In today's #wth... At the trailhead I found a burning fire in a loose "fire pit" and trash strewn about. Not a person in sight.
I was so pissed. There's dry grass everywhere. Got lucky that today's winds weren't as bad as the past few day's.
I dumped my spare water on it and got my avy shovel out of my truck to bury it. #BendWX #PineMountain #Fire #peoplearestupid













![<div><img alt="" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" height="450" src="https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/charcoal-main.png?w=800" style="margin: 0 auto; margin-bottom: 15px;" width="800" /></div><p>Cooking with charcoal is a fairly common human activity, as much as others have come to prefer fuels like propane and propane accessories for their outdoor, summertime grilling. Although it’s made from wood, it has properties that make it much more useful for cooking — including burning at a higher temperature and with more consistent burn rates. It can also be used as a fuel for generating heat and electricity, but since it’s not typically found lying around in the forest it has to be produced, which <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEop8qmmt4M" target="_blank">[Greenhill Forge] has demonstrated his charcoal production system in one of his latest videos</a>.</p>
<p>The process for creating charcoal is fairly simple. All that needs to happen is for wood to be heated beyond a certain temperature in the absence of oxygen. At this point it will off-gas the water stored in it as well as some of the volatile organic compounds, and what’s left behind is a flammable carbon residue. Those volatile organics are flammable as well, though, so [Greenhill Forge] uses them to heat the wood in a self-sustaining reaction. First, a metal retort is constructed from a metal ammo box, with a pipe extending from the side and then underneath th](https://files.mastodon.social/cache/media_attachments/files/116/229/195/718/802/793/small/a75ac58b7c8c2f57.png)