Tips for Making Fire for Wilderness Cooking In the Snow

Camping in the snow can be quite challenging from a number of perspectives. It is more of a survival practice than camping. The biggest challenge to deal with is how to start fire to cook foods and to keep you warm. Good thing is that you may need more tools than what you pack in the survival backpack properly. However, it’s the skills that you are going to have to learn.

The challenging part during snow camping is to find the wood that can catch fire easily. He trees and branches are usually covered with snow; and there is a mighty chance that the branches are going to be quite wet.

Let’s talk about the tools that you are going to need.

• A folding hand saw
• Small axe
• A high quality knife with a sheath
• A flint
• An army mess kit which usually contains a couple of pans, spoons, and fork for cooking

Since you are planning to do the camping in an area which might have a temperature as low as 0 °C, you are going to have to plan well because in case if the fire cannot be started, you need to have supplies to keep you warm.

Finding firewood

Finding burnable wood can be found pretty easily in dry conditions. However, you are going to have to work a bit harder to get burnable firewood when things are covered with snow.

You can cut several branches of nearby tree using the folding hand saw. The branches are going to be wet on the barks’ surface. In this scenario, you can first divide these branches into 12-18 inch segments. This segmentation will allow you to slice off the outer wet layer, leaving the dryer core of the wood.

While most of the wood segments are going to be used as firewood, the remaining pieces can be used for tinder. Even the shaved wood is going to be useful here. Since you are going to put this thin bark in a dry place, it is also going to dry up and, so, it can be also be used as kindling.

Building the fire

First of all, you are going to have to find an area free of snow. You are going to have to create a fire pit in that area. You can cut off more branches to make a wooden base for the pit. Now, you are going to need flint and steel fire starter along with the tinder that you have created. Kindle pieces and other wooden segments should be placed nearby.

By striking steel on the flint’s surface, the sparks will be created. You will have to make sure that the sparks created are going directly onto the tinder. It is going to be a bit slow process because it takes time for the steel to heat up and come into the molten state. The consistent shooting of spark into the tinder will result in tinder building up heat and catching fire eventually.

Once the tinder has caught fire, you need to place it on the fire pit and start adding kindling gradually. Placing twig-sized pieces of wood over the flames in a cone-shaped pattern will allow oxygen to aid the flames. At this point, you will be able to cook your foods. You can also use this setup to warm up the place.