Vargo’s new Ultimate Fire Starter might just become your new favorite companion for backpacking, hiking, camping, hunting, paddling, or any adventure in the backcountry where you need a reliable way to start a fire regardless of conditions. Combing a collapsible belllows with a flint striker enabling you to create a hotter burning fire more quickly, even with stubborn or wet wood.
Fire needs three things to exist: heat, fuel, and oxygen. Other fire starters simply focus on providing enough heat in the form of a spark or flame to ignite tinder, but lack the ability to add more oxygen and thereby increase a fire’s heat to ignite larger fuel. Sure, you could just blow on the fire but a bellows makes each breath that much more potent and on the mark.
The Vargo Ultimate Fire Starter offers all the heat and oxygen needed for fire lighting with its collapsible bellows and integrated ferrocerium rod. The ferrocerium rod creates sparks over 5,000°F (2,760°C) to ignite any tinder and the collapsible bellows make efficient use of lung power to focus and direct your breath to the fire to help increase oxygen and, in turn, heat, allowing it to ignite larger fuel faster. The replaceable integrated ferrocerium rod is good for 1000s of strikes with the built in hexagon striker.
The stainless steel bellows extend to over 18 inches for safe operating distance from a fire, yet collapses down to less than 6 inches. It even comes with a clip for convenient carrying options.
The Vargo Ultimate Fire Starter weighs 1.8 ounces or 53 grams, retails for $24.95, and is available now.