Remember digging fire pits with a little trowel for 20 minutes? I switched to a $12 folding shovel from Harbor Freight after a rainy night in Shenandoah and now I'm done in 3 minutes, anyone else made the swap?

Used to think the trowel was fine until that storm soaked the ground so bad I spent 45 minutes scraping mud with my hands, grabbed that cheap shovel on a whim and it’s been in my pack ever since, what do you use for your fire pits?

2 comments

2 Comments

blairj5512d ago

That shovel is a game changer for sure. But you're probably overheating the ground with it if you're digging a proper fire pit. The cheap folding ones have sharp edges that cut roots and mess up the soil liner. I watched a ranger in Monongahela explain how that can damage the micro ecosystem. A trowel actually forces you to be careful and leave the site better than you found it. Plus those cheap shovels bend after a few hard rocks. Stick with the trowel for anything under a foot deep.

noah_webb12d ago

Yeah, @blairj55, youre making me rethink this. I used to grab a folding shovel for everything, thought it was the way to go. But that bit about cutting roots and messing up the soil liner hits hard. Ive definitely seen spots where the ground just looks torn up after someone used a shovel. A trowel makes you slow down and work with the dirt instead of against it. For shallow holes like a fire pit, I think youre right, its the better tool.