How to Build the Right Campfire for Any Outdoor Situation

Brighten Your Night, Cook Your Food, Keep You Warm: A Fire Lay for Every Occasion

After an exhilarating day wheeling down the Shaffer Lake trail from the breathtaking vistas of Forest Falls, you realized you’ve spent a little too much time enjoying the splendid views that Mother Nature offers and won’t have enough time before nightfall to make it back to basecamp. To avoid traversing the last 14 miles with only the illumination of your headlights, you thought it best to circle the wagons, get a roaring campfire blazing, and settle in for the night under a speckled canopy of the stars.

Since the dawn of time, the control of fire is one of mankind’s greatest achievements, and because of it, he was able to cook his meals, extend the day’s light, ward off predators, and keep warm. However, which kind of fire do you need to build in order to most benefit your situation? Does your firewood need to last all night? Do you need coals for cooking? Or do you just want to light up the campsite? For each circumstance, there are different fire lays that present different benefits.

The Fire Triangle

There are only three things you need to start a fire: a fuel source, air and heat. Without one of these elements, you’ll be cold and left in the dark. Fire is the result of a chemical reaction called combustion, a type of oxidation, which is a reaction that occurs when a combustible fuel (i.e. wood or gas) is exposed to a source of heat (i.e. a match or spark) in the presence of oxygen. The oxidation of the molecules that make up fuel is an exothermic reaction, meaning it releases energy in the form of heat and light. We know the result of this reaction as fire.

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Tinder is easy to ignite and will get a fire started but will burn out quickly. Kindling is added to help build a bigger fire.

Fuel

For the sake of this article, we will use wood as our source of fuel. For starters, it is abundant in nature, inexpensive in civilization (compared to liquid fuels), and easily controlled. Gathering wood for a camp fire is an age-old practice, and this wooden fuel can be broken down into four main groups, each one a necessary step to easily go from spark to flame:

Tinder: Soft, light, with a large surface area, and easy to ignite. It is easy to imagine tinder as some combustible material that will ignite with a small spark. For example: cotton balls, dry grass, pine needles, cattail fluff, and birch tree bark.

Kindling: Usually small twigs less than diameter of a pencil. While tinder will burn easily, kindling is used to keep the fire going after the tinder has sparked. Consider cedar bark, dry leaves, and small twigs.

Sticks: Small limbs in diameter slightly larger than your thumb (about an inch). These will maintain a small fire once the tinder and kindling have burned off.

Wood: To maintain a healthy and long-lasting fire, larger pieces of wood around three or four inches in diameter are needed.

Building a Fire

Once you start a fire, the tinder and kindling will burn up quickly and your fire will extinguish itself if you don’t augment it with additional fuel. The process works best if you have prepared various piles of your materials before you add the match or spark to the tinder. This way, you can assemble a proper fire by using each group of fuel, gradually going up in size as you do so.

While doing so, take care in not piling too much fuel on the fire all at once; a fire has to breath, so leave spaces for oxygen to get into the fire. A careful balance between fuel, heat, and air is essential in order for the fire to be efficient. Too much or not enough of one thing will snuff out the blaze.

Fire Construction

Much like a specific knife has a specific function or that different boots will handle different terrain, not all camp fires are equal. Depending on the purpose of the fire—to warm, to cook, to light, to last all night, to signal, or to be stealth—there are different fire lays, that is, methods to arrange the wood to achieve a specific affect, for different situations. For example, not illustrated here, but a Dakota Hole Fire is a small fire that sits just below the ground in order to camouflage its light. A secondary hole is dug a foot or so away with a tunnel connecting the two holes; this funnels air into the base of the fire. Also, although technically not considered a fire lay, per se, the Keyhole Fire utilizes rock placement to form a keyhole shape, which is perfect for cooking. While the fire blazes away in the main fire ring, a small rectangle of rocks outlines a cooking area where coals are scraped to and over which a pot is placed.

Depending on your situation, you can choose from many different fire lays, some with very creative names, such as Bean Hole Fire, Yukon Stove, and the Gilwell Fire; however, most are slight variations of the nine most popular and useful shown here. Note: We used store-bought wood in our illustrations for two reasons: 1) The consistency of each piece better illustrates the different levels and sizes of the fuel; while, 2) the construction of each fire lay is easier to recognize and describe with uniform pieces of lumber.

o1. Alter Fire

Also known as a snow-base fire, the Alter Fire is used when the ground is particularly wet or covered in snow too deep to dig down to ground. The idea is to build a platform that raises the fire above the snow.

By using green logs as the base, they won’t easily burn and break through to the snow below. You can create as many layers as you need to keep it out of the snow, but as you go up, crisscross each new layer to better protect it.

o2. Lean-To Fire

The Lean-To Fire is used mainly to direct the heat in a specific way, towards you. The support stick can be propped up with rocks while larger and larger pieces of fuel are leaned up against it. The tinder and kindling is lit inside, and the fuel acts as a wind break.

This fire allows for a lot of airflow and heat, but the downside is that if the support stick is not big enough, it will quickly burn through and collapse the whole structure.

o3. Pyramid Fire

With large sized fuel at the bottom and smaller and smaller fuel positioned as you go toward the top, the Pyramid Fire is a self-feeding fire. As the levels burn, it will fall in on itself, adding new fuel from the upper levels as the bottom levels burn.

This is a great long-lasting fire that will keep burning maintenance-free for hours, but it takes a great deal of fuel to build. By keeping the levels close together, you starve the fire of oxygen, so it will burn slower. If done correctly, by morning, a nice bed of coals will remain.

o4. Long Fire

The Long Fire can be built above ground using two long logs (shown) or in a shallow trench. Either way, the effect of the logs and trench is to shade the fire from unwanted wind and to keep the coals together. The proximity of the logs depends on how large of a fire you need and the diameter of your cooking pots. This fire lay, built next to a large reflector (such as a boulder or a wall of a ravine), can be used to keep a nearby tent warm. The sticks underneath the long logs allow oxygen to reach the coals.

o5. Fire Stick Lay

The rocks at either end support the main log of the fire. On it, various sized kindling and sticks are laid. With tinder under the log and lots of air between the various sized fuel, a bright and warm fire is produced.

Similar to a Long Fire, this can be used to warm a tent or keep two people warm on either side. The downside is that the fire doesn’t last as long as other.

o6. Star Fire

Also known as the Indian Fire, this is a safe fire, one that can be easily controlled by pushing in or pulling out the arms of the star. As well, it is good for conserving fuel as it produces a small fire that will burn for a long time (as long as you keep pushing in the fuel as it burns).

Because the logs of each arm can be of any length, the fire will remain the same size as long as it is burning. The stones in between each arm keep the coals concentrated in the middle.

o7. V Fire

This fire lay is a slightly modified version of the Long Fire. The shape of the V by two large logs allows you to either block the wind if it is especially harsh or take advantage of a slight breeze to feed the fire oxygen. This is placed either pointed toward or against the wind depending on what affect is needed.

As well, coals from the fire can be scraped toward the junction of the V, over which a pot can be placed for cooking. In this manner, it is a simplified Keyhole Fire. Adding rocks to the opening of the V can control how much oxygen gets to the base of the fire, which will determine how much fuel the fire will consume.

o8. Log Cabin Fire

Because of the open and airy construction of this fire lay, the Log Cabin Fire burns fiercely, producing a great deal of light and heat. That said, it also consumes a lot of fuel quickly, reducing it to a substantial bed of coals, great for cooking. To make the fire last longer, build a small Tee-Pee lay within the Log Cabin and keep it fed so the fire won’t consume the “logs” of the cabin so quickly.

The difference between this and the Pyramid Fire is the spacing of the fuel. Where in the Pyramid Fire, we wanted a limited amount of oxygen to make the fire last longer; in the Log Cabin Fire—the most popular fire build next to the TeePee Fire—the idea is to have a large fire and end with a lot of coals.

o9. Teepee Fire

This is the most popular kind of fire lay known, the one most everyone builds when constructing a fire. It burns large, bright, hot, and quickly. With the fuel angled in this manner, it creates a natural chimney, which funnels a great deal of air into the spaces at the bottom, creating a very large fire.

The Teepee Fire lights easily and is easy to maintain (just lay on more fuel), but the downside is that it is also a tall fire, so make sure not to construct this one under overhanging branches.

However, toss on some green foliage for smoke, and this is a perfect signal fire.

Ways to Ignite a Fire

Though there are many ways to start a fire—some unintentional like an electrical short, a lightning strike, or a chemical combination—many of the ways to intentionally start a fire without matches are mechanical and creative: