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Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The Solo Cook kit

Presently my cook kit is not cumbersome on hikes where I am "cooking" (boiling water) for 2 people. I presently carry a .9L Evernew Titanium pot with a Coleman F1 Ultralight canister stove or a B.I.O.S. II alcohol stove. The stove mainly depends on the trip length as to which I want to carry. Since I'm planning on doing several more solo backpacking trips this season I am planning to cut several ounces out of the cooking system.

The BIOS II stove weighs roughly 1.1 oz. plus .8 oz for the empty fuel bottle.
The Coleman F1 weighs 2.65 oz plus roughly 3.05 oz for the empty fuel bottle.
The .9L Evernew pot weighs 5.8 oz
Titanium Trapper Mug .475L weighs 1.3 oz
Titanium spork .55 oz
mini bic lighter .45 oz.
green scout cup .80 oz
proposed new Esbit wing stove .38 oz (uses solid fuel and does not use a fuel container)

The Trapper mug was bought last year with a kit from backpacking light that included the Trapper mug, a mini fire starter, and tons of Java Juice coffee extract. The cost of the package was the cost of just buying the coffee extract alone, which I was going to buy anyhow. Gotta love sales!!! Well, ever since I bought it I decided it could eventually become my solo cook pot. There was one caveat... no handle... I'm not so extreme with the ultralight belief that I would forgo the handle to save a gram. So the long winded story short I made a handle weighing .3 oz out of an old metal clothes hanger to allow easier use of this mug as a cook pot. The cook kit will include the Trapper mug, my folding titanium spork, micro bic lighter, the new handle and a Backpackinglight Esbit wing stove. The total kit will weigh just over 3 oz after the .38 oz stove and a light windscreen is added to the system. Cutting the total non consumable weight of the cooking system down by leaps and bounds. If assuming the empty weight of the canister stove and pot w/gear I'll be saving nearly 10 oz (over half a pound!) of weight for my solo endeavors. The trapper mug would be used as my coffee cup, reducing the need for the scout cup and would also be my pot for boiling water to add water to rehydrate my home dehydrated meals.

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