Short Final for the Beaver Fire

A small fire. A tight clearing. A lesson I won’t forget.

We are at 1,800 feet. Visibility is great — unrestricted in every direction. About 700 feet above us, a thick overcast layer sits like a lid on the world. Below, the boreal forest of western Saskatchewan stretches to every horizon: dense spruce, muskeg, and silence.

I spot the Beaver fire. It’s a small one — northwest of Dore Lake, a name that means nothing to most people but has become familiar to me this season. I’ve been here before. This morning I dropped the crew I’m now flying to pick up, landing 2.3 kilometres away — the closest I could find after 30 minutes of searching. That’s about the maximum a crew is permitted to walk in toward an active fire. Any closer becomes too dangerous to justify on foot.

They have walked through muskeg and dense forest, then cut down enough trees to carve a landing spot in the bush — big enough for one helicopter. This is what the crews do. The Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency Type 1 crews wear yellow brush shirts. I call them the Advanced Dudes. They are the elite of wildland firefighting: hundreds of hours deep in the bush, cutting firelines, running pumps, managing backburns. The brains of the operation. The red shirts — often volunteers or municipal staff — are the muscle. Today I’ve got 2 yellow shirts and their crew.

I transmit on the radio:

Good. He’s writing it down. Someone always knows where you are.

I circle the clearing once. It’s tight — but doable. I’ve landed in tighter. One of the yellow shirts is waving from below, proud of his work and ready to get out. Then I see the white helmet. That’s Big Joe, the crew leader. He reaches for his radio.

Now that I’ve turned away from the clearing, I can’t see it well anymore. I’m descending at 500 feet per minute, turning, slowing down. I feel a little rushed. I don’t notice it at the time.

The trees whip by below. I’m going too fast. I pick the nose up and pull pitch — that’s the collective, the control in my left hand that changes the angle of the rotor blades and gives the helicopter lift. The Bell 407 responds immediately. A quick shudder, and I’m down to 40 knots into wind, smooth and stable. Good. I run my instrument scan: oil pressure normal, engine temperature nominal, transmission healthy. About 500 pounds of fuel — roughly 1.5 hours with reserve. Plenty.

I begin my final approach using something called the parallax effect: objects that are far away appear to move slowly; as they get closer, they appear to accelerate. If I keep my closing speed on the clearing at roughly a brisk walking pace, I’ll naturally decelerate the whole way in — smooth, precise, easy on the machine. The helicopter pilot’s preferred method. (In an airplane, this would be fatal. Different discussion.)

My torque — the power the engine is pulling — is climbing as I slow down and descend. In dense air at low altitude, torque limits tend to come before engine temperature limits. I check the gauge. Good margin. I descend below the treeline.

“Wow, this is a cool approach,” I think to myself.

Another gauge check. Still good. My rotor wash is now reaching the guys on the ground — I can see them pressing their helmets down with both hands, leaning into the wind I’m making. Almost there.

A cold wave runs down my spine.

I forgot to check the ground. And I never picked a spot.

Every helicopter approach to an off-airport landing should end with a specific point on the ground that you’ve chosen, studied, and committed to — your intended touchdown spot. A patch of flat earth, a gap between roots, a clear piece of ground you’ve mentally marked and are flying toward. I had done none of that. I was descending into a clearing I’d only circled once, fast, with no spot picked and no ground assessment done. I was just… arriving.

I remembered a log lying across the clearing when I circled it. I can’t find it anymore — covered in moss, invisible from this angle. And when I glance at my mirror to check my right skid position, the mirror is knocked out of alignment. I must have bumped it earlier when I pulled the water bucket off. I’m hovering, pounding these guys with gale-force wind, and I genuinely do not know what my right skid is sitting above or what the ground beneath me actually looks like.

I hold the hover. The crew is staring at me. I slowly descend — I can see my left skid about three feet over the ground. Then I feel my right skid touch something. I stop. I should be left-skid low on a slope like this. Something is wrong.

I look straight at the other white helmet directly in front of me. He’s crouched low, watching. I hold his eyes and open mine wider — the universal signal. Tell me what you see. He understands instantly. He drops even lower, checks my skids, then looks up and points to my right. Move right. I check — plenty of clearance on that side. I lean my head out the window, scan the tail rotor area. Clear.

Hovering sideways is something I try to avoid in a tight environment like this — one unexpected gust, one misjudged input, and a rotor blade finds a tree. But I have no choice. I give the slowest, smallest sideways input I can, and ease right. The crewman tracks with me the whole way — checking my skid, checking the blade clearance above, checking the trees. Then his pointing finger curls into a thumbs up. He holds it, then turns it straight down.

I look in my mirror — now I can see it. A tree stump, right below where my right skid had been. I’d been balanced on it without knowing.

I set down. Collective full down. I take my left hand off the controls and give the thumbs up to Joe.

Then I breathe out. I realise I haven’t breathed in a while.

Five big guys walk up and load their bags into the basket. The bags look heavy. I do the weight math: the Bell 407 carries 5,250 pounds total. Minus the aircraft at 3,000. Minus 500 pounds of fuel. Minus my own 200 pounds (I always round up on myself — buffer). That leaves 1,550 pounds for crew and gear. They’ve each told me their weights: 280 to 300 pounds with bags. Five of them at the top end exceeds what I want to carry out of this tight spot, where I’ll need to climb vertically through the trees with no room to build airspeed.

One man steps off, walks to the front, gives me the thumbs up. We’re all paid by the hour out here — there’s no reason to rush, and the fire is not danger close and raging. It can wait five minutes.

Before I lift, I catch the eye of the crewman who guided me in. I press my hands together into a heart and hold them up to the window. He pulls his hand to his chest and gives me a slow smile. Out here, that counts as a standing ovation.

I lift off. The centre of gravity feels right. I pull ten percent more torque and we climb smoothly above the treeline. As we pitch forward for airspeed, I get back on the radio to tell base I’ve lifted the first four and I’m heading back to Beauval.