View Full Version : Campfires
I carry a lightwieght bowsaw when I hike because I prefer to cook over a campfire and only use my alcohol stove when I need to or when i am just too tired to cut wood for a good ole camp fire.
What about some of you folks? Do you like cooking over a camp fire or with your stoves?
Furthermore do you enjoy having some one build a good camp fire so you can stand or sit around it that night and trade windy stories?
wanderer:bse
Happypappy
05-29-2005, 08:19
I must admit that I do occasionally enjoy sitting around a nice fire with good friends, though I am usually out there alone. for cooking I generally just use my stove.
NO NEED to carry a bow-saw..no matter how light it is...
use the dead wood around the camp site/shelter area...
use what's fallen...dont be cutting up wood....LEAVE NO TRACE!
"the Model T crew" (which section-hikes every year)..ends our last night on the trail with a roaring campfire....swapping stories (about our hike, what we're gonna eat when we get to town, etc.,etc) ...its great...we use already dead wood. :D
flyfisher
05-29-2005, 08:49
I carry a lightwieght bowsaw when I hike because I prefer to cook over a campfire and only use my alcohol stove when I need to or when i am just too tired to cut wood for a good ole camp fire.
What about some of you folks? Do you like cooking over a camp fire or with your stoves?
Furthermore do you enjoy having some one build a good camp fire so you can stand or sit around it that night and trade windy stories?
wanderer:bse
I think it is fine to carry a bow saw, though it is too heavy for me to carry. It makes more sense than a lot of other things I have seen being carried.
I'd much rather see someone has cut up a 3-4 inch diameter log into campfire sized pieces than to have tried burning the log from the end because it was too thick to break.
I do enjoy a campfire occasonally, but find that there is scarce wood for a full size campfire around most shelters. The woods are often stripped of campfire wood. If there are 3-4 people who want the fire, then it often works for the crew to gather enough wood for a fire - we have called it the cowboy TV.
When I am alone, I enjoy a candle and can look at it for quite a while, mesmerized by the flickering flame... especially in the fall when the daylight ends at suppertime. I sometimes enjoy a twig fire in a twig stove, and find that the wood to keep such a fire going is much easier to come by than a full size fire. Such a stove also is a good compromise between using a stove to cook and the larger campfire sized fire.
i have section hiked from georgia to dalton mass,and i have only had a camp fire 5 or 6 times,i spend more time hiking than in camp,but on my backpacking trips i do thru the year off the AT i have a fire almost always:cool: neo
Fiddleback
05-29-2005, 10:50
I prefer to cook over a stove; alcohol or white gas. It's quicker and a whole lot cleaner and fits well with the LNT ethic. And stove cooking is safer...these days most of the places I backpack prohibit open fires during the summer if not year around.
Come to think about it...I haven't cooked over a campfire since the 60s. Still, the lack of a campfire has never seemed to minimize windy stories...:rolleyes:
FB
MacGyver2005
05-29-2005, 11:07
I cook with the stove, as it is much quicker than a fire. When not on the AT and car camping it is nice to get a good fire going, then Dutch-Oven some meals though.
Campfires are certainly a part of camping, I just wish that more people were safe and intelligent about it. So many people don't know how to build a fire, and worse they don't know that the fuel for the fire doesn't need to be a huge log. A lot of the areas around shelters have been ravaged by folks that feel "It's not camping unless I'm burning a fire you can see from outerspace!" and burn everything in sight. This truly is bad for the LNT aspect of things (even though we trapsed into the woods to erect a building!) and we all should really try to preserve those principles.
Campfires are nice, and they certainly have their place and play their role in the camping experience. There are many times that it has been a welcome sight to have a campfire at the end of the day, and it certainly does provide a medium to turn those strangers around you turn into new friends.
Regards,
-MacGyver
GA -->ME 2005
For me, backpacking is inseparable from cooking over a small campfire. Call me old fashioned (or just old), but there's nothing like the warmth, ambiance, and bug-repelling friendliness of a fire.
You ultraliters, take note: this is the second lightest way to go (the lightest way is to eat all cold food). You're not carrying a stove, you're not carrying fuel, all you're carrying is matches (a bowsaw is overkill, IMO). I always bring along a few cold meals for those rare occasions when making a fire is illegal, ill-advised (dry, windy, tinderbox conditions), or too much of a hassle.
Yeah, it's not as fast as a jet boil, but who cares? I'm out in the woods to relax and enjoy it, not rush thru it.
As far as LNT principles are concerned, which leaves the bigger overall footprint, 1) the manufacture and transport of stoves, plus the drilling, transport, refining, and burning of oil products (not to mention the political costs!) OR 2) a small cooking fire made from small sticks? That's a pretty hard question to answer, especially when you add the political costs to the price of oil.
Give me the crackle and snap of a fire, and the flexibility to eat meals that take a little longer to cook.
MacGyver2005
05-29-2005, 12:18
As far as LNT principles are concerned, which leaves the bigger overall footprint, 1) the manufacture and transport of stoves, plus the drilling, transport, refining, and burning of oil products (not to mention the political costs!) OR 2) a small cooking fire made from small sticks? That's a pretty hard question to answer, especially when you add the political costs to the price of oil.
NO offense buddy, but LNT really has nothing to do with politics. It is oriented towards preservation of the outdoors in regards to the use of the outdoors by folks like hikers. It's not Greenpeace.
Regards,
-MacGyver
GA -->ME 2005
NO offense buddy, but LNT really has nothing to do with politics. It is oriented towards preservation of the outdoors in regards to the use of the outdoors by folks like hikers. It's not Greenpeace.
Regards,
-MacGyver
GA -->ME 2005what is LNT?
what is LNT?
Leave
No
Trace
:sun
Fiddleback
05-29-2005, 14:04
what is LNT?Leave No Trace...nicely summed by "Take only pictures, leave only footprints."
I try to hike and camp so that no one can tell I was ever there. Not original but simple. http://www.lnt.org/
FB
i'm still getting use to all these anagrams. up til recently i was on the internet little. now after having purchased this compaq a couple of weeks earlier, i've been on the thing non stop. first one i ever owned. crap! i need to get off the thing.....................................
i'm gonna become an internet junky....................oh no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
wanderer
i'm still getting use to all these anagrams. up til recently i was on the internet little. now after having purchased this compaq a couple of weeks earlier, i've been on the thing non stop. first one i ever owned. crap! i need to get off the thing.....................................
i'm gonna become an internet junky....................oh no!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
wanderer
New PC and internet access... ITEOTWAYKI!
:welcome
what is LNT?
It's the stuff that accumulates in your belly button while hiking. It makes great fire starter.
how did u know that stuff accumilates there? you know me?:confused:
It's the stuff that accumulates in your belly button while hiking. It makes great fire starter.
You ask several questions here.
In general, most backpackers these days do not use campfires for cooking. However, like all means and methods, there are some.
The biggest impact from campfires is the "human brouse line." That is, the area around a tentsite or shelter that has been cleared of all dead limbs and trees for firewood.
Campfires have always been part of camping and backpacking. And I think that all of us have really enjoyed them from time to time, either for fellowship with others, or on a chilly and perhaps damp evening.
The biggest impact from campfires is the "human brouse line." That is, the area around a tentsite or shelter that has been cleared of all dead limbs and trees for firewood.
Although I rarely make campfires while backpacking, when I do, I'll often start to gather wood as I approach a campsite. When I gather wood, unless there is a considerable amount of down & dead wood in the immediate area (like on the Florida Trail this winter - post hurricanes) I'll travel a good distance out of camp to find wood. I rarely gather anything larger than 3" in diameter. Just lots of smaller stuff. If I have a fire, it usualy lasts about an hour or so. By then, I'm usually ready to hit the sack.
Like MOWGLI16, I too gather dead and downed wood well away from the shelter/campsite, rarely over 3" diameter. So I contribute very little to the "human browse line" mentioned above.
Besides, long ago, didn't forest fires periodically clear the forest of excess fuel (dead wood)? Now that we prevent/suppress forest fires, heavily wooded areas might have a bit of excess dead wood.
I have yet to hear a convincing argument that clearly demonstrates/proves that stove use has less overall impact (INCLUDING the drilling, transport, refining, further transport, and burning of gas/butane/whatever and the mining, smelting, and manufacture and transport of campstoves) than the use of small cooking fires.
Btw, Leave No Trace is a misnomer - there's no such thing as Leave No Trace (has anybody seen CSI?). The whole concept needs to be renamed (Leave Minimal Trace?) and some of the more anal elements (such as an aversion to small cooking fires) need to be removed.
MacGyver2005
05-31-2005, 10:04
Btw, Leave No Trace is a misnomer - there's no such thing as Leave No Trace (has anybody seen CSI?). The whole concept needs to be renamed (Leave Minimal Trace?) and some of the more anal elements (such as an aversion to small cooking fires) need to be removed.
Leave No Trace is an ideal, man. It's not a literal interpretation. It is LNT because that is what we are striving to do; leave no trace, even though we may not be able to meet that ideal. And again, LNT is not Greenpeace; they aren't trying to save the world by converting everyone to hemp clothing and veganism, and banning the production of camp stoves.
Regards,
-MacGyver
GA -->ME 2005
Organizations like the ATC were mature enough to recognize that the name Appalachian Trail Conference was confusing, so they fixed it. There's nothing wrong with admitting a mistake, fixing it and moving on. A name that doesn't make sense, like Leave No Trace, can easily be changed and policies modified. If that doesn't happen, then they've lost support among the hiking population that they otherwise might have had.
MacGyver2005
05-31-2005, 10:25
Organizations like the ATC were mature enough to recognize that the name Appalachian Trail Conference was confusing, so they fixed it. There's nothing wrong with admitting a mistake, fixing it and moving on. A name that doesn't make sense, like Leave No Trace, can easily be changed and policies modified. If that doesn't happen, then they've lost support among the hiking population that they otherwise might have had.
From what I've seen they have a strong backing from the hiker community. Why should they change their name? There is nothing confusing about it; they want to promote the ideal of going into the woods without leaving a trace. If you want to get wrapped up in the "politically correct" naming of the organization, you still won't change what they preach. You can call "shell shock" by a mouthful of "post traumatic stress disorder" but you won't change the symptoms. It's called Leave No Trace because that is what you are striving to achieve, even if you cannot do quite that well. You set the bar high and shoot for it; you do not give everyone a mediocre standard just so that we can feel all warm and fuzzy about actually achieving, while missing the point completely.
Regards,
-MacGyver
GA -->ME 2005
Hog, your right, the name Appalachian Trail Conference was a bit confusing to, I have this slow wittedness about me at times. If they have not changed the name yet, I think it would be fitting to hear Appalachian Trail Headquarters. When I hear that word "Conference" I tend to think that they all are up there having a few drinks and talking everything over about the trail, of which I found out that this is prdominantly what they do anyway. The name needs to be changed. Probably was a conference at first but now it is "Headquarters!"
Lumberjack
06-01-2005, 11:14
Sometimes Organizations need to reinvent themselves as time and growth tend to change things. what is acceptable in a small group is completely intolerable later when the group grows to a large mass.
LNT is a bit hard to do where the AT is concerned as there are just too many who use the trail so much of what it stands for gets compromised. On smaller more remote trails LNT is very much the standard because one person can cause major damage to the pristine environs that can take decades to repair. in some places you are required to even bag out your feces because it will never decompose.... When traveling these paths the last thing you want to find is a trace of anyone else.