Foolproof - Suppose you’re a first-time backpacker.More time efficient - No need to gather wood, build a tepee, and then tend to the fire.Cleaner - No soot-covered pots and hands, and no ashes in your food.More reliable - Wet wood or no wood? No problem!.Humans have relied on biomass fires much longer than they have relied on modern backpacking stoves - the skills needed to build a fire are well known. Yet most backpackers prefer non-biomass stoves. Cook fires and wood stoves are inherently not user-friendly. Moreover, if you plan to use the BioLite to recharge your devices, I hope you have are planning ample down-time - it took Philip Werner of SectionHiker two hours of burning wood to bring an empty Android smartphone to 50% power. But personally I’d rather take extra batteries, which won’t require me to stop hiking and to build a fire so that they can be recharged - I go backpacking to hike, not to recharge electrical batteries. Even if I carried a heavy stove like the JetBoil PCS (15 oz sans fuel canister), I could carry a dedicated GPS and a dedicated camera (instead of using an iPhone for these purposes), and a backup headlamp, and maybe extra batteries, without exceeding the CampStove’s 40-oz system weight. “But I can recharge my electronics infinitely.” Yes, again, you can. Even if I was hiking with a large group, which by nature will consume a lot of fuel, I would still choose a more efficient system than the CampStove: I would break the group into small cook groups and give each cook group a stove (probably alcohol or canister). If I carried 34 oz of fuel on a trip, I’d have enough fuel for about 45 meals. For example, my preferred Fancy Feast alcohol stove system weighs about 6 oz, making it 34 oz lighter. you are living off the land for months) there are lighter and more user-friendly options. But in all but the most extreme applications (e.g. “But I can heat up an infinite amount of water.” Yes, you can. Its weight is very difficult to justify for a backpacking trip that entails even a moderate amount of hiking, as pack weight then needs to be an important consideration. The stove weighs 33 oz, not including a pot or fire-starting supplies assume that a complete CampStove system will weigh about 40 oz, or 2.5 pounds. liquid fuel, gas canister, alcohol, and esbit), with other wood stoves (namely the revered Bushbuddy), and with cook fires, I’m doubtful that the CookStove’s popularity as a backcountry stove will be long-lasting. Based on my extensive experience with common backpacking stoves (e.g. I have not seen or used this stove myself, so perhaps I’m missing something, but I’ve been surprised by the excitement over this product. The CampStove was featured by many of the most popular online media outlets, including Outside, GearJunkie, and TrailSpace Brian Green has also written about it a few times. (And I’m pretty skilled at fire-building.) Photo courtesy of BioLite.Ī major attention-grabber at last week’s Outdoor Retailer Summer Market (ORSM) was the BioLite CampStove, a unique biomass-burning stove that will boil water andcharge your electronics via USB. My experience with wood stoves is that they are much less user-friendly than this picture suggests they are.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |