[quote=JFKinYK]Yakataga -
If I was going to attempt a fire in super wet conditions, I would build a shelter to keep the base fire materials and area as dry as possible for the initial lighting. Then keep the tender materials secure until I was finally ready to strike a spark.
Very good idea. We sure try to get it protected from wind and rain, and keep the next size up of kindling under a plastic bag or in a pack or something.
The second stage of fire building past initial starting flame is MUCH HARDER for us on the coast than getting initial flame. It is really hard to get a self sustaining fire going. In the past month I've built fires three times in wet brushy timber where it had been raining and snowing and melting for weeks. Each was near a vehicle and an axe made a huge difference in accessing enough quantity of wood in small enough diameter to dry out and burn.
The finest hairlike ends of dead twigs on spruce and fir trees covered by a canopy of branches above them are the most likely to be avaiable source of secondary kindling to find in our woods. They will likely be damp, maybe even soaked, but they are fine enough to dry and burn if you can keep a flame under them for a couple of minutes. It takes a LOT of them, and they don't work well unless every side twig is pulled off and they lie straight together like coarse hair. Any side twigs and it pushes the bundle apart too much to ever get burning. Gathering a softball diameter bundle sometimes takes quite awhile. It is worth it. Most novice fire builders in this area light the tinder too soon and don't have enough fine material to feed it.
Dead limbs broken from a tree trunk are our main source of backpack firewood in wet country, never picked up from the ground. Anything touching the ground is wet enough to squeeze liquid water from it (if you are as strong as Chuck Norris
). I don't backpack an axe or large saw, but cutting short, knot free sections of such limbs gives a source of inner wood that can be split into small diameter kindling with a knife. Standing dead sapling poles are another good source. A knife will peel off shavings from the inner wood of the split face. It will likely be damp, but again, if sliced into thin shavings, it will dry if kept over a flame for awhile. It takes a LOT of such stuff to ever get a sustaining fire going, and it requires constant attention, propping the next pieces of firewood to dry as close to the flame as possible, etc.
The most difficult fire starting conditions I've tried happened on a four day November backpack hunt near alpine. It took me hours to get a sustaining fire started. I was keeping camp, not hunting. I used a small folding saw to cut five inch long pieces of straight grained grey dead root horn off of a fallen fir tree, then used my knife to split and cut shavings from those. Prep of the secondary material after intitial flame material took me nearly two hours. It had been wet for a month or more.
