When you assemble 812 people to fight a fire in the wilderness, you need a variety of occupations - pilots, accountants, cooks, map-makers, weathermen and medics, to name a few.
Every now and then you might also need a mule skinner or four, which was the case Thursday on the Horseshoe 2 Fire, which has now burned through 34,451 acres of the Chiricahua Mountains in 12 days.
Horses and mules have one big advantage over helicopters on this fire. "They don't care about wind," said Bill Edwards, ranger for the Douglas district of the Coronado National Forest.
On Thursday morning, four Forest Service wranglers led a string of horses and mules up a trail from Rucker Canyon to resupply a force of 40 hotshots with meals, water, coffee and tools.
Those two crews had worked through the night to successfully keep the fire on the east side of Raspberry Ridge, now the southwest boundary of the Horseshoe 2 Fire, said Brad Pitassi, spokesman for the team managing the fire.
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The crews had been flown to a site near the lookout tower on 9,340-foot Monte Vista Peak the morning before. Air operations were suspended Wednesday afternoon and again Thursday morning as clouds hung over the peaks.
Horses and mules don't care about clouds, either. The string, owned by the Forest Service, regularly supplies wilderness lookouts in the Chiricahuas, Edwards said.
From Monte Vista, crews will extend a line north to the vicinity of Chiricahua Peak to establish a western defense along the Crest Trail, the north-south spine of these mountains.
The goal, said Edwards, is to "prevent fire from getting established on the west."
The fire, which started on May 8 in Horseshoe Canyon, has burned through most of the east side of the 87,770-acre Chiricahua Wilderness. The fire is 25 percent contained.
Edwards holds out hope that the fire may eventually prove beneficial. On the first day, when it raced across 3,000 acres of dried grass and oak hills, it obliterated the landscape, he said. Since then, it has mostly burned along the ground, with only occasional incidents of crowning in the trees.
The weather news was good Thursday. The wind slackened a bit, though it still grounded helicopters in the afternoon. The cold front that brought fierce winds Wednesday also brought cooler temperatures and higher humidity.
At a community meeting in nearby Rodeo, N.M., on Thursday, residents were told not to expect an end to this fire anytime soon, possibly not until rains come in early July, said Peg Abbott of Portal.
Evacuation orders continued for the Southwest Research Station east of Portal and for a dozen or so homes in the Cave Creek area. The five permanent residents of Paradise remain under potential evacuation notice.
Contact reporter Tom Beal at tbeal@azstarnet.com or 573-4158.
