Chris Hallaxs' Forensic Behavioral Profile: Wilderness Skills Page

Chest-deep icewater

"Virtues to wandering around half-lost"

There are virtues to wandering around half-lost too. Indeed, I often do it on purpose. Due to working around the wet spots and other impediments, I was covering areas I hadn't perhaps been on all winter.

The landscape sort of drastically changes if you add or remove a couple feet of snow, which means the easiest route moves around a lot all winter.

With this bit of unfamiliarity, I got a bit off course and ran into what I think is the biggest black spruce tree I've ever seen; maybe over 2 1/2 feet in diameter.

That's not much of a tree in general, but it is quite possibly the biggest _black_ spruce I've ever seen.

These kinds of things are what I sometimes wish I had a GPS for, because I could probably walk around for two days trying to find it again, constantly walking within 100 feet of it without knowing.

Then again, supposing I had it marked on a GPs, I can't quite see myself going back to just look at it again.

"Yup--it's still here. Um....So, what's happening, tree?" <silence....> "Right. ...okay, I'll be going now."
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, April 16, 2003

I wouldn't have been doing something stupid like this [wading in chest-deep icewater] except that I knew the cabin was only another 2 miles or so up the road and I could start a fire and dry out.

It was 25 degrees by the time I got to the cabin, still dripping water and starting to shake. :-)
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, December 31, 2002

Consuming water contaminated with E. Coli

Sometimes, some perspective helps. I used to work for the local state park, and we had to shut a hand pump down because it started testing for E. Coli.

We were trying to treat the well, which required pumping on it for an hour for some reason I don't remember.

A coworker was shocked that I was drinking out of this well between turns at the hard work of the pumping.

I told her "well, I've been drinking out if daily for a month before we found out, so I doubt it's going to kill me today"
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 4, 2003

"You can afford to be a lot more daring"

Another thing to keep in mind is that snowshoes leave very obvious tracks. You can afford to be a lot more daring, since at worst you can always backtrack.

Under most conditions I'm used to, it takes nearly two feet of snow to fully obscure new snoeshoe tracks. Even if it is snowing 6" an hour and fast drifting over any tracks, you'll still always find a track ever little while behind a tree where the air currents have perversely kept it clear of snow instead of filling it.

If you are used to "working the terrain" in picking a route, you'll tend to follow the same track over the same ground whether you even know it or not at the time. This being the case, picking up even the occasional track every few hundred feet even is enough to know where you've been.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 20, 2003

"I couldn't resist crawling up the riverbank to the bottom of the upper falls"

On being lost

I'm not sure I know what lost means. To SOME degree, you always know where you are.

The less you know about where exactly you are, it just means it's going to take somewhat longer to get back to somewhere where you will know. That's all.

I mean, say you are this "lost" thing. You still know that you are:

1) On earth
2) in a particular state in the United States
3) Probably know which particular county
4) where you came from before getting lost, which can't be too far away etc.

I suppose at some point along the spectrum of uncertainty, you can call it "lost".

I would say it is a matter of preparedness and personal circumstances at what point you'd call it "lost".

One person might think they were lost, where in the same situation another would just take another half day to get back out.

Yet another person might not worry much for a few days.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, November 27, 2003

Then when I got to the upper falls, I couldn't resist crawling up the riverbank to the bottom of the upper falls, and marveling at the house-trailer sized chunks of ice that had fallen from the rock face above.

Where they had fallen and busted open, the insides were for some reason a delicate aqua yet vibrantly blue color.

Even though there were two of these ice masses left hanging above, and it was above freezing, and even drizzling now, I clambered right up to one of these to investigate it.

However; keeping one eye *constantly* on those two last chunks hanging up there was getting nerve wracking. :-)
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 10, 2003

"I do stupid stuff, but I'm prepared"

I did have the minimal gear necessary to survive overnight no problem, if not exactly comfortably.

I do stupid stuff, but I'm prepared for the worst case if it turns out to be stupider than I estimated. heh.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 10, 2003

"I'm heading out west of town to see if I can't freeze off a couple appendages"

It's about -10 right now. I'm heading out west of town to see if I can't freeze off a couple appendages or something :-) I imagine the temp will rise significantly in a half hour or hour now that the sun is about to come up.

I'm going to be lazy/violate snowshoeing ethics and walk the snowmobile trail out part of the way while it's early and I still have it to myself. *GRIN*
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, February 13, 2003

Severe windchill

"You really shouldn't be out there alone"

When someone hassles me about "you really shouldn't be out there alone" my infallible, standard response, (stated more diplomatically than this) amounts to: "Oh! You're coming along with me, then? No? Oh...then must be you know someone who'd want to go along? No? Then MYOB."
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, May 4, 2003

I don't habitually deal with such situations [extreme, sub-zero temps in high winds], because in the country I am used to traversing, I'll simply reroute to stay on the lee side of hills and take to the cedar swamps or such and avoid the worst of it.

Maybe there are ways of better coping with this than I am aware, but the only thing I can imagine being able to do is hole up and wait that out. That's not going to be easy, either, since you are still having to stay warm, and are slowly losing your energy reserve no matter how well you are dressed.

Ever hour becomes more of a tradeoff of trying to brave the conditions and bug out, or sit tight and eventually succumb to lack of food, which in such conditions happens faster than actually starving, as it takes a lot of energy to keep warm.

Once your blood sugar drops far enough, that's probably all it takes. Then blood starts pulling in from your limbs, and they become more useless, and maybe freeze, and now you lack the ability to move well anyway. It all could pile up quite fast.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 22, 2004

"I'll tell them at work where I'm going to be"

Heading out to "see what happens"

I have something like 15 pounds of frozen meat which I bought on sale a couple weeks ago, and is earmarked for a snowshoeing expedition of some sort.

No date or location set yet, but it'll be something local, and is going to start from here in Paradise, because I'm going to pack a sled and take off in some semi- random direction west and see what happens, probably.

This weekend is too warm. Tomorrow is supposed to be potentially 35 degrees.

I'll die of heatstroke trying to snowshoe. Previous to finding the weather shaping up that way, I had tentatively considered doing a day snowshoe trip out to hopefully as far as the upper Tahquamenon Falls.

The route would just form itself as I went, but would probably partly follow my recent, probably still-barely visible, trail out to Clark lake.

Then it is uncertain if I would drop south to the lower falls, and follow the river to the upper, or arch around to the north toward the upper falls.

If I went via the lower falls, I'd get to see them again, and also, the trail between the two falls would be so packed with snowshoe traffic it would be a nice pleasant walk in just boots, I'm certain.

Either way, it would make for a very long day, and I'd probably end up walking the highway back during the last part of the day simply because it got dark on me before I returned, even if I start out at predawn light.

This Sunday will reportedly be below zero most or all of the day.

That's no huge impediment. If I was stuck with a "go now or lose the chance this week" situation, it'd be a nondecision.

However, then the next three days are supposedly going to have highs in the 10-15F range, which is about perfect by the time you work up a good trudging warmth.

Hell, if there's no wind, it's shirtsleeve weather for anything moderately aerobic, which snowshoeing is.

Well, as long as I stay out of the hot sun, and in the shade of trees.

I have done lots of one-day stuff this year, but I should work in a chance to establish a base camp in the boonies, complete with a fire to sit by to watch the stars a night or two.

That's always nice, too. ....hence the aforementioned frozen dead animal parts ;-)
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, March 1, 2003

This is a good point [letting someone know where you are going] and in retrospect something I have often done, I guess.

Like, maybe I'll tell them at work where I'm going to be, and that I *do* intend to be back for my next scheduled work day. So, someone knows, and it's someone that is definitely going to notice if I'm not back, because it's going to inconvenience them.

File under "If you don't think anyone cares if you exist or not, try missing a car payment."
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 9, 2003

On leaving emergency contact and medical info

Heh. Half the time, it would be weeks or months, possibly years, before another person came through the area I'm in.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, August 9, 2003

"I don't know where I'm going yet"

I've never been any good at that [leaving a trip itinerary], either, though. The simple fact of the matter is most often, I DON"T KNOW WHERE I'M GOING yet, until I get there!

This is why I stealth camped for a week in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. They wanted you to be at a specific spot every night. How the hell do I know where I'm going be? I don't even know where I'm going yet, besides vaguely "east-ish, probably more-or-less along the lakeshore...maybe".

I guess this is to maximize who gets a chance at a campsite, due to demand, but this turned out to be no big deal, because I was the only one at any of the designated camp sites.. It was mid-October, and for the most part I was the only person around anywhere.

Even on a few-hour walk, I might take off north with something tentatively in mind, but after going out, the terrain changes my mind, or maybe there's more snow than I thought still, for example, or who knows what. I end up walking back into town from the southwest.

I can't necessarily say when I'll be back either. If I don't have anything going to make me come back at a certain time in the next day, I might have an approximate time in mind, but then I end up taking longer to walk an experimental route than I first planned.

All day dayhikes sometimes end up becoming impromptu overnighters as I run out of daylight.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, May 9, 2003

"No one approves of me out wandering around by myself"

Basically, it has been made abundantly clear to me in the past that I 'll get nothing but hassle for my efforts [to inform family members of where I am going], as no one approves of me out wandering around by myself. Being that as it is, I've chosen to stop burdening them with the knowledge, as well as saving myself the hassle. As I've said before:

Someone: "You're not going to go out there by yourself!"
Me: "Oh?? You mean you're coming along too? Cool."

The downside of this is that sometimes I am reluctant to do things that I might otherwise do if I had a bit more safety margin through having a partner or three. On the other hand, this is probably a false sense of security. People in groups tend to somehow end up doing even stupider things than they would otherwise know better to do by themselves. :-)

Of course, having made that observation, now I'll assume I'm wiser than a group, and go off and do something cocky and dumb. heh.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 9, 2003

"Stay away from trees during lightning"

I do think it is kind of funny camping in the middle of a forest when you've always heard "stay away from trees during lightning".

I'm not sure what the correct interpretation of this is, but I assume that 1) that advice is only relevant for isolated trees in otherwise flat areas and/or 2) in the middle of miles and miles of woods, what the hell is there to do about it anyway? :-)

....maybe stay at home out of the dangerous woods...and slip in the bathtub and get a head injury and be a vegetable for life.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, May 12, 2003

Search-and-rescue costs

Late for dinner

The sun was starting to slide faster west now. Uhoh.

I was supposed to be at my grandparents' house for a dinner party for my Mom tonight.... It's that late already?

My watch said 3pm. Oops. Sadly, they are kinda used to me saying I'll be back, and I don't make it.

Me is a Bad Son. :-)

These kinds of explorations always take longer than one imagines, even after you take into account that it'll take longer than you imagine.

I'd only covered maybe five miles of distance, but by the time I wander slightly back and forth in favor of terrain, I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up closer to 7 or 8.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, February 14, 2003

I don't see validity either in the argument that the cost of search and rescue is something you can hold over the head of someone who supposedly is "irresponsible". Did they ask for SAR?

A secondary argument is that "well, what about the relatives/family/friends?" Indeed. They were the ones that requested SARS service, in that case, so they can foot the bill.

Haggling over splitting it or whatever is totally between the rescued person(s) and whoever initiate the rescue.

If any of this sounds intolerable to you, or doesn't match your mode of thinking, the beauty of it is that it still leaves you free to make your own accommodations to have someone come after you if you don't show up at your scheduled time.

This isn't equally important to all people. Some people have kids, some don't, etc. Some people get more value out of doing things that may or may not have incidental risk than others do, and they have to individually decide if the value they get out of it balances the risk or not.

Actually, perhaps I don't take this idea far enough; like the issue of the "one armed rockclimber" to be irrelevant. Maybe he had insurance, maybe he paid cash, maybe he was treated pro bono for the publicity it got the medical center...but maybe he's even a leech on the partly socialistic health care system, and in that case, who's being dumber, him, or all the people that were in some way responsible for footing the bill for him? :-D
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, May 10, 2003

"I once popped one of my knees slightly backwards"

"The most hazardous thing I've done"


	Upper Tahquamenon River Falls in the winter. Click on photo for high-resolution imagery. (Photo courtesy of Chris Hallaxs' digital archives)

The most hazard-ous thing I've done (shhh. .don't tell any-one) is cross-ed the top of the upper Tahqua-menon falls when the water is a bit down at least.

I do this a ways upstream, where I'd have a lot of chances to catch myself if I lost footing, it's just upriver out of the eyes of the silly tourists (wouldn't want to give them any ideas) and there is a sort of shallow ledge that runs from one side of the river to the other.

You can walk on the back side of this so you are effectively braced against the rock against the current if you are careful how you step.

I've never even come close to falling over doing this, much less getting sucked downstream, but unless the river is very low, every step is a detailed study in its own right.

There is a nice place to ford downstream of the falls, but it's not only waist deep at the driest times, but the other side is a short trek of hell to get back out of the swamp that is in the lowlands below the escarpment that makes the falls.

In past droughts, I have been able to walk across above the upper falls and never have it go over ankle deep most of the way across. Then it's a cinch.

There are countless places to cross for at least a half mile upriver of the lower falls, but the bottom here is extremely tricky.

Always carry some kind of staff, stick, pole, to prod the rock bottom ahead of you. There are interesting places where you might be in mid-shin water, and one step drops you in up to your neck.

If you know they are there, these are great fun to play in in the summer, but if you get caught by surprise, you can easily injure yourself falling into them.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, May 6, 2003

I once popped one of my knees slightly backwards after falling off a roof I was shoveling. This was a case of stupidity: the fall didn't do anything, it was what I did after.

The snow that came down around me packed in hard around my legs slightly over the knees, and I lost my balance while trying to yank my feet out of the snow.

I fell forward, my leg was held in the snow as if in dried concrete, and it made a loud audible "snap" noise, and hurt like *#&$ for a few weeks afterward.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, May 5, 2003

"Danger: no progress beyond this point"

Heh. I have a soft spot for them too, despite the fact that they often exist next to signs saying things along the lines of "stay on trail" and "Danger: no progress beyond this point" In the case of the latter, they do often lead to the best scenes available.

Sure, they could build a big huge deck with rails out to that spot, and thus make it safely viewable, but that would be nearly pointless, as it would also ruin it in almost all cases.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, May 4, 2003

Falling through ice

I know if I fell through the ice in the winter, I sure as hell might not live, let alone be able to just keep going.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 23, 2004

"Luck, while a valid fact, is overrated"

Luck, while a valid fact, is overrated. Paranoia works better. That is, a lot of the stuff I step on while hiking I am EXPECTING to betray my confidence in it supporting me.

I am half sure every rotten log I step one will unexpectedly let my foot drop right through it, that every web board is impossible to stand on without doing a Chevy Chase, that every rock has been carefully balanced on the rounded end.

I attempt to counteract this by using a sense of balance, and also being ready to fall in as graceful a manner as possible. Walking is not fully automatic, or at least doesn't have to be. It does help to actively be thinking about what you are doing even when strolling down a relatively tame trail. I

f you keep stubbing your toe on roots, be conscious of how you are walking, analyze it, and modify the habitual pattern. Even constantly thinking about what you want to do if you do fall helps you to do so in such a way as to minimize or even prevent injury.

Well, in theory. I'm not going to pretend I never get injured, or never do stupid things. I've tried to cross a log over a river before and ended up with a pure black bruise on the outside of my right thigh that was as big as my outspread hand when I slipped off and landed on the log as I fell.

I do feel that trying to think about how I walk makes a lot of difference, though. For example, despite constantly doing stuff like stepping on downed trees that bounce up and down as I try to stand on them, and sometimes jumping from one such tree to the next, I can't recall the last time I twisted an ankle. A couple years at least.

Of course having said all this, now tomorrow I'm going to go for a 1/4 mile walk and fall 24 inches off a log and shatter both legs or something. :-)
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, August 24, 2004

Personal responsibility

This [people needing expensive rescues or evacuations] sincerely perplexes me. What's complicated? Why not just let people sign a waiver, and if they call for help, tough shit? ...unless someone wants to volunteer to go get them totally of their own accord, out of boredom or whatever.

I don't buy the excuse about "they might not know what they are getting into, so someone has to protect them". That works for dogs and small children, but theoretically, adults are....well, adults. They were warned (though even this is not strictly necessary, because no one follows you around in real life warning you of every possible danger or setback), they didn't listen, they made their own problems.

The only person anyone can do anything about is themselves. Part of fully respecting people as individuals is to allow them the right to do things that you personally find really stupid, because surely sometime, you are going to do things that someone else thinks is asinine. :-)
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 8, 2003

On being lost

Have you ever gone into the grotto under the Upper Tahquamenon River Falls?

*GRIN* Er...no...there are signs that tell you not to do that, and it would be dangerous.

Actually, yeah. Two or three times. It's neat under there. In the summer, around 6am the sun is coming up and shining through the curtain of water, and the rock wall is all fuzzy and green with moss and some sort of fern that is apparently specialized to the environment there.

One time I was under there and the whole area was full of butterflies.

You'd think the heavy mist would drag them down, but it was so thick with them under there I could stand still and hold my arms out, and they'd land on me.

One year when the river was extremely low, I went under at the water level from the other side too, but you end up standing in water to your knees on submerged rocks.

It's not nearly as interesting as the south side.

I know the signs are because they get tired of, or don't want to be liable for rescuing idiots that fall in, but I wouldn't be the least bit resentful if I myself fell in and was drowning and everyone just stood on the observation deck and waved.

After all, it would have been MY fault, wouldn't it?

No sense anyone else risking anything to save someone else from their own stupidity!
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 5, 2003

What I was really trying to write in between the lines was having a few simple crucial [survival] tools at my *immediate* disposal [in a survival situation], the most important one being my head, is ever so much better than even an army headed my way and due in an hour.

It's also much more efficient. There's really hardly anything that you can't survive for several days around here. There's always some sort of water.

Even if you were sure it would make you sick to drink it, you would do so in order to keep going for a couple days, and then deal with the effects later. Biggest thing is don't get frenzied.

You can do yourself more harm in a lot of situations in 15 minutes of panic than calmly assessing and coping for a couple days. I didn't say it was going to be like laying home in bed, but you'll live.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 6, 2003

Does anyone have a helicopter available up there [U.P.] for rescue purposes?

I don't think so. I'm sure not counting on it. Actually, I kinda hope not. I'd be pissed if anyone went to that much bother. Helicopters are expensive to waste on fools getting themselves lost in the woods :-)

Again, the places I go are often not accessible by anything other than foot. Also, because I'm often exploring new areas, I can't exactly usefully tell anyone where I'm going.

I have at times been out just exploring and ended up 10 miles from home or camp or cabin, and just walked out to the nearest road and then back 'home', such that my planned 8 hour walk turned into a 16 hour overnight one, but that's fine.

In the summer, sometimes I'm ambivalent about whether or not I'm out of the woods before dark. The worst I'll get is somewhat hungry.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 5, 2003

Do you carry a cell phone...to summon rescue?

Cell phones don't work around here in a lot of places, and I couldn't depend on the batteries anyway, probably. Also, the kinds of places I go, it would be about useless.

The batteries would go dead before I could ever talk anyone into where I am. "Yeah, okay, now follow that ridge to the north until the woods changes to spruce, then skirt the bog around the east side, and continue on about a half mile until you hit the creek, then head upstream until you get to where it narrows and there are trees to walk across.... (continue on like this for about 15 minutes of conversation)

Well, worst case scenario, I could probably head to a snowmobile trail or the highway under an hour. I HAVE gotten wet before in the winter, and it's really not all that bad as you'd think.

Once your clothes freeze up, they just become windproof, and it's not a huge issue until you stop moving, which you never do until you stop for the night anyway. It's not nice, but it's survivable.

Also, I ALWAYS have the means to start a fire, plus a hatchet, large knife, folding saw, and sometimes a short machete-type thing (Ontario SP-8) I carry this stuff even if I only expect to be out an hour or so.

I have yet to have needed it, but it's useful for other things too. With the means to cut and shape trees, to some extent, I could even repair snowshoes if I had some rope.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 5, 2003

"Molotov Cedar Cocktail" or "Incendiary Idiocy"

An experimental campfire. Click on photo for high-resolution imagery. (Photo courtesy of Chris Hallaxs' digital archives)

Okay, yesterday I did at once one of the dumber and yet more impressive things I've ever accomplished, at the same time.

I've always wanted to try building a fire without artificial aids, (unless you count a knife) and someone mentioned something that happened to remind me of this.

It's very dry right now, so it probably couldn't ever be easier. I set out to do so yesterday morning.

I did play with a lighter somewhat, sampling various things I had picked up from weeds and off trees as possible tinders.

Then with a collection of pine needles and plant down and shavings and other stuff, constructed what I hoped would be a fire.

After tired hands, and hours of fiddling, I had some smoldering going on. Incendiary foreplay, you might say.

So after hours of work are paying off, I'm intent on this. I'm right down inches from the smoke, blowing air on it, nursing it along.

I've got my arms right around the little mound of tinder. The smoke increases, but I still can't get actual flame. After a bit more, the thing is smoking helaciously, and the amount of stuff smoking is increasing too. Then all of a swoon "Fwoomp" it goes up.

Fighting
a forest fire

A few years ago, I and another guy were first on the scene of a small fire just east of Upper Tahquamenon falls on M-123.

I remember almost wanting to stop and laugh (though I was too busy to do so), because I was standing in knee deep black sludge and water, trying to put out a frighteningly persistent fire.

At the time it hadn't rained in about a month. You could stamp a section out, turn your back and hear a "fwoomp" and it would have re-lit itself just from the ground heat, apparently.

The point is, the fire was doing just great with the grass hummocks and brush even though it was mostly burning on top of standing water.

By the same token, the ground wasn't much affected at all.

It killed some trees, but now, a couple years later, you'd have to go out in the woods and look around close to tell that anything had happened.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, April 28,, 2003

Dried brown cedar foliage is surprisingly, amazingly, fearsomely flammable.

I lost all the hair on my right arm, singed my mustache, some of my hair, and my right eyebrow, and somehow pretty much totally lost my right eyelashes.

Of course, this didn't hurt me in the least. It barely felt warm before I got away from it. Still, I was rather jubilant overall. It worked! What a pain in the ass, though. I'm torn whether to keep trying this to see if it gets easier, or to just be content I did it once and be sane and use lighters.

Just to round out a day of experimentation---Walking back home, I passed some balsam trees; the young ones that still have the sap-filled blisters in the bark.

I read somewhere these are good to eat. I popped a couple and licked it up. Hmm...It's not ....*bad*... but it is strange. Somehow almost minty, and basically tastes like gin. I like gin. It reminds me of balsam trees. The next couple of hours, I kept burping pine.

Actually unrelated to this in any way, someone in Canada just this morning was telling me about "Buckley's" Cough syrup. Apparently, the stuff tastes horrible, but supposedly works.

That's their slogan actually boasts that it tastes terrible. One of the main ingredients is balsam pine sap or oil.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, September 10, 2003

Low-impact fire wood collection

Usually, you can easily find some 6 foot tall, standing dead pine without needles, and it contains everything you need for a fire. Fine branches, bigger branches farther down, and various sizes of trunk to build the fire up.

Even nicer, you can even just rip the things out of the ground and carry them off with one hand and leaving no ugly chopped off stump. I don't like to leave traces of having been there.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 25, 2003

Fire pistons

Gas line antifreeze turned fire starter

Some way along, I found a full, unopened pint bottle of alcohol gas line antifreeze.

The weather indicated rain was possible still today, so figuring it might be handy for starting a fire later, I tossed it in my pack.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 25, 2003

Anyone ever heard of these things? They are apparently semi-ancient in origin.

The aboriginals who first made them of course think they must use certain materials to complete the spell or invoke the magic or gods or whatever, but essentially, it uses compression to create heat, in the same way that a diesel engine's cylinder ignites the fuel.

I'm intrigued. I'm looking more into this. So far, the most info I have found in single web page is here: http://www.onagocag.com/piston.html
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, August 4, 2003

Winter fires

I've found that in some cases building a fire in the winter is easier. Finding dry wood is easier. the bottom dead branches of trees are full of dry wood. Snow is dry. Having much of a fire requires digging a hole down the ground, though.

I've only had a campfire once. I try not to do it because it's hard to clean the fire site up properly in the snow.

In the summer or fall, I can dig out a firepit, burn it out, fill it back in, drop the sod back on top and leave nothing but some trampled ferns even on a close inspection. Random bits of charcoal get away from you easier in the snow, and then lay around on the ground come spring.

Maybe this isn't a huge deal. After a single year, the forest litter will probably cover it. Or you could go back months later and fix it. Most of the woods has burned several times in the past in Michigan anyway, and digging around in the woods turns up charcoal in most places, I suppose.

On the plus side, forest fire danger is literally zero. You couldn't get a forest fire going even if you tried your best and had a napalm cannon to work with.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 25, 2003

Low impact firemaking

Hot, not big, campfires

Heh. Yeah, it's too easy to lose aluminum in a hot campfire for one thing. I've melted aluminum down in a campfire for amusement before.

The stuff just can't take heat...or maybe I'm just overzealous in making sure I have a hot fire?

I said hot, not "big"...I usually sit 18 inches away from my fires. Having to find and cut wood by hand makes you stingy about it, and big fires eat wood.

Also, a tiny fire can be easily cleaned up and leave zero trace to find--one time I forgot a knife stuck in a log and wandered back over my own campsite twice while looking, without recognizing it at first because I had left so little sign.

I have no reason to think aluminum is going to kill me, but I'm not entirely comfortable using something that reactive to cook in, either.

Sometimes it gives some things a very strong metal taste, and even if that's harmless, it's nasty.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, December 18, 2002

That's one (out of a hundred at least) reasons I carry my Ontario SP-8 It's a 12-inch long (or so) 1/4" thick heavy chopping blade with a chisel-sharpened, square end.

Four whacks cuts out a hole, for waste purposes or for a tiny fire pit. You set the plug to the side. When you are done using it, you drop the plug back in and maybe step it down.

Even for fire pits, I've come by weeks or months later and only because I knew PRECISELY where the spot was, noticed that the vegetation on the plug was still doing well. The actual edges of the plug are so far always impossible ot determine without prodding at the ground to pick them back out by feel.

Otherwise, it would be impossible to even locate at all.

This is highly specific to this area, but the organic layer in the woods is usually mere inches deep, with sand underneath. For a fire, I chop out a round wad of rootbound stuff, dig some sand out and set it aside.

After the fire is out, probably with water added anyway, even though the fires are often double-handful sized and went out hours ago and are cold gray ash which you can stick your fingers in. The sand gets packed back in, the rootball goes back on top, complete with live plants.

Toss a handful of dead leaves at it and run a hand over it and it's invisible. The most lasting trace is the packed spot on the ground where I slept.

As far as leaving bits of charcoal or ash in the ground, it's right near the surface. The woods have had so many fires over the years that as often as not, you dig up bits of charcoal in the process of making the hole. The ash is fertilizer.

Of course chopping up the root layer isn't probably good in erosion areas, but then also, one doesn't usually camp on a noticeable slope of any sort, unless you want to roll downhill in your sleep :-)
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, May 10, 2003

Winter firewood collection

This [ability to find firewood] depends on the weather and where you are going. Fuel availability in the snowbelt regions in midwinter is often excellent! The snow tears branches off the trees all winter long, so there is often a lot laying around.

If it has stayed below 25 or so, the debris is often drier than it would be at any time in the summer. For once, even, something works out nice: The colder it is, the drier everything is. (and the better fire you'll thus have)
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, November 15, 2003

Return to top

Primitive cooking

Smoking game

Building an "oven" style campfire

The kinds of fires I tend to make are perhaps good for this kind of thing, as they kind of form an oven as a byproduct of their structure.

I initially start a small fire and get it going with just twigs and stuff, then when it's going fairly well, put a log on two sides of it, then lay two logs the other way across those.

This is good for burning to ashes, being very hot yet self-contained, and not smoking much, because air comes in the sides underneath and then runs up the center.

The logs facing each other reflects the heat in on itself and intensifies the fire. The outsides of the bottom logs often are not even burning.

While it doesn't make much for coals, there still are a good white-hot bed in the bottom, and you can shove things(like onions) in the ends between the bottom two logs as if it were an oven.

If more coals are desired, simply throw on more wood as if you were trying to smother the fire with wood, such as by putting more wood across and blocking off the "chimney" in the middle, or shoving wood in the open ends to fill in the gap in the center.

Pretty much you can let this arrangement burn down, use the coals, and then put logs back on and rebuild it.

Or, if I take care to carefully match the pairs of logs so that they burn equally (equal size, geometry, type of wood, dampness) I can pretty much keep adding onto the top forever and it will keep burning straight down from the bottom up.

That is, the log pairs burn and collapse about equally at and the same time, so as not to let one side down and tip it over.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, October 10, 2003

I even eat them [red squirrel], though they don't taste very good at all, but smoke anything over a campfire and it's semi-tolerable.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 16, 2003

Cooking potatoes and onions in coals of fire

Maybe I'm having a streak of good luck, for today, I finally seem to have perfected the method of throwing a potato in fire coals and figuring out when it is somewhere reasonably between raw inside and hard cinder.

It seems the secret is to wait until it starts smoking somewhat on the outside. It won't do that until the outside has dried enough to smolder, which it can't do until it cooks the water out. At that point, leave it a bit longer. Yeah, exactly a little while. You know.

At this point, it technically still isn't done, but you flip it out with a stick and leave it sit around somewhere. The superhot outside will cook or finish cooking the inside, and it will also cool so you don't burn your fingers when peeling the charred skin off to eat it.

I've tried spearing them with a green stick, but while you can cook meat and some other things this way, potatoes take too long at too high of heat to cook, and the stick burns off fairly soon and drops the tater in the fire to incinerate, and that's the end of that.

Buoyed by my success at producing two edible, delicious, even, potatoes, I tried an onion. I almost peeled it by reflex, and then happened to think that was stupid. I threw it in the fire assuming the same system as the potatoes.

When it was deemed done, I rolled it out with a stick. After it was out of the fire, I found out that, just like the potatoes, it could be handled with bare hands with little trouble. Surprising. I guess the outside gets so dry and fluffed up with char that it can't transfer heat well.

The onion was a definitely a success. Next time I have a fire, I'm bringing onions. Maybe a bagfull! I won't try to describe it, because I can't think of why it was so good, but it's good, trust me.

Like the onions on shish kebabs, or the bits of still slightly crunchy onion on a Supreme Pan Pizza, only a bit better. This was just a plain old humble yellow onion, too. I wonder if I could get one of the big sweet red ones to cook okay, despite the size?
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, October 10, 2003

A low-impact pit fire for cooking steaks and an onion

By about 2230 I had worked my way back to the river. I was still debating on spending the night out or not. After a half hour or so of mostly sitting around, resting, thinking, listening, I decided to at least cook my steaks.

I chopped out a hole in the forest rootmass with the machete and made myself a little firepit, and went about collecting wood to fill it. I found a bunch of sticky White Pine cones, which make good tinder, then some of the fine wire-like, dead spruce and balsam branches that make such great early fire material, and on up.

Usually, you can easily find some 6 foot tall, standing dead pine without needles, and it contains everything you need for a fire. Fine branches, bigger branches farther down, and various sizes of trunk to build the fire up.

Even nicer, you can even just rip the things out of the ground and carry them off with one hand and leaving no ugly chopped off stump.

I don't like to leave traces of having been there. After the fire got going, I basically tried to smother it by covering it with 3-4" diameter chunks of other dead stuff I had chopped up into lengths.

This temporarily starves it of air somewhat and promotes coals, which is necessary to help when burning dead dry 'gopher wood' like this, as it practically wants to just flash into ash. This is also by design though, because it burns out quickly and is gone.

Also, for what I was doing, I only need a fire slightly bigger than I could theoretically hold in my two hands, if I had asbestos gloves. When it was starting to die back down, It was now nearing midnight and the skeeters had slacked off significantly. Annoying, but tolerable.

I decided I could probably take a bath in the river without risking losing my sanity or a quart of blood, and it gave me something to do while waiting on the fire.

While back standing around drying at the fire, I carved out a meat fork from a green stick, and then cooked supper, and ate the steaks and drank a beer I brought with me for the occasion. 60F degrees beer, but Miller isn't too bad of stuff. The cheaper beer is, the colder it has to be to stand it. Good stuff can be room temp, even.

After the meat was done, I realized I also still had most of an onion in my pack, so I spitted it on a stick and roasted it over the remains of the fire. Yummy. Sometimes I carry a plate of some sort, and kind of wished I had not, to sit the meat on while the onion cooked. Hmm...a stiff bit of bark laying around, covered with a layer of maple leaves worked well enough....

I hung around by the fire, enjoying it and the stars and all, until about 1am, when the fire was nearly entirely dead. I tentatively decided to walk back tonight. I went and got a double handful of nearby black swamp soup and dumped it in the mostly ashes in the firepit, and stirred it up with my fingers to drown all the coals.

When done, I had a cold pudding that I'd had my fingers all through, knowing there wasn't so much as a warm spot in it. I put the sand back, stuck the dirt plug back on top, even still correctly oriented north/south, plants still upright, lastly brushing the forest litter back over.

The only sign I'd been there was some flattened ferns. If I go back in a week, or a month, assuming I can even find the spot (I might not be able to) the grass on top will still be growing.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 25, 2003

"If you want baking coals..."

How to cook a ruffed grouse

Don't overcook them [a ruffed grouse] though, or they get horrid dry.

They're so lean they make venison seem greasy.

My preferred method of cooking is on a campfire for maximum flavor.

Just salt them a bit and put 'em on a stick or grill over it.

The breast meat is thick though, and I usually end up cooking it for a while, eating the outside and smaller cooked parts, then putting it back in when I hit raw meat.

Otherwise, by the time it's done inside, the outside is overdone or even burnt.

Perhaps this isn't good food safety regarding salmonella and whatnot, but I figure what I actually eat is cooked. So far so good, I guess.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 29, 2003

It depends on what sort of fire one intends to build, partly. If you want baking coals, it pretty much requires some bigger chunks of nominally decent stuff, for example.

Also, it is precisely the desire to leave minimal impact that will make me 'vanish' a single downed tree rather than sucking up every stick for the nearest 100 feet Depending on the type of land, this is sometimes a lot less noticeable, believe it or not.

For instance, some areas have no brush on the ground to speak of, yet are so full of fallen pines that traversing the area is like scrambling through perpetual monkey bars.

A large part of the time, I'm actually more partial to little hot fires you could almost seemingly hold in two hands, and will set near or almost over them constantly poking and feeding a stick or two. These are usually rather temporary. Overnight at most.

These need small bits of fuel. Often if I'm sure I'm going to stop soon, I'll start snatching up random branches as I go. Or, I've also turned and entire small-medium tree into logs, split the logs into splinters, and kept that type of small fire going for several days out of one 20 foot pine trunk.

Of course, I had plenty of time to mill around and gather up all the precious chips, so by the time I left, only the stump was left, and not much of that. ...nor did the stump look out of place, since the tree had snapped off a half a foot above the ground quite naturally.

Oh all right. *GRIN* I also admit I find an axe fun. It seems to be roughly 15 percent how hard you swing it and 85 percent the finesse with which you wield it. When I can really get my mind into the right order conducive to this, it's immensely satisfying to see big chunks of log go flying with every strike, not to mention missing out on the fun blisters.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, April 23, 2003