Have you ever made a Dakota Hole Fire ? I've built many of them and find it to be useful when firewood is limited or winds are high. I prefer it, when soil type permits, to dig a potbelly shaped hole with a small opening and as deep down as I can reach to excavate the dirt.

The Dakota Hole is a great way to practice Leave No Trace, or when you want to keep a really low profile. Its also great when the temp is low; when you're finished with the fire for the night, put a Dutch Oven into the hole with breakfast in it, cover the whole thing, and build your shelter over it. Warm bed and hot breakfast in the morning. This requires a shallower hole, and doesn't work when the ground is frozen.

Mountain Man,

Thanks for the intro to that Dakota Hole. I've never seen that one before. I have, however, sort of "invented" my own deal...(smile). You know...the accidental discovery type.

(Pardon me if I've shared this here before once, but I don't remember if I did.) I was out camping once and trying to use one of those crazy MSR stoves (the Whisperlite, I think). Anyhow, it didn't function well, and I later learned we had the wrong nozzle on the crazy thing. It's supposed to operate on most any kind of fuel, and we were using regular unleaded, but apparently it needed a fuel-specific nozzle/jet for that fuel type, and had instead the one for white gas. Long story short, I aborted the use of said fuel in said stove, and used the fuel instead for fire starter in a fire pit.

I had tried to start the fire earlier, without success, and so far as I could see, there wasn't much there. I poured from the fuel cannister over the wood in the fire pit, and was just about finished pouring when "Whoosh!!" the flames leapt up and caught the fuel in the can (I had probably a good half-liter still in that can, if not more). I knew that I needed to cap that can quickly, or I would have a worse situation on my hands...so I began attempting to screw the lid on fast. Hahah. Ever notice how things take longer when you're in a hurry?! I'm sure I got at least three or four cross-threaded starts to that thing without getting the cap on, and all the while, flames are in heated frenzy of action around my hands. All of a sudden, someone called out to me that my jeans had caught fire. As the sound seemed urgent, I went ahead and dropped that crazy fuel bottle on the sand--a bit too hurriedly though, and it tipped itself over and began spilling out. After having slapped out the fire on my pants--all of which took far shorter time than it takes to tell here--I snapped up that fuel bottle again and, this time, successfully threaded the cap on...which stopped the fire streaming from the mouth of the can. But by now, there was perhaps only 3/4 cup left of fuel in that can, and the rest had been drained into the sand.

Poor me! After all that trouble, the fire in the pit still refused to start! The wood was damp, as it had rained upon it recently, and I had not found anything sufficiently dry. But there was a constant leap of flame coming from that sandy spot where the spill had happened. The same one who had warned me of being on fire, now suggested that I scoop up the burning sand and dump it into the fire pit. That did the trick! It started the fire. And it kept burning a long time. (Both in the fire pit, and outside of it where it had spilled.) As I considered the whole thing, I realized that the sand was acting very similarly to a stove. Only when the vapors reached the surface where they could react with oxygen did they burn. There was no "explosion" under the sand, because oxygen was too limited there.

So, if you're really down and out with your fuel stove, I theorized, you could pour a bit of fuel into a tin can full of sand, and light that for your stove.

Of course, I would not recommend trying any of the above where the outside temperatures were much above 70. Where I was, it was cool, and probably around 4000 feet. Fortunately, even after a number of seconds in the flames, I was almost entirely unharmed. A few singed hairs on the backs of my hands were all the evidence I had of the fire. I had not ever "played with fire" to that degree before, but I had heard it said that it is possible to put a match out in gasoline on a cold day (not sure just how cold it would need to be, but no plans to experiment with that either).

Scooping up that burning sand with a sharp flat rock (I didn't have a shovel) was rather interesting as well. It was a nice learning experience, but it was a good thing I was not seriously harmed, because I was at least two hours of hard/fast hiking away from the nearest road (took more than five hours of hiking in, but going downhill in a hurry can always cut the time shorter), and there was no cell phone reception there.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

GC, thanx for the story. Too funny. I saw it all play out in my mind. Well told. It would have been an altogether different story if it had been white gas instead of unleaded. I'll have to try soaking sand with gas and use it as a burner. I had a similar thing happen one time with molten pine pitch. Collected a huge pile of pitch globs from the sides of pine trees and got it burning in a hole to use a glue to make "tooth pick structure". I was bored. I was in a Tee Pee made of nylon parachute material. I accidentally stepped in the hole of burning pitch causing the goo to squirt out. It landed on the nylon and within seconds the entire thing was up in flames like a roman candle. I escaped unharmed and none the worse for wear. I finished out the military solo survival ordeal with no further complications.

Pitch fire, eh? Interesting. I was just doing a bit of looking online for the facts relative to the volatility of gasoline, and to putting matches out in it, and found some nice info. One article, from 1932, was a real gem on some essential fire safety with gasoline, but some of the article leads me to believe that the specific composition of gasoline was different back then than it is now. (Can we use gasoline today for "home" dry-cleaning?) Here is a link to the article.

Blessings,

Green Cochoa.

Interesting article. Loved the wordsmithing.

MM, what are your thoughts on big knives such as TOPS "Anaconda", Fehrman's "Final Judgment", Cold Steel "Trailmaster", Trace Rinaldi’s "Armageddon" and the like? Do you use big blades?

Yes, I do use big fixed blade knives. I have an old K-Bar. I use it to split log rounds into more manageable sizes for whittling into drills/spindles for the bow and drill fire sets. What about you?

I have an old Ka-bar, too. Lots of history in that design.

I have a Cold Steel Trailmaster in Carbon V steel with black powder-coat. (It is not the San Mai steel, but rather CS's proprietary high-carbon.) It has the leather sheath. In my opinion it is an excellent knife for big tasks such as shelter building, splitting rounds, etc. It is easy to maintain in the field with a steel, and holds a good edge. The leather sheath is excellent quality, but I would (should) make a new one since it rides too high on the hip and interfers with movement and is difficult to draw.

Here is a link to a pic: Scroll down the page a little and you will see it. http://www.survivalistboards.com/showthread.php?t=106682&page=2

I also have a Kershaw "Outcast." (see here: http://www.spyderco.com/forums/showthread.php?t=19861) I reallly liked the blade shape, which is reminiscent of a Kukri, and it had great review, but the knife I had did not have a good edge and needed to be re-profiled. I was not happy with it, and the CSTM will out-perform it on every task. It came with a Kydex (read "plastic") sheath, which is hard and noisy in the bush, and makes a tell-tale rattle when drawn.

That being said I would take either knife as a survival tool.

We drove through WA on our way to graduation at Upper Columbia a couple of weeks ago. It is beautiful county; I could survive there. We camped at Wanapum State Park, and then stopped at Lake Easton. Great sites!