This story appears in the May 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine.
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When wildfires break out, this elite team of ‘smokejumpers’ parachute in
A dangerous race to fight remote fires begins each summer when Alaska's combustible backcountry is ablaze.
Matt Oakleaf, camera mounted on his gear bag, drops behind the rest of his team to a landing site near smoldering boreal forest. Jumpers can put on 100 pounds of gear and get on a plane in minutes. Their mission: extinguish fires before they rage out of control.
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