LOS ANGELES _ The veteran wildland firefighter holds up a stopwatch, his thumb on the button.
"Everyone ready?" he asks.
For four of the competitors lined up in the scrubby terrain near Hansen Dam, it will soon become apparent that they should have answered, "No."
Fifty-four candidates filed applications to participate in the U.S. Forest Service's Women in Wildland Basic Training Camp _ the first to be held in Southern California's Angeles National Forest.
Now it's down to 10.
Women have fought wildfires in the U.S. for decades. But a wide gender gap remains, with women holding about 13 percent of the permanent wildfire-suppression jobs in the Forest Service.
To address this, in 2012 the Forest Service launched its first all-women training program, in New Mexico.
"Our goal was to do a better job of targeting women and preparing them mentally and physically for work on fire lines," says Bequi Livingston, the Forest Service fire specialist who came up with the concept. "Since then, the idea has spread to national forests in Arizona, Idaho, Montana and California."
So, on a hot and sticky June morning, the remaining candidates, ages 19 to 52, fidget uncomfortably under the weight of 45-pound vests.
Those who can scramble through the three-mile course in under 45 minutes will advance immediately into five days of training for a job that can require 16-hour shifts, night and day, for up to two weeks straight _ often in rugged wilderness where, in addition to walls of flame and smoke roiling with lethal toxins, the workplace amenities may include rattlesnakes, careening rocks and burnt trees crashing over in the night.
Still, many are tempted by the $14-an-hour salary, with additional pay for overtime, holidays and hazardous duty, and a chance to forge a new career path.
MacKenzie Jennings, 27, a single mother who works as a waitress near Lake Hughes, says she's going into the trial with a sense of purpose.
"Waiting on tables," she says, stretching, "is not a lifetime job."
A few feet away, Estephany Campos, 27, an art teacher who grew up in South Los Angeles, takes a swig from a water bottle.
"I don't intend to fail," she mutters.
The thumb clicks the stopwatch.
"Go!"
The aspiring trainees surge forward. Almost immediately they encounter a discouraging obstacle: A Labrador retriever has collapsed in the middle of the trail.
"Heat exhaustion," a passer-by says.
By the time they hit the final half-mile, an asphalt bike path stretching along the crest of the dam, the women are leaning forward, grimacing.
One competitor's stride gets choppy and she falls behind. Then another. In the end, four fail the test.
Sales clerk Kelsey Almendariz, 27, of Inglewood is the first across the finish line, with 11 minutes to spare.
She struggles to catch her breath.
"The whole time ... I kept telling myself ... 'Don't disappoint.'"
Campos and Jennings also cross the line in the allotted time, faces flushed, legs wobbling. So do Adela Montserrat Valencia, 19, of Cameron Park, Hannah Siebert, 19, of Bakersfield, and Yasmine Wolfe, 52, of Sunland.
Campos immediately texts her boyfriend, a firefighter with a hotshot crew out of Flagstaff, Ariz., not far from where, in 2013, a wildfire killed 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots: "Yo! I passed."
A few hours later a caravan of green Forest Service vehicles delivers the new firefighting class to a remote camp in the San Gabriel Mountains, about 45 miles northwest of Pasadena.
Hungry, tired and sore, they trundle to assigned cabins.
