As The Crow Flies

This is my emergency fire starting kit. It’s a spare Bic lighter and two Esbit Solid Fuel Tablets in a plastic ziplock baggie. It weighs 1.6 ounces or 47 grams. I’m thinking of trading one of the Esbit tablets in for a tea light.

I have never had to start a fire on the trail, but I have needed an extra lighter when my other one stopped working. Also I figure I could cook dinner on the Esbit tablets if I ran out of fuel or my stove quit working.

When I was hiking the Appalachian Trail in the Shenandoah’s, it had been rainy and cold for days. It wasn’t just vertical rain but this thick wet mist that would roll into my tent and get everything wet.  Supposedly, there was a camp ground with a laundry mat, showers,  and a store off the trail a bit, but it was so foggy that I couldn’t find it. Walking through the campground, I was yelling, “Hello?, Hellooo?” Finally I found the camp store, laundry mat and showers.    After buying food for the next section, I did laundry and took a shower. The laundry mat seemed so cheery with the bare Fluorescent bulb buzzing away.  While I waited for my clothes to dry I dreaded going back out into that wet cold fog.

Another hiker and I camped at the campground by the bathrooms; they were heated and had one of those lovely hand dryers. We had a hard time pulling ourselves away from the hand dryer.

Day after day it rained, and night after night I crawled into that wet tent.

According to the guide book there was a cabin coming up. It was a cabin that thru-hikers were not supposed to camp at, around or even stop at. I decided to check it out. It was a locked up cabin with a covered rock porch with a fireplace. There was another hiker there checking it out. I called to the woman I had been hiking with and told her that I had found accommodations for the night The other hiker decided he was going to build a fire in the outdoor fireplace.

My friend and I gave a half hearted effort to help him gather wood but we were both thinking it was futile; the woods were so wet. He gathered his dry kindling from the lower dead branches on trees. He also shaved the wet bark off some of the wood. I scraped wax from the mantle left from past resident’s candle burning and he used guide book pages for paper. Soon he had a nice fire going. It was so cheery and we were all so happy; never having imagined that this wet cold day would end up like this. We all laid our bags out in front of the fire and laughed and talked while the fire warmed our bodies and spirits.

Other things that you may have can be used as fire starting aids. For example any petroleum products like Neosporin or Chap Stick. If you carry alcohol gel you might want to try that.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 4:59 pm and is filed under Adventure gear and techniques, Appalachian Trail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.