Fire, cooking and running a camp

When you may have a fire at all

Check, every time, before you promise a client a campfire:

• Never in the Eastern High Peaks Zone
• Not above 4,000 ft (Adirondacks) or 3,500 ft (Catskills), outside the winter windows
• Not within 150 feet of road, trail or water in the Western High Peaks and Adirondack Canoe Route zones, except at a primitive tent site or lean-to
• Not during a burn ban. New York runs a statewide residential brush burning ban 16 March to 14 May, and DEC issues fire danger ratings through the season
• Not where the land manager prohibits it, and not on deep duff or peat anywhere

Building one

1. Use an existing fire ring. Do not build a new one. If there are two, dismantle one
2. Clear a wide area to mineral soil, and keep water to hand before you light it
3. Prepare tinder, three grades of kindling and fuel before striking
4. Start small: a tepee or lean-to of the finest material, and add gradually. Most failures are impatience
5. Keep it small. A guide's fire is a cooking and warming fire, not a bonfire. Small fires burn cleaner, use less wood and leave less trace

Wood

• Dead and down only, wrist-thick or smaller, so it burns to ash. Never cut a standing tree, live or dead
• Gather widely so one area is not stripped, and never from around the site itself
• Do not transport firewood. New York restricts moving untreated firewood more than 50 miles from its source, to slow emerald ash borer and other pests. Buy local, burn local

Putting it out

Burn it down to ash, drench it, stir it, drench it again, and feel it with the back of your hand. If it is too hot to touch, it is not out. Scatter cold ashes widely and, at a dispersed site, restore the ground. Every year in New York a fire "put out" by a departing group starts a wildfire hours later.

The group kitchen

• Stoves on a flat, stable, non-flammable surface. The commonest camp injury is a spilled pot of boiling water
• Never light or run a stove inside a tent. Fire and carbon monoxide, and both have killed people
• Refill liquid-fuel stoves well away from any flame, and check canister seals
• Keep the kitchen tidy while cooking: it is faster, and it is what stops scraps and wrappers going missing into the duff
• Have a plan for hot pots and children, and for hot pots and dogs

Camp routine

A group without a routine mills about, gets cold, and eats late. Set one on the first night and keep it.

1. Arrive, drop packs, brief the zones, everybody puts a warm layer on
2. Tents up, all of them, before anything else
3. Water collected and treating
4. Kitchen set, food out of the canisters, cook
5. Wash up, strain, food and rubbish back in the canisters, kitchen clean before dark
6. Brief tomorrow: wake time, breakfast, on the move by