Wood Heat

One of the first things you'll want to do upon your arrival at your yurt is build a fire in the woodstove. There are quite a few things you need to know about the yurt's heating system. First, we were surprised to see that no one has cleaned out the ash in a really long time. There was a thick layer of encrusted ash on the bottom of the fire box. For someone who loves to build fires, this was perplexing. We simply has assumed that the park would clean out the ash in the woodstove. This routine maintenance task is beyond the capability of casual overnight users. besides that, it could be downright dangerous, too, for both the visitor doing the cleaner and the integrity of the yurt itself. Next time, we plan on asking the park to clean the fire box before our arrival. That's a very fair request in light of the overnight fees.

There are two wood boxes in the yurt. One is a large traditional woodbox and the other is a plastic tub filled with a variety of kindling. The "rules" here state that you can use all the wood you wish but you must fill up the wood boxes for the next person before your departure. Fair enough. The person(s) who stayed in the yurt before us really didn't have a handle on how to split either firewood or kindling. Neither box was filled with anything usable for our needs. Luckily, I had anticipated this possibility and brought my own axe. I was quickly able to split up some suitable kindling and also prepare the proper size firewood to fit the little woodstove.

As you might imagine, the woodstove is a small one. Even if someone foolishly overfilled the firebox, the inherent size of the woodstove would be self-limiting in terms of just how hot it could get. We are in favor of small fires that do not get the woodstove overly hot. It's really easy to choke off oxygen to a small fire. Big fires can present problems and we long ago stopped building them.

The park provides a little metal can with some wood shavings that have been soaked in a petrochemical. We think it's kerosene. You're supposed to use the plastic spoon to place a small amount below your kindling. We are much more comfortable with generic Wal-Mart charcoal lighting fluid. You can easily control the placement of the fluid on the kindling and have a nice smallish fire going rather quickly. We're somewhat skeptical of the use of the soaked shavings on live coals. The flashpoint of charcoal lighter is proven safe in a ba-zillion circumstances. So, we left the shavings alone and used our "tried & true" methodology.

We'd strongly suggest starting a very small kindling fire. Don't add your heat logs until the kindling has burned about half way down. Add perhaps two smallish quarter split logs and let them ignite and burn for awhile before adding any more fuel. Bring you heat up slowly.

Here's a few thigns we wish we would have thought of. If you have welder's gloves--take them! If not, take a pair of stout leather palm gloves. If you have some fire tools, and don't mind towing the extra weight, take them, too. You can easily get a vicious 3rd degree burn with this style woodstove if you reach in to move a log. Be extraordinarily careful with this style of stove--it can really bite you!
The only fire poker available on our visit was a black-tipped pine branch. Frankly, it's not smart to use a flammable material as a fire poker. We'd much rather have a piece of iron as a fire poker.

When we're camping, we use a copper pipe that has had one end crimped as a blow pipe to help reignite a coal bed. We'd highly recommend one of these devices. You can bet we will have a pair of tongs, welder's gloves and our blow pipe on our next trip.

Also be aware that lodgepole pine is not a long burning wood. It burns quickly producing a fast, hot fire and then it dies down almost as quickly. You will need to be doing regular fire management with the lodgepole pieces. At night, if you wait too long, the inside temperature will drop into the 30's and then take 30-45 minutes to recover. We plan on taking a digital kitchen timer (no ticking sound) to helpwake us up at the appropriate intervals during the night. A regularly tended fire will yield an even and enjoyable temperature throughout your stay.

The woodshed is over behind the outhouse. You can't miss it. There is a heavy splitting maul inside the yurt to use for making small pieces from big pieces. If you are not accustomed to using a splitting maul, be caseful. These things can wreck havoc with your muscles and spinal system. Even though I am no novice when it comes to this device, I still managed to badly pull a muscle in the lower right side of my back. Next time, I will definitely take my back brace! It's a pretty fair amount of work to split the semi-green pine rounds. If you have any physical limitations, I'd suggest letting park staff know before you begin your overnight stay. I would think the ADA laws would require park staff to provide assistance proportional to your limitations.

we saw some visitors carrying their split wood back to their yurt by hand. Hum...wouldn't it be so much easier to use your sled(s)? It took only two sled loads to refill our wood box. As a favor to the next guests, I split down the rounds into perfectly sized stove wood. I also made some custom kindling for the plastic box. I think it's a nice gesture to slightly overfill the woodbox. The next visitor can tell when someone was only doing the minimum work to add wood to the box. In our case, most of the wood they split was still too big to even fit into the woodstove.

The little axe really made a BIG difference in the quality of our visit!