Building a Camp Cooking Fire

» kingsford1 - Cheap Hard Wood

I bring home Oak Pallets from work. I cut the 1"x6" along the 2"x4" piece. This gives me a piece of Oak wood 1x6x12-18" long. I cut the 2x4s up into small peices and discard.( I dont pull nails out, but you can and use the 2x4s. We have lots of pallets at work, they just throw away) I stack the boards in those plastic crates that look like milk cartons. I have all the firewood I neeed to take camping. Using an Hatchet I cut 1 or 2 peices of wood for kindling. This makes good fire for heat and wonderful nice hot coals for DutchOven cooking. The Plastic boxes stack nice too. Doesn't take up room like logs. I usually take a half a dozen boxes with me for a 3 day weekend. I use some logs too.

-- posted by kingsford1

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» sckaroly - Re: Cheap Hard Wood

In response to message posted by kingsford1:

Sounds like you found a workable solution, John. As I said in the article, most of the high altitude forests out west are fir, cedar and pine. So, unless you're willing to buy good orchard wood (like almond) and haul it to the mountains, you're stuck (and I'm not willing).

Last night my son and I camped at Icehouse Reservoir. We didn't get there until about 7:30 p.m. and there wasn't any free wood within walking distance. So we got into the Jeep and found wood within a mile. The meal went well, even with pine and fir.

Of course, the one items that I purposefully left behind was the fire grate. I thought wrong that Icehouse had grates on the fire rings. Although I've never camped at Icehouse, I based my assumption on the other campgrounds in Eldorado National Forest.

So I used the elevated BBQ (after I stabilized it with rocks) as a stove and transferred coals with the shovel. (I should tell everyone to never leave home with those 16-inch tongs I talked about in the article -- don't know how valuable they are until you forget to pack them!)

The key point to remember when using pine and fir is to build a very large fire and to keep it going until after the meal is over. For instance, this morning, when I cooked breakfast, the first fire that I lit produced just enough coals to boil water for coffee. I had to re-build the fire three times to complete breakfast. It seemed that each two or three shovels-full of coals depleted the fire.

But one advantage with using pine and fir is that it burns fast. You can usually have red-hot coals in 20 to 30 minutes, especially if you gather sound dry wood. The best pine and fir for a cooking fire is branches that are 2 to 3 inches in diameter. Select wood that is solid and has little rot.

After dinner, build the fire, grab a cup of hot cocoa and start up the conversation.

-- posted by sckaroly

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