Fire making at altitude

[MustardMan]

So last weekend I was camped out at just over 11,000 feet altitude - just a few hundred feet shy of the treeline. At this altitude, your options for wood are pine, pine, and more pine. The plus side is that, since it's so dry at those altitudes, and the sun is so intense, there is generally a lot of dry fuel available - plenty of scrubby grasses and lichens and so forth.

The downside, however, is that the available wood can tend to be pretty lousy. One thing that was driving me nuts, was that the wood was almost too dry. Most of it was almost like balsa wood in weight, but also really crumbly. None of the stuff I'd normally do at sane altitudes as far as wood processing with a knife was working with this fuel - try to make curls and you'd get tiny chips and maybe a bit of dust, try to split it, and you break off an inch long piece, and so on. Even though it was quite dry, and there was a lot of fuel available, it probably took me twice as long to start a fire as normally. You would expect, with the very dry conditions, that it would have been a lot easier than it was, but I found it to be a real pain in the butt, and well outside my comfort zone. I got flame in large bundles of dry grass several times, with the flame burning out without catching anything else, and it took several tries to get that grass to actually catch anything. I've never had so much trouble with so much dry fuel.


Has anyone done much fire building at these sorts of elevations? Any tips for getting your materials prepped for your fire? Could the reduced oxygen be part of the problem, or was it more likely to be caused by my own ineptitude?

 

[PayetteRucker]

I spend alot of time at 10,000 feet, in and around the Seven Devils. You're right-plenty of dry mosses and lichens for tinder and all you have are the limbs the tall thick pine trees drop. And it burns fast. That dry punky stuff is great for fire starting and making a Les Stroud style smoldering survivor's match, but you have to be careful to build a fire that conserves what wood you can find. Once I get a coalbed going, I build a four stick fire-I start with a half inch diameter stick about two feet long laid parallel to a inch thick diameter stick about two feet long laid parallel to a 2 inch stick laid parallel to a 4 inch stick. The goal is to keep a flame going while burning the smallest amount of wood possible-transferring the energy from the coals to keep the wood burning. you have to replace the 2 small sticks every 10-15 minutes or so but the big ones last a good long time. Small fire but not hard to stay warm with such a dry hot coalbed and that 4 inch log will typically last a good 3-4 hours. I think I have some pictures somewhere, gimme a few minutes to find em...

 

[fnc]

I have had the same problems and lack of oxygen is a cause.
I have watched "forest fires" in those kind of areas and the fires
have a real hard time.

If you think ahead, you could bring some more solid wood with you
as you hike up to your prospective base camp: dragging a small dead
tree, on a rope is not hard to do.
Or use a petroleum based fuel stove.

Sometimes it is better to camp a few hundred feet lower, for that
reason.

 

[PayetteRucker]

you get the gist-small amount of wood, long burn time, big enough to keep the coals glowing, cook meals and warm yourself by.

 

[MustardMan]

Luckily for us, the amount of fuel wasn't actually an issue - there were plenty of down trees from the winter storms. The issue was more processing that fuel to get that coal bed built up in the first place. Try to split it to consistently sized fuel, and you'd end up with mostly wood chips and dust. It was like trying to turn styrofoam packing peanuts into kindling.

 

[PayetteRucker]

I know what you're talking about-the wood isn't rotted as much as it is sawdust on the inside....

 

[MustardMan]

The plentiful fuel lead to a fire that looked more like this:

The issue was getting the kindling prepared without it exploding into dust every time we did anything to it. My normal comfort zone is to make big feather sticks, that catch quickly and easily, but this wood was so dry and brittle that feather sticks just weren't happening.

The fire would have been EASY to start with a PJCB or something similar, to keep a source of flame burning for a while, but with all natural materials like grass that burned out so quickly they didn't catch anything else, it was a pain in the neck. There were no pencil lead sized twigs, and trying to split anything to get kindling that small was not working. I got a lot of wood chips and sawdust and not much usable kindling.

We obviously got it going eventually, but it was more effort than I would have liked. Hopefully next time will be better.

 

[pitdog]

Interesting topic buddy, some pics of the surrounding area would have been nice to give us a better idea what kind materials ya have at hand.

Do ya get old mans beard where you were ?

 

[Rotte]

I know what you mean about the crumbly wood. It doesn't seem to generate much heat or burn well. Poor fuel quality and less O2. When camping up over 10K I tend to rely on my stove.

 

[MustardMan]

I used my alcohol stove for breakfast - I hate canister stoves with a passion. Sometimes it takes a few tricks to get alky to work at elevation, but it does the job if you keep the burner and fuel warm beforehand.