Starting a fire in the rain is a skill. Here is the method that works when everything is wet and comfortable camping depends on getting it right.
The Principle
Fire requires three things: fuel, oxygen, and heat. In wet conditions the challenge is fuel — specifically, dry enough fuel to ignite at the temperature your ignition source can produce. The method for wet-condition fire building is a staged approach: start extremely small with the driest material available and grow the fire slowly until it generates enough heat to dry and ignite progressively wetter fuel.
Finding Dry Material
Even in heavy rain, dry material exists:
- Standing dead wood: Dead branches that have not fallen are significantly drier than wood on the ground, which wicks moisture from the soil.
- The inside of dead logs: The outer surface of a fallen log is wet; the inner wood, accessible by splitting, is much drier.
- Protected surfaces: The underside of fallen logs, rock overhangs, and the inner branches of dense conifers or similar dense-canopy trees.
- Your pack: Tinder from home — cotton balls with petroleum jelly, commercial fire starters, or dry paper — stored in a waterproof bag.
The Method
- Find or create a dry platform — a flat piece of split wood or a layer of bark — to build on. Do not build directly on wet ground.
- Build a tinder bundle of the finest, driest material available. This must catch from a single ignition source.
- Construct a very small feather stick structure over the tinder — thin shavings of wood with the curls still attached, built into a cone. The curls catch before the main wood.
- Ignite. Protect the initial flame from wind and rain with your body and a piece of bark held overhead if necessary.
- Add fuel in strictly increasing size — nothing larger than pencil thickness until the fire has been burning for five minutes.
- Once the fire is self-sustaining, build a log-cabin structure and add progressively larger wet wood. The heat of the fire will dry and then ignite it.
