What it's like being trapped by wildfire in Alberta's backcountry

Christine Jacques had no idea an evacuation order was in effect for Jasper National Park when she and her friend woke up in a tent on Tuesday. It was a beautiful, blue-sky-mountain-air kind of morning.

Then, at 7 a.m. local time, her sister got in touch through the satellite communicator Jacques carries when she's in the backcountry. A wildfire had broken out and was burning dangerously close to where she was on Fryatt Trail. Even if they could make it back to the parking lot, the fire was blocking the road out of there. 

The next few hours were confusing. Other than Jacques and her camping partner, there were three adults, two kids and a dog at the campsite. At first, they weren't sure if they should bike back down to the parking lot, stay put or go farther up the mountain.

Jacques, 44, said at that time time she didn't feel like they were in imminent danger. "It was more a matter of trying to figure out where to go without getting in the way of things," she told CBC News.

Jacques used her GPS messaging system to try to contact Jasper Dispatch, but it wasn't clear if the messages were getting through. She got her sister to telephone them and the group was eventually told to stay put and wait for a helicopter.

At around 10 a.m., Jacques started to see white smoke. "It looked like it was just over the next ridge," she said. After that, she said she "definitely had an uneasy feeling."

Remarkably, everyone remained calm. The wind was blowing the fire away from their campsite. Jacques said she couldn't really smell smoke and the skies overhead were still clear. 

"It would've been different if you could see the fire coming down the mountainside, if it was black and ominous, rather than white," she said. "You don't understand the magnitude of it when there are no other signs."

About two hours later, a helicopter circled over their campsite and then flew away. The campers were trying to figure out if it was looking for a place to land or just doing a headcount, when, suddenly, they heard a radio behind them.

It was a member of the rescue team there to escort them to their airlift. They had to bushwhack a few hundred metres through the tinder-dry backcountry to get to the helicopter landing spot.

The other campers got on the first airlift out of there. Jacques said the kids — and even their dog — stayed cool and collected as they got on the helicopter. "The blades were turning and [the dog] was standing there like it was an everyday occurrence."

At about 1:45 p.m., the helicopter came back for Jacques, her friend and a member of the rescue crew who stayed behind with them.

Once they were in the air, the threat from the wildfire became much more apparent. "Once you could see the fire, it just kept going and going," she said. The pilot called the fire "a monster."  It was so big and hot, it was creating a lot of turbulence for the helicopter.

As Jacques flew over the mountain, she looked at some of the other trails she had hiked before, now under threat from flames. "There's all this beautiful terrain that might not be here. Just stunningly beautiful countryside."

Then, the chopper touched down at a staging area and she and her friend were taken to an evacuation centre in Jasper. They had to wait a few hours before getting on a shuttle bus to Edmonton.

They passed another fire burning just east of Jasper, along the highway. "We saw the extent of the fire … still smouldering and smoking."

Jacques spent the night in Edmonton, and now is on her way to stay with her sister in Calgary. She's not sure when she will be able to return to the trail head to collect her truck — or if it will still be in one piece.

But she does have plans to go hiking in the mountains again — on Friday, with her niece and nephew.