Building a Fire on a Wet Day in the BWCA/Quetico
Finding Warmth After a Wet Day on the Water.
It’s been a wet day of canoeing and you just want to feel some warmth. You can’t wait to get to camp and start a fire. But you are worried about finding some dry wood to get the fire started and burn. Hopefully, you have brought along a few fire starter squares, or at least some dryer lint, to get things going. But if you haven’t, here are a few tips to help you when this situation arises.
1. Carry a flint and steel along with matches. You can go through a lot of matches on a cold, windy day. But the flint and steel will keep making sparks.
2. Each BWCA campsite has a fire ring with a grate. Make sure you have a nice space under the grate that is protected from the wind.
3. Most important is to gather up tinder and kindling. For tinder, look for birch bark. Birch bark, even when wet, will light easily. Just don’t remove the bark from live trees. Also look for some dry pine needles and pine bark with sap bubbles. These are also very flammable. Also gather up small sticks to use as kindling once you get the tinder going.
4. Lay a few small sticks across the ground of the fire ring. The dirt in the fire ring will likely be wet and cold. The sticks will act as insulating floor.
5. Now place your tinder on top of your floor of sticks. Using a match or flint and steel, light the tinder. Then begin to add your kindling slowly until your fire is going well.
6. At this point you should be able to add larger pieces of wood.
Here are a couple of additional fire building tips.
Place your larger two pieces of wood on the fire grate above your fire to dry out.
Wood that is damp on the outside may be dry on the inside. Try making some fuzzsticks which will help expose the dry wood. Fuzzsticks can make great tinder.
Make sure you have plenty of tinder, kindling and some larger wood ready before you light your fire.
Test your fire building skills on a dry day first.