The unnamed protagonist of "To Build a Fire" is travelling alone, with only his dog as a companion, in order to meet back up with the other members of his party. We don't know exactly why he had traveled away alone from those men, but we do know that the purpose of his original errand was to check out if it would be possible to float some logs down the river. Now the man is on his way back to his companions' camp site, beginning a journey that he expects will be pretty short and pretty easy.
The journey and all the dangers it involves are the central part of the story; as readers, we don't really focus on why this guy is going where he's going. But the information about why he's on a trip in the first place appears near the beginning of the story:
He was headed for the old camp on Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come across the mountain from the Indian Creek country. He had taken the long trail to look at the possibility of floating logs from the islands in the Yukon down the river when the ice melted. He would be in camp by six o’clock that evening. It would be a little after dark, but the boys would be there, a fire would be burning, and a hot supper would be ready.
As the story continues, the man occasionally thinks of how soon he'll be meeting up with "the boys."
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