{gallery}09_24_09/clark{/gallery}Heedless of the fiery drama above their heads, horses graze peacefully while Shoshone NAtional Forest personnel conduct a controlled burn near Bennett Creek above Clark on Friday. Tribune photo by Gib MathersForest Service concludes controlled burn near ClarkApproximately 400 acres above Clark were put under the torch intentionally Friday and Saturday.Over the course of two years, three prescribed burns have been initiated in this area. This is the last planned fire in the area, said Clint Dawson, zone fire manager for Shoshone National Forest, as he stood at his observation post below the blaze near Bennett Creek on Friday.

Armed with kerosene drip torches, 16 Shoshone National Forest personnel fanned out across the steep hill facing Clark below the Beartooth Plateau roughly west of Bennett Creek.

The fire will remove encroaching conifers to improve defensibility of private land in the Clark area and improve habitat for wildlife, Dawson said.

In some places on the slope are small groves, in other spots, the trees are distributed like pea-green dots amid autumn-brown grass.

“We can fight a grass fire better than we can trees,” Dawson said.

In 2002, the forest service held a public meeting in Clark to discuss controlled burns. At the time, some locals were skeptical.

Then in 2003, the 6,000- to 7,000-acre Deep Lake Fire ignited, burning down Little Rock Creek toward Clark and demonstrating the reality of risk to Clark residents, Dawson said.

It seems only minutes after Dawson's arrival, a plume of smoke rises from the trees.

“We're getting really good results from this juniper,” said a disembodied voice on Dawson's two-way radio.

It's spreading now. Within the brown and gray smoke, a few trees crown, flaring like candles in a soupy fog.

Dawson watches and listens to the radio discussion while receiving reports from an automated weather station located in the fire zone. The station's computer voice measures and reports the temperature, wind direction and humidity.

Like a cloud pinned to the ground, the tawny smoke hovers over the fire zone and finds escape, rising like a fuzzy monolith and then dispersing like a frayed bubble.

Strolling up a dirt track, a few horses invade Dawson's mobile observation post. Like children questioning an adult busy at a crucial task, the horses are underfoot. But the pleasure of the equines' visit overshadows any vexation.

The fire is burning steadily now, gradually moving down the hill as planned. Like a mindless lawnmower, the fire consumes almost everything in its path.

But some trees are spared.

Starting at the top, the guys light horizontal lines of fire. They move down the slope and light another line and then repeat the procedure. In this way, the flames can be directed by the crew.

“We lay strips of fire, and it keeps burning into what it burned before,” Dawson said. “It gives us really good control.”

“It just runs into itself continually,” Dawson added.

Dawson has no fear for his crew's safety. The personnel are clad in Nomax (fire retardant) clothing and pack fire shelters — a fire-proof blanket they can cover themselves with if fire overtakes them. And at all times they keep the fire at their backs.

Last spring, just northeast of the current fire, crews torched 400 acres in the same manner. From here, the old burnt trees resemble toasted straws in the grass.

In 2007, a similar controlled burn took place further to the northeast on Line Creek, removing 600 to 700 acres of trees.

On Friday afternoon, around lunch time, the fire appears to be cooperating — taking out most of the timber but leaving some unscathed to create a mosaic pattern that the forest service always aims for.

Dawson said Monday the 400-acre burn was completed by Saturday at noon.