With snow coming down in sheets, the firefighters dropped their jerry cans, shrugged off their coiled hoses and, one after another, handed over heavy pumps to waiting instructors. …The drill, in which recruits repeatedly carry as much as 70 kilograms of gear up a steep hill for two hours straight, is meant to be “one of the toughest things you’ve ever done,” instructor Katelynn Harness said last week. But it’s more than just intentional suffering – it’s about each recruit proving to themselves what they are capable of. And it’s an annual rite of passage for new recruits in the BC Wildfire Service, one of several on the final day of New Recruit Boot Camp. Instructors – some with decades of wildfire experience – can still recall their own battles on that hillside in the mountains above Merritt, B.C.