Counterintuitively the knee- and waste-high flames crept through matted and cured grasses straight into the wind coming out of the southwest.
This is what firefighters refer to as âbacking.â On Thursday, in a grassy flat just outside the cottonwoods south of the Gros Ventre River floodplain, âbackingâ was just what Teton Interagency Fire assistant fire management officer Bill Mayer wanted to see.
âIf youâve got a good, continuous fuel bed, itâll do that,â Mayer said. âFor the most part, itâs just backing on its own.â
Firefighters corralling predictably moving flames set the scene for the National Elk Refugeâs first prescribed burn since early in the first term of the George W. Bush administration. The two-decade-long absence of flames from the landscape â best known as a wintering ground for thousands of elk and hundreds of bison â resulted from a lack of funds and resources. But ahead of this springtime burning season, when the vegetation is dry, but not too dry, the Elk Refuge secured enough money to pull off a 147-acre controlled fire in the Pederson Prescribed Burn unit.