wood types for fire

[Canoearoo]

What types of wood do you like for your camp fires? I have just started learning about how to find really dry wood and splitting wet wood for fires.

[Cossack]

It's hard to beat oak & hickory (which is plentiful where I live), but that's not an option in the BWCA & Quetico. Up there dry wood of decent size can be hard to find. We've had the best results sawing freshly fallen pine and splitting it.

[Yellowbird]

For cook fires in the canoe country, I like to gather up dead spruce, 1 - 2 inch diameter. Anything will do for a camp fire. Once the fire gets going, the heat dry the moisture out of whatever you throw on (provided its not to big).
-YB

[bogwalker]

My list

Cedar if and when you can find it is first
Spuce
Birch
Pine

in that order.

Cedar is not very available especially at campsites. Usually you need to take a trip away from the camp a little and hike back into the woods. Then you will have no problem finding wood. I admit I do not do this all the time, but if wood is at a premium and I have the time a scouting trip for wood with another is a great use of time.

[intrepidcamper]

My list:
To start the fire: Cedar, Birch bark, Spruce or Balsam tinder twigs. Cedar is found on the shorelines, it is often in flat, weathered pieces, caught up in the base of the brush along shore where the waves have washed it up. There is a lot of wood under the brush for those who hunt for it, I often find quite a bit in campsites because no one looks there! Birch bark I find on portages, as I go back for a second load I fill a little sandwich bag with bark bits found on the ground. It is easier to find at the portages, because no one is looking for it there. Balsam fir everywhere has little tiny twigs growing out of the trunk below the green branches. These are usually dead and dry and very available. I gather a handfull of them to put on top of the birch bark, then the cedar split up, and a burning fire is garanteed.
For bigger wood: I use beaver wood, also along shore under the brush. This is generally poplar (aspen) which is knawed off in convenient lengths and stripped of the bark by the Beeves. It dries wonderfully and will be dry, even if wet on the outside. To tell a good dry piece from a wet one, strike it on a rock. A wet one "thuds" and a dry one makes a hollow "crack" type noise. You can also tell by weight of the piece once you pick up a few. I make an excursion along the shore with my canoe, either paddling or wading, and pick up wood as I go, after I set up camp or while someone else is setting up camp. This method is better known and sometimes you have to go quite a way to find a load. I am a maniac about it, so you may have been to a campsite I've left a heap of beaver wood on for you. Look for it in hollows of bays, on windy shores (south and east shore) where wood collects, and on beaver houses and old dams or near them.
Back to Balsam, there is tons of it. Find a thick copse of it and look for the 1-2 inch diameter ones still standing but dead, under the shade of the others. You can crank these dead trees out of the ground at the roots and take them to camp and saw them up.
We like beaver wood because it burns cleaner and burns completely away. Less smoke and a deader fire when it is out.

[Beemer01]

Beaver wood. End of story.

Burns well, saws nice, splits well - besides its fun to go gather it.

[Canoearoo]

Beaver wood. End of story

Yes but is that legal?

[Beemer01]

Sure - Beaver wood can be found around the shores of lake - weather silver grey and up on the rocks. The nice thing is that this is usually Birch which burns hot, smokeless and for quite a while.

I've only taken beaver wood off of a lodge once in Quetico and that one certainly appeared to be VERY old and almost certainly abandoned... though admittedly I'm not sure how to tell since the beavers weren't around to ask.