>>1205936Sorta, it is up to your patience. Though, it also depends on what you are using to start the fire with and how much of that you have. If you have enough fire starting materials in your fire starting kit, you should be able to start a fire in any condition where trees exist; even if it means using your fire starting materials to dry out the wood.
The most extreme thing I can think of happens where I live in a temperate rainforst. Once winter begins there can be weeks of rain that turns to freezing rain then to snow. After such an event there can be up to 1 inch of ice coating everything like some fantasy ice castle. It hasn't happened in a very long time though. Due to this, all the normal tinder and kindling you might source from the environment will be fully saturated with water, frozen, and encased in ice. While you can start a fire with that sort of material, it will take a rather long time to prep it, and quite a bit of fire starting materials from your kit to get it going.
In such a situation, the best course of action is to use 1-3 inch thick sticks to make very fine feather sticks (artistically fine). All you need to make a fire in this manner in the above conditions is a simple pocket knife and you don't even need to baton it. If you want, you can gather up some sticks, put them into a stock pot with water, boil the sticks for about 5 minutes, let them cool in the water until room temp (this helps to saturate them with water) then put them in a pan of water in the freezer. Freeze the sticks and pan until everything is solid ice. Take this out and try to start a fire with it from scratch using your fire kit. Time how long it takes.
