Honoring the 13 smokejumpers killed in Mann Gulch 70 years ago

Wayne Phillips waves a white flag in honor of the Miss Montana fire fighting plane

Miss Montana, which dropped the smoke jumpers 70 years ago, made several runs in their honor 

Peter Johnson walks past one of the spots where a smoke jumper died

A new fire at Flesher Pass is visible over the Sleeping Giant on our way out

Our Wayne's Wednesday Walks moved its weekly hike to Monday to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Mann Gulch Disaster in the Helena National Forest where 13 Forest Service smoke jumpers died on Aug. 5, 1949.
We've hiked in here several other times using Norman MacLean's "Young Men and Fire," that dissects the fire like a detective story.  The puzzle is how and where did two of the smoke jumpers climb to a ridge and through a cliff to safety while the others died.
The fire is famous not only as the worst smoke jumper tragedy up to that date, but also for the innovation by Wag Dodge, the fire boss, who back-lit a fire in the grass and stepped into the char, covered his face with a wet hankie and escaped death as the fire, having no fuel, jumped over him.  Despite his urging, the fire fighters refused to get into that safety zone and died.  His back-lighting is now standard forest fire fighting practice.
We waited in a saddle above where the smoke jumpers were dropped by an airplane now called the Miss Montana.  As part of a commemoration ceremony at the Meriwether Picnic Area in the Gates of the Mountains, the plane flew four times up and down the gulch as it had that fateful day. 
Gordon Whirry and I had scurried up a high point to the north and were amazed as the plane flew below us and and circled around beneath the nose of the Sleeping Giant and the Horseshoe Bend in the Missouri on its way to the gulch.
We were surprised by how few others hiked to this spot on this day.
There were about a dozen other hikers on a day that began cool and even spit some rain, but warmed up substantially into the 90s as we hiked out.
We used a great hunter's trail and some reckoning rather than the standard Jim Phillips Memorial Trail off Willow Creek Road on the Beartooth Game Range.  It cut off substantial distance and crossing Willow Creek wasn't difficult, but got one of my shoes wet.
Just as I was remarking to the others how blue and smokeless the sky was a wildfire blew up in the Flesher Pass area blowing smoke into the Holter Lake area.
Appropriate for such a day.
Part of our commemoration was an (Indian) sage grass smudge conducted by Wayne Phillips at the drop site.
Wayne also carried a large, white flag up and waved it as the plane flew by and as a guide to the spotter plane testing the route before Miss Montana made her run.
We went to the cliffs where Robert Sallee and Walt Rumsey had scurried to safety and Wayne told us that he had back-measured from the spot where one of the others who made it through the cliffs, but was burned below.  A cross and monument mark the spot.  He felt confident that he had located the spot in the dark-brown cliffs where the smoke jumpers had gotten to safety.
I had interviewed Sallee and Rumsey 40 years ago for the Great Falls Tribune on the fire's 30th anniversary, as well as Norman MacLean, who had brought them together to investigate how they got through the cliffs for his seminal book.
My, 40 years just flew by.