What three ingredients make up the "fire triangle"?
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Fuel, oxygen and heat
Remove any of the three and every fire dies. If it only smokes, oxygen is usually missing (make an air channel) or wet wood is swallowing the heat.
All questions with answers
What do you need between the spark and the firewood for a fire to catch at all?
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Tinder
Fine, dry, instantly catching material: birch bark, dry grass, shredded bark, cotton wool. Build up from tinder through pencil-thin to finger-thick sticks: never the other way round.
Which bark burns even when wet, thanks to its oils?
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Birch bark
The white, papery strips peel off without stripping the tree and catch fire even damp: the classic emergency tinder of the north.
Which tool lights fires even wet, barely wears out and replaces thousands of matches?
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The ferro rod
One stroke with the back of a knife showers sparks at 3,000 degrees: it works soaked, in storms, and after years in a backpack.
How do you make fire in sunshine without lighter or steel?
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By focusing light with a lens
A magnifier, eyeglass lens, binocular lens or a clear water-filled bottle focuses sunlight onto tinder until it smoulders. Takes patience and dark, fine tinder.
Where do you find burnable wood in steady rain?
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On dead branches still hanging on trees
Ground wood soaks like a sponge; standing deadwood dries in the wind. Split thick wet logs: inside they are often dry.
Why is a small, tended fire better in a bivouac than a large one?
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It needs less wood and warms you up close
A big fire devours wood all night that you first have to haul, and you can hardly approach it. Small, close, with a reflector behind: that is how it truly warms.
How do you nearly double a campfire's warmth with almost no effort?
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With a reflector behind the fire
A wall of logs, a rock face or a stretched space blanket throws the radiant heat back towards your sleeping spot instead of into the night.
What matters most when bivouacking on a cold night?
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The insulation beneath you
The ground drains heat from a lying body far faster than the air. A thick layer of leaves, brush or your pack under the torso saves the night, without it the best roof is useless.
What is the simplest warm emergency shelter you can build in a forest without tools?
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The debris hut
A ridge pole into a fork, ribs leaned on, then knee-deep leaves over and under: the air pockets in the litter insulate like a sleeping bag.
Which emergency shelter keeps its inside near freezing at minus 20 outside?
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The snow cave
Snow insulates superbly: in a properly built cave with an air hole and a raised sleeping shelf it stays near zero: let it howl outside. The Inuit knew why.
Why shouldn't you camp in a hollow or depression?
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Cold air and water collect there
Cold air flows downhill at night like water and pools in hollows: several degrees colder, and in rain the hollow becomes a bathtub. Slightly raised and wind-sheltered is ideal.
What must you check above your sleeping spot before lying down?
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Whether dead branches could fall
Dead limbs and dry crowns (foresters call them widowmakers) like to drop in night wind. A glance upward belongs to every campsite choice.
Which way should the entrance of an emergency shelter face?
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Away from the wind
The entrance belongs on the lee side, otherwise the wind pushes cold and rain inside and carries your hard-won warmth away.
Why must embers or fire never come inside an enclosed shelter?
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Because of carbon monoxide
Glowing coals produce the odourless gas CO, which binds to the blood and kills in your sleep. Fire belongs outside the entrance: never in a tent, hut or cave without a flue.
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