Continuing our May 6 burning adventures, we departed mapp and drove west to nwlf. Our goal was to burn nwlf when conditions were most extreme to maximize burn coverage at nwlf.
After arriving at the site, staging equipment, and taking weather, I ignited a test fire in the NW corner of the unit. We were pleased with fire behavior and went ahead with securing the north edge of the burn unit. After rounding the tricky northeast corner, I tried extending the black in the ditch with little success. The fire did not carry well in the bottom of the ditch. We decided the best course of action was to ignite along the eastern edge of the unit before igniting in the ditch. I used a lot of fuel in the bottom of the ditch. This generated a lot of smoke but didn’t dramatically improve burn coverage in the bottom of the ditch at the north end of the unit. I ignited one more line along the western edge of the unit for good measure. The smoke soon subsided and we were left with a sufficiently charred ditch to leave us proud of our work. We packed up and departed for our last remnant burn of the afternoon.
Igniting along the north edge (Alex’s photo) Securing the north break was strenuous work (Alex’s photo) Lighting in this ditch bottom was an exercise in futility (Alex’s photo) 
Jared re-evaluating tactics from the ditch (Alex’s photo) Fire carried much better along eastern edge of unit (Stuart’s photo) Jared dismayed by ratio of fire to drip torch fuel in the bottom of the ditch (Alex’s photo) Who made all this smoke? (Stuart’s photo) Pretty complete burn on south end of unit Patchy burn in ditch on north end of burn unit (Stuart’s photo)
Temperature: 69 F
Relative Humidity: 31 %
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind Direction: SE
Ignition time: 3:30 PM
End time: 3:58 PM
Burn Crew: Jared, Stuart, Alex C., Trygg
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