Every Spring, our partner & I go up & prepare our cabin to be used. The people I was with and I spent most of our Summer weekends & every day all of us had off work, in our cabin in the mountains. My partner & I love to fish, & all of us passed our love of fishing & hiking down to her children, and in the Spring, all of us were up at the cabin & I wanted to scrub the chimney. The people I was with and I had a fireplace in the cabin to help keep us moderate on the cool days in early Spring & late summer, then after seeing the signs of squirrels in the cabin, I knew the flue must have been open all Winter time long. I was using the brush in the chimney when I realized it did not go down to the hearth. I had to go inside the apartment & push the brush into the chimney from the inside of the cabin. I got down on the fireplace hearth & started pushing the wire brush up into the chimney. My partner had just gotten out that I needed to be careful because there could a lot of dirt up there when the soot came flying down at me. A good layer of soot was all over the hearth & the floor. What did not make it onto the floor & hearth was in our hair on our skin & coated me from the head to toe. I swore this was going to be the last time I cleaned the fireplace chimney. The next time the fireplace chimney needed cleaned, I was going to call 1 of the local professionals.