>>973883Yes, you can and should take tinder with you. Egg cartons with candle wax and egg carton mix, or the petroleum jelly cotton pads, you can even use litchen or birch bark or pine/spruce resin, acorns, mushrooms, whatever.
Frozen wet leaves, frozen tiny twigs or feathersticks of frozen wood won't work so well in my experience.
Feathersticks of dry unfrozen wood work fine, to get this you split the wood one way or the other. The center is usually dry for a wrist-thick piece and burns nice.
Generally thoroughly frozen wood sticks of kindling size won't burn without a bigger fire. Using them at the start of the fire just makes a lot of smoke but maybe my skills are shit and I did not say the magic word.
I'd use an axe for the rough work and knife to baton tinier sticks since it's more accurate with a knife. If the only thing I took was a knife, I'd use that and not attempt to baton thicker than wrist size.
Conversely, if the only thing I brought was an axe or I lose my knife, I could do feathersticks with an axe if it were small enough and sharp enough. I don't recommend this though since a knife is easier.
In my experience attempting to "dry" frozen wood while starting a fire is just theory speaking and not going to really dry the wood at all, but then again I'm a bushkekker with a good steel knife.
