Fires were banned in Grand Canyon in 1972.  Of course, we still built them.  For a while.  We always figured that the only people who cooked on stoves were those too incompetent to cook on a fire.

When I got my first stove, a wee little Svea, I put my pot on and proceeded to set up camp.  That is how one cooks on a fire:  put the pot on the fire, do everything else, and by the time camp is set up, the water is hot.  On the stove, my water boiled over.  Almost instantly.

Okay, so cooking on a stove was not so bad.  But we still HAD to have a fire every night.  Even though the Canyon is a desert and sadly lacking in wood.  And what wood there is is very slow growing and thus does not replenish readily.  I recall Indian Garden and Bright Angel Campgrounds as totally devoid of life.  No grass, no twigs, no bushes, bark stripped from trees, because we HAD to have a fire. And so did everyone else.

More than 30 years ago, I was hiking on an alpine mountain with one other companion.  We found a campsite at tree line, open, airy, unspoilt.  Thought I: if we build a fire, the only wood around is this lovely krumholtz.  There will be a scar on this minute alpine plant life.  The campground will no longer be pristine.  So I asked my friend if he minded if we did not build a fire, and he agreed. That is the last time I even considered building a campfire.

Back in the day, when I routinely led hikes for my local Sierra Club Chapter, I would tell my participants up front that we would not have campfires.  In the Superstition Wilderness, where we usually hiked then, the Forest Service requested that visitors to build fires, and I didn't see why the Sierra Club, of all people, should gainsay them.  One hiker ate dried food, uncooked, for four days because he was by-god determined to cook on a fire, and I was just as by-goddess determined that he would not.  I offered him my stove, but he would cook on a fire nor nothing.  He is still not speaking to me.

It is, of course, possible to build a leave no trace fire.  It is a pain in the neck.  Better by far to cook on a stove and use the ambiance of a candle in the evening.  As for keeping warm, I have spent a night around a survival fire at 10,000 feet in 40 feet of snow.  I don't recommend it.  I would have been infinitely better off had I packed my down parka.  And breathing smoke?  Please.  Another evening in the Holy Cross Wilderness I was all set up in camp with a lovely view of the countryside below, and the party below me built a fire which filled the whole valley with smoke.

I have carried a good dozen bags of fire debris out of Grand Canyon.  An illegal fire leaves a scar on the land, scars on the rocks, and bags and bags of charcoal and ash.  Usually there is unburnt trash in said ash.  Also, the casual visitor may think, "Oh!  If they built a fire, so can I!"  So we schelp down garbage bags and carry it out.  Every time I walk across Mormon Flat on the South Kaibab I note with pleasure that the scar from the last fire I carried out is indiscernible to the human eye.  Or at least to mine.

Fires are old school. They are, like, so fifties!  Most of us have the most up-to-the-minute hiking gear we can afford, so why cling to this Neanderthal notion that fires keep the Smilodon away?

On one car camping trip, a friend groused for a week about no campfires.  Then she finally admitted: "You know, when you are not hunting for wood, and tending the fire, and babying the fire, there is an awful lot of time left to do other things."

Indeed.

Proof that trash thrown into a fire ring will magicaly vanish.  Not.

FIre at Deer Creek started by uneducated person burning TP

Bright Angel Campground in the 60's: no vegetation.