This video pretty much violates every principle of LNT, as well as suggesting that you break the law in most national forests and national parks in the West. Gotta wonder who edits these things. And who the "experts" are who suggest creating a new fire ring where none already exists.


Completely clueless!!!

http://www.backpacker.com/view/videos/su...gn=newsletter01

I guess I don't see it that way. They did say this was a "Survival Fire", and to put it out completely and scatter the fire ring and ash when you're done.

I see nothing "Sickening" with what's presented in that video for building a campfire here. That is pretty much how I build campfires here. I've refined my method for my personal preferences but that's as good a way as any.

I'm well aware things are burning out west. I've lived there when the ash was several inches thick everywhere and the air was orange and brown with smoke, but you couldn't start a forest fire here with a flame thrower right now. And you couldn't find a scar from a fire built and dispersed like that in the NF here in as little as a few weeks depending on the weather. One good storm would dissolve whatever traces were left and the worms would work that into the topsoil where it'd be used as plant nutrients as soon as it was available.

I will say that the video could have easily went into more detail on when not to build a fire, and there seems to be a lack of that in most videos I've seen on this subject. I don't think that's necessarily negligence as much as just ignorance and, really, tradition.

I've sat and watched people many times struggle and fail completely when trying to build a campfire so there is a need for accessible instruction.

I'll suggest you write the editors and tell them how you think that video can and should be improved and why it could be dangerous if left as is. You might find they agree and appreciate the feedback and make the suggested changes.

I got Suburu to pull a nationwide ad featuring one of their cars by calling them. They pulled that ad as fast as they could after I told them why they should. You might remember it. It was two kids racing on a curvy mountain road while the song "Radar Love" was booming away. If you don't remember it you can blame it me

My only criticism is that the fire seemed a little big and could have been contained a little better.

Something that big is fine for sitting around cooking things on sticks or warming several folks' soaked shoes in winter but there's a lot to be said for a Ray Jardine / Collin Fletcher - style little fire. If the goal is to encourage (or give an excuse for) practice of a valuable (and fun) skill a tiny fire can be very useful. A tiny twig fire just a few inches in diameter is quick and easy and plenty to warm hands and heat a cup or two of water. It also requires a lot less work, makes less smoke, and is easier to contain.

As for containment, it can be hard to find a place as clear as the location in that demonstration and a sudden gust could have sent that teepee and tinder ball rolling out of that ring of little stones. I know that no one likes the look of blackened stones but at least it's an indication of some containment of the fire. I'm not sure what function the stones in that demonstration served.

I've been practicing lately with twig fires inside 12-oz aluminum cans. I open the top completely and cut a fireplace opening and a few vent holes near the base. With just about any tinder twigs start quickly and the fire keeps going as long as it's fed. The chimney effect makes a great draft, so it burns hotter than the same size fire on the ground and even ignites most of the smoke. The whole double-wall "wood gassification" thing probably adds some measurable benefit but a single-wall chimney is so simple and light and is, IMHO, a huge improvement over an open fire i.t.o smoke and heat. A single can is also about as light as it gets, and it's a sad fact that in many places you can count on finding one on the way. When it burns out, it tends to leave not much but ash. Cleanup is quick and secure since there's no question about how far the coals spread and you can pick up the can and be sure it's cold.

I used to try to support a cook pot on rocks or tent stakes but lately I've been practicing digging an oblong trench deep enough to hold the can with plenty of room in one dimension to let air in but narrow enough in the other to set a pot on. It's like a Dakota Fire Pit, which looks very interesting in itself but is tough to pull off in damp ground and I haven't had any luck scaling one down to tiny size.

A tiny fire in a can is perfect for morning coffee without leaving the sleeping bag: quick, easy, contained, and low smoke.

Anyone even considering a wood fire or wood stove in the parched far west right now should be stood up in front of a firing squad at sunrise! Fines are not enough! While the area west of the Cascades in Washington and Northern Oregon has recently received some (not enough) rain, anything farther south or east of the Cascade Crest is tinder-dry--explosively so. Millions of acres have burned, a lot of unique wilderness areas (where the fires were let burn, not due to policy--suspended due to the abnormally dry conditions--but to lack of firefighting resources) are now gone, many people have lost their homes and livelihoods (ranchers whose grazing area is now gone, businesses--and therefore jobs--gone), three firefighters killed, more injured. I wonder what is needed to convince folks like this to stop encouraging the building of fires!

Aside from those considerations, what's this about using rocks around the fire? First, the rocks hide a lot of still hot embers. Second, pouring water on hot rocks can be dangerous--I've seen them explode! Plus, while they did at least put the fire on gravel (no organic material) soil, that sure doesn't look like a three feet-wide area of bare ground between the fire and surrounding vegetation. And I don't call piling the rocks at the edge of the cleared area "disestablishing" the fire ring! The rocks (once cold, if used) should be thrown off into the bushes so nobody else is tempted to build a fire at that spot.

Fire rings also attract a lot of garbage, another reason for not using them and "disestablishing" them wherever they are found.

I must admit I couldn't get the sound to work (strange computer, since I'm away from home), but I saw enough to be horrified, like balzaccom!

Thanks OM.

And don't even get me started on why we NEED a fire in a survival situation (how many bad decisions were made to get to THAT point?) or that in a survival situation, you are not going to find nice dry tinder sitting around on the ground.

What BS.

That was a waste of time. I feel like I'm 10, no make that 5.
I actually made fires like that almost daily playing after school when it was cold out. And no, I never had a fire get out of hand and I used the same fire pits. But I grew up in the woods of the northeast, where damp conditions are the norm. I've had exactly 0 fires in the Sierra in our almost yearly visits over the past 15 years. Even in campgrounds, I'd rather peer at the stars. I build fires winter camping, but that is almost, not quite a necessity, and the chance of it spreading is exactly zero. Why the heck would you need a fire on a beautiful sunny day? I agree about the silly rocks that served little purpose, other than it "symbolized" a place for the fire. Tinder won't always catch in damp conditions, so his lessons are silly when put to real tests. How about never gathering rocks from near or in a stream, as the water trapped inside makes them explode, as OM pointed out. Last time I bought that mag it was in an airport and I was anxious to get to the other end of the flight and get up on the Paradise Glacier (Probably getting heavy smoke right now) I figured reading about backpacking would sooth my impatience. All it did was make me ill with consumerism and hype. Doesn't surprise me there idea of an instructional video is not even to the level of a cub scout.

Yeah, no doubt.

But... the far west is not everywhere, and what works and doesn't work there should not be assumed to work or not everywhere. One could present situations where that video just does not apply ad infinitum, but it's presented in a very generic way and in no way touted building campfires out west when the fire danger is elevated.

Here, on most days, in most places, building a fire like that is perfectly fine. As a generic example of how to build a campfire here that video is fine. Here, that's the truth.

We all feel for you there. It breaks our hearts to see your forests burning out there, but lashing out at us here isn't going to put your fires out. It's not even going to prevent them. Most of those fires that are caused by people out there are caused by locals, not mid-westerners, or southerners, or east coasters.

We don't come there and burn your forests down, and no campfire started here has ever caused a forest fire there. We don't care if you don't build campfires here, that's fine with us, but we really don't need you telling us if campfires are okay here or how to build them.

What many far westerners don't know about backpacking and camping here is pretty much everything they need to know but still they convince themselves they know absolutely everything about it.

That does not go unnoticed here, and neither does their desire to impose what they think they know everywhere they've never been.

Keep it local.

The danger and foolishness in that video is its extreme simplicity and lack of warnings concerning fire dangers. How about knotty woods with pitch that pop and propel sparks many feet from the fire? How about a little reminder to assess fire danger, maybe even check in with the USFS, or local forestry office. Survival? Fires are needed because there's danger of hypothermia and usually that means two things: cold and/or wet. The video doesn't address wet, and the cold means totally unprepared or mistakes made in choosing clothing and gear! The issue to me isn't fires in general, but what the video suggests and fails to address. I didn't see this post as railing against fires in general, just pointing out the glaring flaws in this video. Chances are, this video won't keep you alive, but will give amateurs playing survival games just enough info to be dangerous.

Exactly my reaction, Bluefish. Only you stated it better!

"The danger and foolishness in that video is its extreme simplicity and lack of warnings concerning fire dangers."

To make that leap you have to ignore that the title of the video is "Survival School: Fire 101".

I can't ignore that with you, or that it's just a silly video meant to get clicks that expose you to advertisements. I have to doubt anyone has ever watched that video and then went out and started a forest fire in order to survive knowing nothing more than what they watched in that video. That's a really huge leap.

If you really believe those videos make a real environmental impact you probably need to cogitate a bit on your own real impact. In order to help with that let me make a similar leap for the "danger and foolishness" in this video:



No where do they warn you of the dangerous environmental impacts of flying to Peru.

The truth is the long term damaging impact of flying to Peru, or even from the East coast to the Sierras, for a quick hike is far greater than fires lit for survival purposes, and the cause of those fires out west is directly related to all of our personal carbon footprints and not at all to survival fires.

That's all true, but it's still a huge leap to blame this "How to chose a backpack" video for anything other than wasting our time.

By the way, I do take our carbon footprint into account. I live smack dab in the middle of the Adirondacks and the Green Mountain Forest. I can backpack from my door. We've cut our impact incredibly and live pretty simply using lots of conservation techniques. As Quakers, we are also politically and socially active promoting sustainable low impact lifestyles in our community. Yeah, we fly somewhere once a year. Shoot us. Maybe I'm a little touchy because I've helped haul out a frozen body of someone who shouldn't have been out there, or fought fires started by idiots. I'm not holding that video responsible for anything, other than being boring and uninformative, just as this thread has become.

I believe I've made my point then.

I would be more or less fine with this video if it came with the following introduction:

Welcome to the next of our “survival skills” video. By now you will have seen our videos on how to avoid finding yourself in a survival situation:

>> You know how to avoid getting lost by taking a map, knowing how to read it, and staying found.

>> You know to take the right equipment on a hike, so you will be prepared the conditions you are going to encounter.

>> You’ve seen our video on day hikes how important it is to be prepared for an emergency even on a day hike.

>> You know enough to check the weather report for your trip to know what conditions you are going to encounter.

>> You know that when you choose to hike solo, you need to be extra careful, because you don’t have a lot of back-up equipment, and you don’t have anyone you can count on for help.

And despite all of that, you now find yourself in a survival situation where building a fire is critical to your survival. How did that happen? Why are you in a survival situation? You obviously didn’t learn anything from at least two of these videos. Which two did you not understand? Didn’t you pack the right equipment? Or did you get lost far from the trailhead—without a hiking companion? Were you surprised by the weather, and left all of your warm equipment behind?

Now that we know that you are not a quick learner, here is a video on how to make a fire in a survival situation. We’ve made it using materials you can find on any sunny, dry day in the mountains, because we know that when you need it, those conditions will prevail. If it’s raining and the tinder is wet, this system won’t work. But that shouldn’t be an issue with you because you’ve already checked the weather. Or not.

And if the tinder is very dry and the fire easy to light, it’s probably because you are west of the Rockies in an area that is so susceptible to wildfires right now that they are prohibited in many national forests and national parks. Note that in the video we suggest that you keep the fire small, so that it is easily controlled. But we also have suggested that you study all the videos above, and you haven’t taken our advice very seriously yet. So we figure you are going to make a huge fire anyway, because you won’t want to wake up every 45 minutes throughout the night to feed it again. So when the wind picks up and blows sparks into the surrounding forest and lights off a conflagration of thousands or hundreds of thousands of acres, you’ll want to be on the windward side of the fire you started.

Finally, if there’s snow on the ground, this system will quickly melt the surrounding snow and put out your fire. And there will be precious little available fuel to re-light it. That would be a good time to pull out a nice book to read for the remaining minutes you have before hypothermia sets in and you die.

We’d suggest Darwin’s “The Origin of the Species” on natural selection…

Caveat on the latter--it's not funny when people are killed or hurt or lose their homes and livelihoods thanks to the fire you shouldn't have built!

Oh boy. The house that I remodeled and loved for many years in Middletown in Lake County is now completely gone. 100 year old farmhouse...so sad.

I used the Backpacker.com search engine and in fairness they do have info there on most everything that's been pointed out as lacking in that video.

That said, after doing that I found the site to be truly awful. They focus on backpacking as being some sort of extreme survivalist adventure, which for me it has never been, and they make some pretty big stretches in order to do that.

I get the despair and grief that results from the destruction going on there, but from what I've read and heard few of those fires have been started by backpackers. The last I heard the Valley fire may have started in a shed in someone's backyard. I haven't heard of any burning right now that were started by backpackers. There may well be, but I've not once heard of this being a leading cause.

Certainly one would be too many, but if they're not a leading cause than focusing on that won't help much. What really needs to be done is beginning an immediate focus on prevention and restoration.

Time to crank up a new "Conservation Core" and put people to work!

While most of the big ones in the NW this year were lightning-caused, a fair number of them are listed in Inciweb as "cause under investigation," which means they were human-caused (the NWS records all the lightning strikes, so that's pretty accurate). That includes two big fires in North Central Washington which together (they came within a few miles of merging) have burned almost 400,000 acres.

Over the years, I've spent quite a few hours putting out other people's campfires, usually well back in wilderness areas, which were not properly extinguished (from the looks, they evidently used a small bottle of water like the one shown in the video, completely inadequate). Some were smoldering in roots and duff. It was fortunate that none of those had "blown up" yet. I figured it was my duty to take care of these the best I could. In the latest case, my QiWiz titanium potty trowel, although great for its intended purpose, was a bit inadequate as a firefighting tool. I was able to dig down to the smoldering roots, though, to uncover the charred section, and then made a lot of trips to water.