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January 01, 2011

Trail Sparks!

To complete 2010, Dave and I hiked through the fresh and sparkling snow into his Back 40+ and found a perfect, off-trail sheltered forest nook to play with a gift from Santaa mini fire steel. It's about the size of a key and is a safety/survival must for  those who love to wander the wilderness.
 
Our site was safely wind-free with a thick layer of snow. For starters the scraped dust from gray birch bark worked well but pocket lint caught more quickly! We fueled our little fire with small dead limbs from one of his nearby pine trees.
 
I'm eager to experiment with char-cloth
Making Char-Cloth from the Rogue Turtle.
And... A video from Make Magazine:

Caution: Don’t play with fire unless you know what you are doing and have the immediate and nearby means to extinguish it. Also don’t peel bark from live trees; it hurts them.

1 comment:

pbazanchuk said...

Thanks for the char-cloth link. I usually carry some sort of fire starter on winter headlamp runs. Think I'll try the cloth.
Happy Winter