I put them out of order but if your short of time, watch the one below even though it is second in series.
This is another escape story….
Generic context….
Chaotic Maui Evacuation:
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Category Archives: Preparedness
Predator vs Honda & GENMAX—Let’s Settle This!
The Honda came out on top pretty convincingly. Worth watching so you know what you are getting for the Honda premium.
RESCUED hiking the Grand Canyon
Interesting part is what took him out (Rabdo) which he explains at the end.
End of the Fire Logs: Fire Logs #12, #13, and #14 plus closing thoughts
When I first started doing these fire logs in the beginning of the year, I said….
“I intend to do one fire a week from the start of January through the end of March. I am not trying to teach myself anything exotic but rather to see how well what I “know” and what I have carries over to fire starting in winter weather. The goal is to try something new either in terms of conditions or in terms of equipment used every week.”
I was reasonably successful in this goal. Once we got into March, I had a harder and harder time finding time to write up the results of what I did, but technically that was not part of the goal. For almost all of the fires, I was able to spin them as some kind of success even if some of them were pretty lame. Only Fire Log #13 was a complete failure.
I had planned for this to end with March in part because I knew I would be getting busier around then. As that is indeed the case (in fact, most of this was written in the first week of April but I am only now finding the time to put it up) I am going to try to do a briefer then normal overview of the fires that I have not already covered to close out this series of experiments.
Surviving In A War Zone
It gets more interesting (for me at least) as it goes along.
Fire Log #11: Three Fires And Three People.
As a follow up to trying to get the “Bad Girl” to start her own fire, I wanted to see if she retained anything useful and if she could start a fire when she had to gather the wood herself. A good opportunity to do this presented itself in the form of a nephew’s birthday party. The property at which this party took place had more suitable woods then I own (a good part of my property is swamp) and wandering out into them was a good way to burn off some of the sugar high after the presents were unwrapped.
Two of my brothers decided to come along as well. I had thought they were just coming along to add to the pressure on “Bad Girl” but as it turns out, they wanted to try their hand at staring a fire in poor conditions themselves. As a result, there were three people of varying skill levels trying to make fire in the snow with scavenged wood for the first time.
Originally I was going to do something myself while “Bad Girl” was doing her thing, but with so many people to watch I did not really do anything other than set up an alcohol stove using the Firebox Nano stove and light it with a ferro rod. So what follows will just be my observations on the three first time fires in the snow.
Links For Today
RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, MARCH 19, 2023
China flexes muscles over Internet subsea cables across South China Sea
Get ready for Manhattan DA’s made-for-TV Trump prosecution: high on ratings, but short on the law However there is also this: Trump Lawyer: About That Tuesday “Arrest” Date, Nevermind
Countdown To New York’s Rendezvous With Energy Impossibility
FOMC Preview: Uncertainty, Likely 25bp Hike, Maybe Pause
Oops. How the FDIC Guaranteed the Deposits of SVB Financial Group
Fire Log #10: Boil Water With All Of The Toys
There is a chance that I will be using my Firebox Stove (a bigger version of the Nano that I tried on Fire Log #4) for an extended period of time this spring. But before this test, I had yet to try it out.
Honestly speaking the main reason I decided to try it out for this particular goaround is that I was short on time. So I wanted to try to do something I had not done before that would be done and over with quickly. Since the Firebox Stove has an insert that is just for boiling water, I figured a good drill would be to see how fast it would take me to boil water using all the advantages I could ever reasonable be expected to have when camping sans a gas or alcohol stove. The plan was to have a nice short drill that confirmed how much faster things go when you have all the toys.
But as is usual when I try to go fast, it actually took longer to boil water this time then when I did the hypothermia drill.
Fire Log #9: “Bad Girl” Makes Fire
Not everyone has the time or inclination to practice their fire making skills. But it is possible that anyone might have to make a fire in less than ideal situations as was demonstrated by the unfortunate lady I talked about in the first fire log. So what would you put together in a kit to give someone with little or no experience the maximum ability to start a fire in bad conditions while still being small and compact?
I had my theories on this subject based on what I imagined would give a rookie the most difficulty and how to overcome that. But I wanted to see what a real rookie would do when confronted with making a fire in less than ideal conditions. So I recruited the “Bad Girl” (my nickname for my youngest sister) as my semi-willing victim and set out to find out what it was like for a real life rookie to start a fire.
Since I was trying to be mindful of her time and keep total time I was dragging her away from her books to be around an hour, I figured I would gather all the wood needed for her to start the fire. I was focused on finding out what tools and tinders would be the easiest for her to use and so I did not want to waste her good will by having her tramp around looking for wood. As it turns out, my focus was misplaced.
Fire Log #8: Making A Legal Fire In A State Forest
If you are going to areas of New York State Land where most people go, you are typically not allowed to make a fire unless it is an emergency. But in the areas of State Land where most people don’t go (which is most of it), you are typically allowed to start campfires as long as you follow the rules. They try to discourage it and they try to point to other options, but as the rules stand now, you can do it.
As with most things in life, there is a catch. As I understand the rules, you only have two choices to get wood for your fire. You either bring it in with you (something that is governed by some stringent rules on where you can get the firewood and how you need to document that you got the firewood correctly) or you have to use dead fire wood found on the forest floor. If I understand the rules correctly, even breaking off dead branches from a tree is not allowed. Needless to say, this time of year and with the weather that we have been having, making a fire under those kinds of constraints can be challenging. For this fire log, I decided to see how challenging it would be.