Matt - Survival Fire Challenge  

I had a bit of downtime today and thought I'd go after the survival fire challenge. It was a success, but it was more difficult than expected and I had a few lessons along the way.

Gear used:

• Becker BK16 knife
• Light my fire 2.0 fire steel
• Dryer lint
• Sticks recovered while walking the dog today (
• Cut up wood leftover from smoking the turkey
• Bundle of dead/dried weeds
• Emberlit steel folding stove
• Self-reliance outfitters canteen cup and lid
• Kuplika cup & tea bag for after

The dryer lint served as my initial spark catcher from the fire steel. It did well at this, though it took a lot of repeated striking for it to finally ignite. The original plan was for the lint to then ignite the feather sticks I made from twigs.

It turns out that it wasn't so easy. The lint didn't quite burn long enough to catch the wood on fire. I actually had to go through two rounds of this before I tried another approach. There were a few bundles of dead weeds around my yard from pulling them out earlier in the fall. I compressed a bundle of it and shoved it down the center of the stove and then tried again.

Success!

That was enough to catch all of the fuel on fire. From there, it was just a matter of keeping it fed.

I didn't keep track of how long it took to boil, but it wasn't fast. The fire was on the verge of going out three times and I had to move the fuel around and blow into the base a few times to get it going again.

But it got there, eventually.

Once I hit a rolling boil, I poured it into a cup and enjoyed some mint tea.

Scoring

If my math is correct, this gets me to the Level 1 challenge because I used "quick tinder" by utilizing dryer lint.