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VOYAGEUR OUTDOOR SKILLS #12

Demonstrate the ability to lay, light and safely extinguish a fire leaving no trace.

This is a significant requirement to cover and it requires the scout youth to apply Leave No Trace (LNT) principles to their outdoor campfire activities. This requirement has a significant overlap with Voyageur Outdoor Skills requirement #11 which asks the youth to develop an Outdoors Environmental Code of Conduct.

All this information for tackling this requirement can be found through the Leave no Trace web programs that can be found on the web.

TIP: good resource sites

Leave no Trace Canada: www.leavenotrace.ca

Leave no Trace USA: www.lnt.org

Leave No Trace BSA:

·  http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/BoyScouts/TeachingLeaveNoTrace.aspx

·  http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/CubScouts/resources/LeavenoTrace.aspx

Another great resource that our Troop was able to leverage was a program for Minimizing Campfire Impacts which we obtained permission to reuse from 20th Cambridge Scouts in Ontario Canada.

·  http://www.scouts-sw.ca/20program.htm

·  http://www.scouts-sw.ca/docs/Minimize_Campfire_Impacts_LNT.pdf

Our Troop tackled this requirement in the following manner.

PROGRAM ACTIVITY

Leader training. We designated one leader to be our resident expert at building LNT campfires. This leader demonstrated to the leaders how to build a series of leave no trace campfires in both Winter and Summer seasons. Once the leaders were familiar with these techniques we were then better to teach our scout youth.

Combine with Leave No Trace requirement: This requirement was tackled in the same time frame as other Voyageur level LNT program activities that our troop performed.

FALL/SPRING LNT CAMPFIRES

We went to our local fire pit armed with our fire starter kits, small shovels, LNT program booklets and the LNT Campfire document from the Cambridge scouts. We then challenged our scout youth to make a small LNT campfire as follows:

1.  Build a small personal campfire on a durable surface and demonstrate what you have done to a leader before lighting it.

2.  Select a non-durable area, identify the area to a leader and explain why you have selected that area and discuss what kind of campfire you will be building (We do this to make sure the scout youth do not build a campfire on a sensitive area and that they understand that we want a SMALL cooking fire and NOT A LARGE WHITE MANS campfire.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

DURABLE SURFACE – SMALL CAMPFIRE #1

Small personal campfire – for a patrol

·  Chose an area of gravel and/or rocky area where there is little or no grass.

·  Pick the campfire area near a wooded area, so you can collect wood easily and also dispose of ashes in an area where there is longer grass and small shrubs – as this helps hide your ashes when you dispose of them.

·  Lay a plastic bag (garbage bag) on the ground where you intend to build your camp fire.

·  Collect pile a small amount of dirt and spread it over the plastic / garbage bag. You should lay the dirt at least 4 inches thick as this will absorb the heat of the fire and not impact the ground.

·  Build a small campfire, no more than 6 inches in length, width and height

·  If you build a larger fire, you could melt your garbage bag and then you will definitely leave a trace of your campfire!!

·  The campfire does not have to be any larger – even for a patrol as the campfire can be kept lit by adding more wood to keep it going until everyone has cooked their food.

·  Have the campfire inspected for LNT purposes and for correct construction technique

·  Light the campfire under leaders supervision (often small campfires will collapse as the youth attempts to light it as the forget to lay the campfire out in a manner in which they can ignite it without their fingers getting too close to the middle of the campfire tinder – this becomes even more obvious if the youth is using a flint striker to ignite the campfire with sparks).

·  Light the campfire and feed it so that it burns for at least 8 to 10 minutes. (It takes approximately 8 to 10 minutes for a small fire to boil a liter of water or cook a tin of soup)

·  Allow the fire to burn out.

·  Let the ashes cool down (check with your hand)

·  Lift up the edges of your plastic / garbage bag and collect the dirt/ashes and then

·  Seal up the bag and take it with you

·  Carry the dirt and ashes into the woods and scatter them where they cannot be seen.

·  Inspect the area where you had your campfire and brush away and marks and clean up.

NON-DURABLE SURFACE – SMALL CAMPFIRE #2

Small personal campfire – for a patrol. If the youth cannot locate a durable surface, then they can make a campfire on a non-durable surface by taking a few extra steps as follows:

·  Taking a small shovel, cut a 6inch x 6inch piece hole in the ground that is no more than 3-4 inches deep. (about the thickness of a piece of turf)

·  Place the earth/turf to one side (so it can be replaced when the fire is completed)

o  An alternative option is to peel the turf back and lay it down. The turf can then be rolled back into place when the fire is done.

·  Collect from the surrounding area, tinder and wood (dead wood only)

·  Within the small hole, lay a small campfire using Tinder and small pieces of wood.

·  Have the campfire inspected.

·  Light the fire and keep it going for at least 10 minutes.

·  Let the fire die out or extinguish it.

·  Let the ashes cool off (check with your hand) and press them down into the bottom of the hole.

·  Replace the turf/earth that you dug up and pat the surface down with the shovel and clean up.

OTHER IDEAS – SMALL CAMPFIRE #3

·  Take a cooking pot and build a small campfire within it. Though this will dirty your pot, it can be cleaned. The pot can sit on a small mound of earth or on a collection of rocks if the pot can be made stable.

·  If you are at a camp, there may be a metal trash can lid that you can use. If so, check that it is not painted and then turn it upside down, stabilize it in a mound of earth or on rocks.

·  If you are carrying heavy duty aluminum foil, lay it out on a flat mound of earth and build your campfire on that.

Take a cooking pot and build a small campfire within it. Though this will dirty your pot, it can be cleaned. The pot can sit on a small mound of earth.

WINTER LNT CAMPFIRES:

We ran this LNT campfire activity in a couple of different ways.

TIN FOIL TRAY

We went to our local fire pit in winter time equipped with only our Fire starter kit and a roll of thick heavy duty aluminum foil. We gave each scout a 16inch x 16inch square of aluminum foil and demonstrated the following:

·  Locate tinder and firewood from the surround area (dead wood only)

·  Scoop out a hole in the snow about 8 inches square

·  Digging either about 6 to 8inches deep in the snow or close to the ground which ever was the shallowest (never dig the snow out and expose the ground as the fire will then leave a trace on the frozen ground).

·  Place one or two pieces of wood at the bottom (about an inch thick). These will act as stabilizers to the fire and keep it flat. (These are used because once the fire it lit, the snow will melt and the campfire will slowly sink deeper into the snow)

·  Place the tin foil in the hole and bend the edges of the tin foil upwards around the inside edges of the hole. This effectively shapes the tin foil into the shape of a a metal tray

·  Lay a small fire in the tray and get it inspected by the leaders

·  Light the fire and keep it going for at least 10 minutes. (10 minutes is the time that a campfire can boil a liter of water).

·  Once the campfire has ended, let it cool down and then

·  Fold the tin foil edges into the centre of the tin foil (covering the ashes) and remove the tin foil from the hole

·  Fill in the hole in the snow so that your campfire area is no longer noticeable.

·  Take the folded foil away to dispose of later OR scatter the ashes at a location where the ashes will not be noticed

·  Clean up any trash or cooking implements.

PATROL CHALLENGE – LEAVE NO TRACE CAMPFIRES

If you scout youth are like those in our Troop, they love a challenge especially when fire is involved. We feed this appetite for burning things with campfire challenges.

We regularly run campfire challenges and adding in LNT principles is simple and adds a further inspection point to our campfires that the scouts know they must take into account.

Our challenges involve building a small LNT campfire for a patrol and it follows these steps>

CAMPFIRE CONSTRUCTION

·  Pick a non-durable surface

·  Dig a hole (6 inches length, 6 inches width and 4 inches deep)

·  Construct a small campfire.

·  Have the campfire inspected for LNT principles and construction techniques.

TRIPOD LASHING

·  Build a tripod with square or diagonal lashing

·  Hang a empty soup tin from the tripod

·  Fill the tin with 2 cups of water

·  Have the tripod inspected for robustness

BOIL WATER

·  Ignite the campfire and boil the water in the tin.

·  Have a leader inspect the water to confirm that it is boiling

CLEAN UP

·  Put the fire out

·  Leader inspects the campfire to confirm the ashes are cool

·  Leader checks to see how / where the ashes are disposed

·  Campfire area is cleaned up to the extent that you cannot tell that a campfire was setup

·  Leader checks that the campfire is cleaned up correctly

LNT DISCUSSION

·  Patrol tells the scout leader what LNT principles they followed for minimizing campfire impact.

This challenge is repeated in winter time with snow on the ground and we supply the scouts with marshmallows for motivation and for their own personal enjoyment. The key issue here is that the scout youth do not get marshmallows until they have successfully setup and passed inspection.

NOTE

Outdoor LNT Campfires are an excellent way to drive learning by doing experience into the scout youth. Tying a cooking activity into the same campfire activity adds further learning and adding lashings into the challenges also adds further layers to the enjoyment and challenge the kids experience.