I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas with family and friends and we are all ready for the new year! Great video link there Farewell, thank you for that, I really like the idea of the brace. Pit and I went out for our hike in the middle of a horrible rain and wind storm here on Vancouver Island, much more water than normal-which is saying a lot considering this is the wettest region in North America, one of the wettest in the world. Normal here in the Pacific Northwest is cool and wet- this was cold and just plain silly soaking wet. Even when you reached up for branches from the tree they were so soaked they had the feel of a sponge or rotten punkwood. The idea was to have a little fun with these unusually wet and windy conditions to test ourselves. We choose a stone that was surrounded on three sides by the sea to avoid any trouble- although we both knew we were not in any danger of starting any forest fires this day. We really just wanted to build a very small fire that could be used in theory to actually build a camp fire- not to build an actual camp fire. We were sucessful almost right away as you can see from the initial photos. The problem was that it was so wet the little fire would not last very long, so much water simpley dowsed the pine resin we were using for the long burn. After a few minutes and a retry the rains picked up and there was so much water running down my sleeve and hand over the firesteel that I was unable too produce sparks, Pit had the same results. That is what actually shocked us. Aside from the pine resin going out so quickly and later, the ranger bands we lit with the little bic lighter. It was a great experience and if anyone is up for it I would highly recomend any similar tests of your or our skills. I believe playing in the extreems can teach us some valuabe lessons. Personally I was surprised that what usually worked in normal damp and wet conditions failed in these extreem conditions. Goodluck guys and keep on keeping on! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />