The right way to build a campfire

Your ultimate objective is a nice bed of coals, not a huge blaze. Towering flames are for bonfire kegger parties on your friend's uncle's farm. In camping situations, huge blazes are dangerous and disrespectful to your fellow campers. Coals are where the heat is, they produce no smoke (all the moisture has burned off), and once you have a good bed of coals you can allow your fire to burn down without adding fuel for up to 6 or 8 hours and still have enough heat to start a fire again just by blowing on it. Without coals your fire is a strong breeze or an ill timed wet log away from extinction.



It's all about preparation. Gather lots and lots of kindling. If you're not sure how much, then gather twice as much as you think you'll need. The smaller the better, the dryer the better, the more the better.

Use paper, birch bark, dry leaves, grass, or shavings from a dry split log to start a small flame. Slowly and carefully add more of this fire-starting material -- no sticks yet.

When your flame is a few inches high and a few inches around at the base you can start adding the smallest of your kindling. Make sure not to add anything too damp, too green, too big, or too much too fast. Keep adding small to medium twigs (nothing much bigger around than a pencil) until your flame is 12 inches high and 12" around at the base.

By now you have some coals going so you can be more generous and less picky with what you put on. Still nothing bigger than an inch around though.

If your flame begins to die down a little just throw on a handful of smaller stuff then throw more medium sticks on top of that. (Aren't you glad you had some small dry stuff "left over?")

Up to this point you've been adding wood in a more-or-less tepee shape. Now that you have a decent bed of coals it's time to make your log cabin. The log cabin allows oxygen to get to the whole fire. A tepee cuts off air to the middle, which is right where you need it most. Tepee is okay for the small twigs, which burn up in a flash, but for the bigger sticks and logs a cabin is the way to go.

I like working in threes. Three log splits -- quartered logs, or smaller -- placed on an X axis, then three more on a Y axis set 90 degrees to the X, then finally another three splits on the X axis.

If you have to use a stick put it between two splits. The splits will be flatter and less likely to roll and shift.

As your cabin collapses (every 15 to 30 minutes) just reshape it to a stable platform as best you can and add layers to the top as needed. I like to take a leather welders glove camping with me. It enables me to reach right into the fire to more easily manipulate the logs. The glove also works great for protecting your hand from hooks and or teeth while landing larger fish. (Ever tried to land a 40" Northern Pike in a canoe with no net and 8lb. test line on a bass rod? A leather glove really helps.)

Stop adding wood to the fire when you think you are 30 minutes or less from turning in. You will be dousing the fire with water before you go to bed and you don't want to leave the next camper one or more huge, wet, nasty, unburned logs in the middle of the fire-pit.

Got a better way to build and keep a campfire? Let's hear it!

Until then -- Happy camping!