The Bitterroot Hot Shots’ firefighting season officially got underway last week while battling a blaze in a Canadian boreal forest and hazing away bears with helicopter water drops. The Darby-based group of elite firefighters hit its halfway mark Wednesday in a 14-day stint working on Alberta’s largest fire. The uncontrolled Chuckegg Creek fire has burned over 700,000 acres — nearly the size of Rhode Island. It is already 50% larger than last year’s record-breaking Medocino Complex Fire in California. Bitterroot Hotshots Superintendent Cache Gibbons said the fire is burning through a boreal forest of mostly spruce and aspen. “Aspen is not supposed to burn very well,” Gibbons said. “But it’s so dry up here, the fire is carrying through both the aspen understory and getting up into the leaves. It’s not something you would usually see.”