Every camper runs the same packing math. Cooler in. Chairs in. Firewood, camp table, dog bed, the bin of stuff you swear you’ll organize before the next trip. Then you get to the fire pit – a rigid steel drum that eats a quarter of the truck bed and leaves soot on everything it touches.
So it stays home. Or it rides on the roof rack, exposed to weather, because there was never a version of the plan where it fit easily inside. PACKFIRE built its fire pit around that problem.
It folds flat
The PACKFIRE 22” fire pit breaks down into three pieces:
- Burn chamber
- Base
- Top ring
And the chamber collapses into a flat rectangle. No tools needed for setup, no hunting for the instructions. The QuickDraw™ legs lock into place, and PACKFIRE says you go from stowed to set up in about 15 seconds.
It’s a full-size pit that takes full-size logs: a 17-inch rim, 22.4 inches tall, built from stainless steel and aluminum. Stowed, it’s a 25-inch flat rectangle that slides in alongside everything else instead of dictating how the rest of the load gets packed. The fold-flat design is patent-pending, and it’s the whole reason the thing exists.
The pack is a carry system, not a hiking pack
Every PACKFIRE ships with a custom pack, and PACKFIRE is refreshingly direct about what that’s for. Combined weight is 35 lbs (27.5 for the pit, 7.5 for the pack) which compares to a full cooler in weight.
That’s not a backcountry number, and PACKFIRE doesn’t claim it is. The pack exists to get a full-size fire from the vehicle to the spot: boat ramp to sandbar, pullout to a dispersed site down a forest road, parking lot to the far end of the beach. Short hauls where a wheelbarrow-shaped fire pit was never going to make it, and where you’d otherwise be stacking rocks.
Clearburn™ and the smokeless story
PACKFIRE’s Clearburn™ system recirculates airflow so smoke gets reburned before it escapes, so you get more airflow and less smoke, which in practice means fewer people dragging their chairs around the circle all night trying to find a good spot.
PACKFIRE acknowledges that the startup smoke is unavoidable (we like honesty), and that dry, seasoned hardwood makes the biggest difference. Try PACKFIRE’s Clearburn Firewood for a better smokeless experience, hotter flames, and a cleaner burn with no binders, glues, or chemicals.
The accessories that matter on public land
Three add-ons are less about convenience than about where and how you’re legally allowed to burn:
- SparkRanger™: a 17-inch stainless mesh spark screen. Plenty of national forests and BLM units require a spark arrestor on any open fire device, and some fire restriction stages exempt contained fires that have one.
- LNT Ash Pan™: a sealed pan with a lid, so ash gets packed out instead of scattered.
- Surface Guard™: a 24-inch silicone mat for wood decks, composite decking, and painted hardscape. The legs elevate the base enough for dirt, gravel, sand, and stone; anything that can scorch or melt needs the mat.
And the small one
If 35 lbs is more than your setup wants, PACKFIRE launched the Ember Smokeless Tabletop Fire Pit in June. Built for kindling and smaller wood pieces, Ember gives you the warmth and atmosphere of a real fire in a compact format. It’s a 10-inch tabletop fire pit weighing in at 7.4 lbs with its carry case. It’s made for a different job: a table, a tailgate, or a float trip where every pound is already spoken for.
The details
The PACKFIRE 22” Smokeless PortableFire Pit is $399 at packfire.com and select retailers. Every purchase of the foldable fire pit from the PACKFIRE website includes a free year of The Dyrt PRO (that means access to offline maps, Dyrt Alerts, and trip planning tools), which pairs about as neatly as it sounds with a fire pit built for the sites you have to drive to find.
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