Well, there was a post recently by a member of these forums about himself and his daughter going into their backyard and trying to get a fire going. To make a long story short, I decided I was going to try something similar. I live in the Northeast, and we just had a big snow storm. Everything is wet outside. I decided it would be an ideal time to go out and try to get a fire going to see if I actually could get one going in a cold, snowy climate if I needed to. I was only going to be taking what I normally carry with myself on a daily basis - in this case I would be using my PSK and Leatherman Charge.

So, I set off into the woods a couple miles from my house, and hiked in for about 30 minutes, and picked a random spot. The ground was covered in snow, as were many of the nearby trees. I started out by making a small fire stand out of some wet, living wood. I cut off some small branches from a nearby tree, and began placed them side-by-side on the ground. I then cut some more small sticks and placed them parallel to the origional two, creating a small platform.



Next, I took a plain cotton ball, ripped it apart, and placed it on the platform. I then took several small dry twigs and placed then all around the cotton ball, sort of like I was building a teepee around the cotton ball.



Next, I took my Sparklite, and lit the cotton ball. It took a couple of cotton balls (they were plain, not soaked in anything), but sure enough I got a small fire going.



I kept adding some small dry pieces of tinder that I was able to find on the lower branches of a dead tree, and slowly worked my way up to larger and larger pieces of fuel. Eventually, somewhat to my surprise, I had a pretty decent fire going.



Even though I got this one going fairly easily, I still have a lot to learn. I'm not really sure if my technique is a good one, but it seemed to work fine for me, at least this time. I highly recommend trying things like this periodically, just to get in some practice before your life depends on your ability to get a fire going.

Good Job!

I agree. It's always best to practice these things before you have to apply the knowledge in a life or death situation, and in doing so test your equipment as well.

Great job!

You didn't need it this time, but how about next time looking around for some fatwood or pine pitch? Look for pine tree stumps that have that Pinesol smell when you scrape the wood. A few sticks of fatwood for kindling does wonders.

Oooh... fire. Fire good.

Great idea and nice pictures!

That's a good start, however ..... I hate it when people say that, don't you? I think that you are about to run into problems in terms of keeping your fire going. Depending on how deep the snow under your fire is. Depending on how deep the snow is and the situation,you should dig down untill you hit dirt, then lay your fire. Otherwise the snow underneath your platform will melt. If you cannot do that - for whatever reason - then the platform needs to be as thick as possible. If you are doing an emergency rewarm then what you have done is absolutely the right way to go. Now go and do it again. But this time do it without the cotton wool. Use only the materials you can find at your chosen site ( give you a tip: Silver Birch is the Rolls Royce of tinder. The bark, shaven or crumpled will ignite readily from a spark.)

From the pictures it looks like it's at ground level or only slightly above it (maybe an inch of snow).

Hopefully. Just above freezing, raining, light snowfall conditions like that are probley the worst possible conditions to get caught out in. Not Fun.