do – I just have to grab a tool and get to work.”
How is the salary?
Terrifying. After my first season of jumping, I was considering going back to the Hotshot crew. Base pay is only $16 an hour When you’re starting out, and you don’t make real money until you’re on active fire and you’re getting hazard pay. My first season was so slow, I only made two jumps, and made about half of what I was making as a hotshot. But it got better. I now earn much more than the hotshot crew.
Part of the trouble is that we don’t get hazard pay for practice jumps. You would think that jumping out of an airplane 3,000 feet above the ground into a place made of wood you’ve never seen before would be considered dangerous. But unless there is an uncontrolled fire, we do not get any extra payment for that work.
When you’re not jumping, do you just sit around the station?
There is always so much to do. We are public servants, so if planes are staffed and there is no incident, we dispatch individuals to nearby fire services as needed. We send people out to do controlled burns in Florida, Georgia, Virginia and all over the West. We also spend a lot of time building and repairing gear.
Do you make all your parachutes and gear in house?
We do We make our own harnesses and risers – the components that connect the suspension line system to the parachute. Our entire office on the ground floor is full of sewing machines. After beginners graduate training, we send them up to the roof to learn to rig parachutes. There are ten measures they must take before being allowed to go to the fire. Once they rig 20, we let them do their own 21st parachute jump.
How do you maintain work-life balance with such an unpredictable schedule?
I spend my life on the road or in the sky for six months of the year. During the season, your work becomes your life, and your life becomes your work. I don’t think this is always a bad thing.
Most of our significant others know that we do what we do because we love it. The caveat is that I don’t have kids yet, and if that changes, things could get tough. I’ve noticed that people have to spend less time on the road because they have their first child, and that’s troubling because it means they make less money.
What is your nearest call?
I was working on a hotshot crew a few years ago, and we were on our second roll – meaning we’d already done a two-week stint in the field, had two days off, and were back for another two weeks. It was day 13 of that roll, and we had single-digit relative humidity. It was dry and hot, and the wind was blowing at 20 to 30 miles per hour.
It was about 12 or 1 o’clock in the afternoon – not a terrible time, but the heat of the day was approaching. We were working on a piece of dozer line, and the fire had burned in the understory. The ground was black and we were told that if the fire got bigger we could retreat here.
But then, in the heat, the unburned material in the ground began to smolder and create plumes of steam, and before we knew it, the flames were on the hill heading toward us – and we had half a mile to cover before we could reach safety.
I was trying to yell to my crew, but the fire was moving like a freight train, and I couldn’t hear myself. I remember waving my arms and shouting, but no one could hear me. Eventually the group looked around, saw the fire, and started running.
Most people left on foot in time, but some people were still there, and we had to send a vehicle. I saw the truck hit the wall of flames on the dozer line. Luckily, everyone made it. I remember the immense relief and adrenaline – but these days I do few things that don’t involve adrenaline in the least.
Have you ever lost a comrade in the line of duty?
A few years ago, there was a deadly attack on my team. I was quite young and an experienced jumper about to die. I was the last person to see his equipment. Before he took the last leap of his life, I gave him a final checkoff.
The thing he found wasn’t equipment failure, so I know it wasn’t my fault, but still. I was stuck on this for several days. I kept wondering in my mind: Did I miss something? Could I have stopped it?
It was eye opening. I began to wonder if I was in the right profession—was this what I wanted to do for the rest of my life?
Did that death make you think about leaving?
I never really wanted to leave. When something like this happens, you have all these conversations with the people you work with. They’ve all been through it and they’ve got this. These people aren’t just coworkers—they’re your best friends. This helps you recover from falls faster than you can imagine.
Why do you keep coming back again and again? What makes the risk worth it?
There are a lot of unknowns in life, and you might as well just keep doing what you love and trying to serve your community. I’m a blue collar guy. I don’t come from a trust-fund family. I’m going to work the rest of my life, and I know it. But it’s a government job, and I obviously don’t do it for the money – it’s the people. This is the service we provide. I have other jobs, and I can’t see myself finding another job that I enjoy as much or people that I not only work well with but really admire. They are my family.
If you look at the American workforce, how many people wake up in the morning and are excited to go to work? I bet you couldn’t find the whole group. Winters are the hardest for me. I miss the busy season. I miss the hustle and bustle around the base in the summer – there were lots of high fives and energy and the stakes were high. This is the feeling. This is what keeps me coming back.
Quotes have been edited to preserve length and clarity, as well as the anonymity of the source.
