I’m heading out on a packrafting loop in the Ruby Horsethief drainage outside of Fruita Colorado on Thursday. Heading down Rattlesnake Arches trialhead, down the Colorado, ditching the boats and spending 3 nights in the Mee Canyon drainage, then back to the river and out Knowles Canyon. We’ve been ticking off packrafting loops on both the Colorado and Green for the last 8 years, connecting canyon systems etc.
On many of the flat water sections of the Colorado and the green like Ruby Horsethief, Labyrinth and Stillwater, river regs say that you have to have a fire pan with at least 1.5″ of sidewall and 12″ square. They require this whether there is a fire ban or not. The thought is that in an emergency you may need to warm yourself or a companion up real quick. I used to laugh at it until one of my friends got stuck in silty quicksand after exiting his boat on the Green when we did a loop in the Maze a few years back. It was really scary, surprised the heck out of all of us, he was terrified and nearly hypothermic by the time we got him unstuck. Warmed him by a fire in our “turkey pan” and learned a valuable lesson for even flatwater floats. You really should have one.. Also, although I’ve never had a check down on these sections by a ranger, I would hate to get caught. I also just want to figure out some ultralight fire pans for general usage. It would also be very useful for mountain trips so we don’t make any new fire rings, keeping the spirit of LNT.
The classic move is to bring a turkey pan, scrunch it up and bring it like many regs have allowed. Of course you’re lucky if it lasts one burn and it’s usually a total melted mess after one use. Seeing as there’s nothing on the market I figured I would do my best to make a river reg compliant fire pan with a practical sidewall height, more durable materials and still keep it ultralight. The stated goal is to get it to last for 10 burns which is for me is probably a few years.
So I bought this stainless steel tool wrap. 10ft by 20″ for $60. Sort of pricey but way cheaper than titanium and good for 5 or 6 different prototypes. It’s a heat treating foil used for tempering in the knife trade. It’s 321 stainless (good to 1600f as it has titanium in its alloy makeup) and it’s a pretty hefty foil material. My hope is to get it to last 10 to 20 burns instead of one, and also to keep it as lightweight as possible. The weak points in this design is The gradual fatiguing of all of the foldable joints. What I found with this 321 tool wrap Is that it really doesn’t fatigue much at all, I discovered that while I was punching my rivet holes. It took sometimes 30 or 40 cycles to break off tags of the material. Promising stuff.
Although I have multiple designs for an ultralight fire pan, I opted for a fairly simple one. Imagine a “present box” top. They come flat packed in multiples. Basically a pan that has 45° angles on all corners that you fold shut, The only difference is that you fold it in half to reduce its size for storage
I traced out a box shape and left 3/4 of inch of tag on the ends so that I could secure the corners with rivets. Seeing as I had no flat-faced rivets to deal with, I simply punched quarter inch holes in the corners. I then cut small coins off of a quarter inch aluminum rod. Then I just pounded the hell out of them to set.
The end result is a 15.5 inch by 12.5 in firepan, plenty big to do actual fire on. As in it’s a real fire pan, not a dinky tiny thing and It checks all the boxes for river regs. I then store it in a 13×10 tyvek envelope.
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It weighs 3.49oz and 3.9oz with the tyvek envelope. Lighter than a crappy turkey pan.
As a bonus it works great with my Widesea 16″ titanium grill. Seeing as I don’t really bring grillable items on trips with my packraft (there’s already a ton of weight on my back), it should come handy for my summer mountain trips with lots of fishing. Total weight with grill is 8.6oz.
As anybody who does a lot of pack rafting knows, there’s a ton of weird regulatory stuff that you have to deal with on the permit side if you’re on a number of western rivers. Wag bags, throw bags, fire pans. Every reg is a bit different, So I’ve been trying to lighten my load as much as possible m
I’ll report back after my trip next week to see how it holds up.
