Snow Peak Titanium Bowl Review

I purchased the Snow Peak Titanium Bowl earlier in the year and didn’t use it until I took it on a 17-day canoe trip across the BWCA. The three of us on the trip cooked single pot meals over a gas stove or over a fire.  We used cups and bowls to eat out of. We were packing a Bushbuddy-like stove to cook over, and it fit inside the single pot we were carrying, which meant that the Snow Peak Titanium Bowl needed to fit unprotected into a pack during travel. I worried that outside a protective pot it would be smashed. It held up fine and maintained its shape despite my worries.

Eating out of the bowl worked fine. Although the bowl is made from just a thin layer of titanium, it never felt overly hot while holding the bowl in my hands. It held about the perfect amount of food for a first helping and a second helping filled the bowl halfway up. It’s hard to find anything wrong with the bowl. I even found that I could easily sip out of it.

I’ve been looking for something light like this bowl for years now and in the past it tired Orikaso’s Folding Bowls, which are lighter, but harder to pack and harder to clean. This bowl packs easily and is easy to clean.

The Perfect Two-Person Cookset Thoughts

Over the last few year, I’ve tweaked my cookset for one person and arrived at something that I’m happy with, but I think that I’m finally made the perfect lightweight two-person cookset. It weighs 15 oz. plus fuel. Here’s what I’ve refined it to:

• One Snow Peak Titanium Bowl (Mine actually weighs 1.8 oz.)
• The large pot and lid from the Snow Peak’s Titanium Multi Compact Cookset (5.8 oz.)
• Two Snow Peak Titanium Short Sporks (1.2 oz. total)
• MSR Pocket Rocket Backpacking Stove (3 oz.) plus empty Jetboil 3.53 oz. fuel can (3.2 oz.)

This gives you a pot, bowl and fry pan lid that you can cook in. It includes an easy to use stove, and everything nests inside the pot. To save weight, you could change out the MSR stove for the Snow Peak Litemax Stove. That would get you down to 14 oz. and still give you all the benefits of this system. If you use a pop can stove, you’d save even more weight.

Overall

You can’t really lose with Snow Peak’s Titanium Bowl. It’s only $16. It’s light. You can cook in it. And it’s the right size. It’s durable. I dare say that it’s the perfect camping bowl.

Highly Recommended.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Snow Peak Titanium Bowl Review

I’ve always relied on canister fuel. I’ve always been a pocket-rocket-style-stove-type guy. Usually, my kit is made up of only what I can buy from REI or other large outdoor retailers. I never considered cottage industry equipment. The Bushbuddy Ultra wood-burning stove, manufactured in the cottage industry, was the first piece of kit that made me rethink every other piece of gear I hauled in boat and on portage.

Other than over coals from campfire, I have never cooked in the backcountry without my “technology”. The Bushbuddy Ultra changed that.

Its simple beginnings, in the tradition of homemade Hobo stoves, constructed of paint or tomato cans, does only one thing: provide contained fire over which we can cook. The Bushbuddy does that and to perfection, providing an incredibly efficient housing for fire. That’s it, nothing more. You still need to collect, ignite and manage the fire within it in order to boil 1 liter of water in four minutes.

It has no moving parts, pins or gaskets, nothing to render your stove useless either. Rather, it’s hand made by Fritz Handel in Iskut, B.C. Canada, of stainless steel. A double-walled construction, like two cans nestled together, with holes on the outside bottom and holes on the inner topside, allows for secondary combustion.

(For example: oxygen pulled in through the bottom holes provides initial combustion of the fire starter and kindling. As the flame rises towards the top holes, a secondary supply is lured into the top holes and forced downward supplementing the initial combustion.)

The thought and engineering that went into this refined design of stove is evident when you see the perfectly cylindrical flutes of flame funnel out of each hole and up onto your pot.

The Bushbuddy’s burn is so efficient it siphon every last bit of fuel out of every stick and twig, leaving little, if any, fine white ash, which very easily left scattered around after use is much more environmentally friendly than a fire pit or an empty canister of fuel. You couldn’t start a fire in a ring of rocks and boil a liter of water with as minimal an amount of fuel and effort as you can with the Bushbuddy.

After a day’s paddle, after camp’s been set, you settle into the cool dirt of riverside woods, get down on your knees and actually work for your fire. It’s meditative. Arched over the stove, it begins to shine its old world charms, it’s hobo beginnings and unexpectedly becomes the perfect little solo fireplace for warming your hands when you don’t want to scorch a pit for campfire.

It is 5.1 oz, 4 1/4″ diameter by 3 3/4″ high, so its light and relatively small. It nestles perfectly into the Snow Peak Trek 900 (.9L) titanium pot, which is essential to protecting your $115.00 investment as well as being the perfect-sized cookpot on top as well.

The drawbacks are obvious. If it’s too wet out to start a fire, you ain’t cookin’! That is unless you already are or are willing to become proficient in backwoods 101: staring fire in all conditions. For the unconfident, combine this stove with any small alcohol stove as backup, such as the Minibull Atomic, which can nestle inside the Bushbuddy creating the perfect, two-burner, kitchen range, or covering you when fire starting with natural material is inhibited by wet conditions or lack of skills.

For me, multifunctional simplicity is the driving factor in choosing lightweight gear. Does it offer an efficient simplification of an essential item of gear and reduce its weight? The Bushbuddy does so handily.  It is the epitome of simple, yet advanced, lightweight stove. Nothing compliments a rushing river more than a lighter tread.

Bushbuddy Ultra | $135 | Buy | More Info

Snow Peak Trek 900 | $45 | Buy

About the Author

Rick Beaty writes about paddling and adventure at Crooked Blue Line. To pay the bills between adventures he trades in gold and silver rare coins in Boston. He’s a section paddler of the NFCT who enjoys nothing more than canoeing the great rivers of Maine.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Bushbuddy Ultra Wood-burning Stove Review

The Kupilka 21 is a round cup with a molded handle that extends from the cup’s lip. The cup hold about 8 oz. It has a lanyard hole for attaching it to something. Mine weighs 2.8 oz. The Kupilka 5 is a shot glass and miniature version of the 21. The manufacturer uses a natural fiber composite material, that consists of 50% pine fiber (wood) and 50% plastic, to make the cups. Michael at the company claims that the “plastics are free from Phthalates and Bisphenol and meet EU standards, which are very high.” He lists the benefits of this hybrid plastic/wood as:

• Natural look + feeling
• Better heat endurance compared with plastic
• Higher durability compared with plastic
• Stiff structure
• Doesn’t absorb smell and taste
• Insensitive to humidity
• Hygiene factor
• Light weight

When I first got the cup, I noticed a pretty strong odor that I don’t know how to describe. I washed it and noticed the smell remained. After my first taste of hot chocolate, I still noticed the smell. I decided to wash it a few dozen times to see if the smell dissipated. It didn’t, so I set the cup aside for about a month until I used it again. Although, not gone, it’s more subtle. It’s not an unpleasant smell, but it’s not pleasant either, and it definitely influences the flavor of whatever you consume out of the cup. Note: Michael Negele, the sales and marketing manager at Kupilka, says that washing it three to five times in the dishwasher will remove the smell if you don’t like it.

I like the cup’s shape. It’s large enough to hold in two hands to let the heat soak into cold hands, and the shape of the handle makes it easy to hold while eating out of. The bottom is plenty flat and big enough to sit securely on the ground. It’s hard to spill. There’s something organic to the shape that seems to pull you towards fondling it, which makes it fun to eat and drink from.

The cup isn’t the lightest out there. A titanium cup, such as the MSR Titan Mug, weighs less and holds more, which makes it more practical that the Kupilka, but the Kupilka is cooler and the wide mouth is easier to eat out of. Because I don’t have two, I can’t tell if it nests, but if the cups nests — it looks like it would — it would be easier to carry in a pack than two cups.

Overall, it’s a neat cup and fun to drink from and eat out of. I’m curious about the smell. Other reviewers didn’t note anything unusual, so I wonder if it’s just my overly sensitive nose. If you’re looking for an interesting cup, then this is the way to go. It’s fun to eat out of and unique enough to make your paddling partners green with envy.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Kupilka Cup Review

Flash Cooking System

Nalgene bottle

Using a Jetboil Stove

Using the Jetboil couldn’t be easier. Once assembled, you open the plastic stove lid, pull the stove out, remove the plastic bowl from the bottom of the pot, attach the stove with a simple twist, fill the pot with two cups of water, turn on the fuel feed, and click the ignition. About two minutes later, you get boiling water. The pot is covered in a neoprene sleeve that protects your hands from the hot surface. It also has a built-in fabric handle that makes it easy to hold.

The small pot size works best for cooking soup, coffee, or freeze-dried meals while on solo trips. I found eating a meal directly out of the pot difficult. Towards the bottom of the pot, my knuckles and fingers tended to hit the side making it, depending on the meal, a somewhat messy affair. The provided bowl alleviates messy hands, but use it makes an other item to clean. If you normally eat freeze-dried, dehydrated, or Freezer Bag Cooking meals, the size of the pot and my issue with messy easing won’t be a problem–just cook your water and pour into your food’s bag.

Because of the ease of use, the stove excels at quickly serving up a hot cup of brew during a break. I found myself cooking a warm cup of soup for lunch on cold days. Normally, I wouldn’t bother pulling out the stove, pot, assembling the mess to get something warm at mid-day, because, I typically find cooking a chore to be avoided at mid-day and would prefer to only have to eat food bars. Jetboil’s ease of use has redefined what I carry for lunch and now soup often makes it into the pack.

On that same note, one of my favorite parts of using a Jetboil stove is not having to deal with the fuel canister until fuel runs out. Once the fuel canister is attached to the stove, it remains attached until you run out of fuel. Although, the saved labor from screwing on and unscrewing a canister, doesn’t save a lot of time when compared to stoves that you have to affix the canister for each use, the convenience of having the canister always attached to the stove makes using the stove a more pleasant experience. This feature alone endures the stove to me. The only disadvantage to leaving the canister attached is any water that remains inside the pot after you finish cooking will cause the canister to rust. Normally, I wouldn’t think this an issue, but because the stove is so efficient fuel canisters last a long time and they rust. A permanent rust coating rings the bottom of my pot.

Fuel Usage

Incredible. I didn’t perform any specific test to see how much fuel it takes to boil two cups of water, but I’ve seen numbers on the Internet ranging from 4.38 grams to Jetboil’s claim of 4.17 grams. This means about 24 two-cup meals. I found this consistent with the fuel usage that I experienced.

Weight

The Jetboil system weighs in at 14 ounces. A full 100g canister weighs 6.7 ounces. So, at the start of the trip, the system weighs 1 pound and 4.7 ounces. At the end of the trip,  if all the fuel is used, the system weighs 1 pound and 1.17 ounces.

Compared to my lightweight Red Bull photon stove system the Jetboil is heavy. My Red Bull stove system, including the pot, custom wind screen, and stove, weighs about 6 ounces. I figure for about 24 meals, I’d need about 16 ounces of fuel. So, the starting weight of the Red Bull system runs 1 pound 6 ounces. And the end weight,  is 6 ounces.

You can calculate the daily weight average over 24 days, and you’ll find that the Jetboil weighs about 19.53 ounces and the Red Bull system weighs about 14 ounces. For longer trips or trips with two meals a day, the Jetboil gets better, but on shorter trips, the Jetboil gains in weight. For a more detailed comparison visit, PMags.com and read his comparison between the weights of different stove systems.

Many paddlers don’t care that much about weight, but I do, because every ounce you add to your boat, increases drag, which slows you down. Even if you’re not looking for speed, extra ounces make it harder to paddle your kayak at whatever speed you’re traveling at. So lighter gear, means less work for the same distance traveled. Read more about this.

(Note: I understand the momentum argument, but there’s a point at which the momentum that carries speed between paddle strokes and the increased resistance meet. At this point, the increase in weight drowns out the gain from more momentum. Based on rough calculations, which need tank testing to confirm, for a lean and efficient paddler with no extra fat, the dead weight (including boat, gear, paddles, etc.) should weigh around 20% of the person’s body weight–anything more just slows the paddler down.)

Accessories

Jetboil offers many accessories for use with their stoves. The most interesting to me are the 1.5 liter pot attachment for the stove, the coffee press, and the hanging kit. The 1.5 liter pot makes the system usable for two people. The coffee press fits right into the standard pot and works as a French press. This is great of coffee lovers who are looking for an easy and light solution to the morning habit. I’m not sure what I’d ever use the hanging kit for, but if I was still into climbing, it’s such a geeky item that I’d have to figure out how to use it.

Conclusion

There are very few products that I keep using when a lighter and perfectly functional alternative is available. For solo trips or even tandem trips when we’re cooking freeze-dried or dehydrated meals, the Jetboil is one product that I now default to. The convenience, efficiency, and ease-of-use outweigh all of its deficiencies. This product is a winner.

That said, I’d like to see just a few changes in the product. The main one is weight. If Jetboil could get the system without fuel down under 10 ounces, I feel like it’d be a better product. The second is the lid, it’s hard to remove and when taken off after boiling and it’s easy to scald your hand from the escaping steam. It’s a winner now, but there’s always room for improvement.

If you’re looking for a simple cooking system for solo travel, this is one of the best. Highly recommended!

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Review: Jetboil Stove

REI

platypus

I just couldn’t stomach the titanium options, because they were so expensive–they ranged in price from $25 to whopping $40. They ranged in weight from 2.4 ounces to the 1.9 ounce MSR Titan Mug. Although I liked the weight, the price was just too high.

I was about to walk away when I ran across the REI Polypropylene Cup. This lightweight camp cup weighs 2.5 ounces and costs $1.95. At only 0.1 ounce heavier than the heaviest titanium mug and only 0.6 ounce heavier than the lightest, this mug is a bargain.

Then I remembered that I already have a cup similar to REI’s plastic cup, so it must be close to the same weight. I went home and put my GSI Camping Cup on the scale and found it weighed only 1.7 ounces. It’s a full 0.2 ounce under the 1.9 ounce lightweight MSR Titan Mug and a $38 less. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Sometimes the lightest and best isn’t the most high-tech and expensive.

Know any items where the less expensive version trumps the high-tech high-end version?

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Lightweight Camping Cups

The Reaction

ChemFire uses a combination of potassium permanganate and glycerin. When these two chemicals are combined they react to produce fire. These items were/are often found in military survival kits and in many emergency kits sold in Europe. Back in the day, potassium permanganate was used to treat water and as a disinfectant, but it’s messy and stains skin and clothing purple, and if mixed incorrectly it can lead to death or violent illness.

The Product

The Ohio based company that manufactures ChemFire packages the potassium permanganate into small pill capsules and provides the glycerin in a small eye dropper. The weight of the kit they sent me for testing was 0.8 ounces for 10 capsules and one dropper bottle. So, it’s pretty light. This package is a unique way of providing the two chemicals and it seems like the capsule helps in producing the reaction.

The Test

To make the reaction work, the capsule is opened and two drops of glycerin are added to the capsule. The capsule is closed and placed under the tinder. A few seconds later the magic begins with instant fire. The reaction produces fire for up to 30 seconds, which with a good dry tinder pile should get your fire started with no problems. I found that sometimes the reaction would only last around 10 seconds.

During my home testing, I found that often excess potassium permanganate would be left over after the reaction finished. And as shown in the following video just emptying the capsule and adding glycerin doesn’t work nearly as well as using a capsule. After testing the capsules on cement at home, I cleaned the pad with a hose and it turned everything purple. My only concern when testing was that I didn’t want to hold on to the capsule too long after the chemicals were mixed.

When lighting a real fire, I first used dry cedar tinder, and it burst into a hot flame very quickly — much more quickly than if I had used just a lighter. With birch bark, this produces a very hot and fast fire, but I didn’t think it was significantly faster than using a match or lighter. In wet weather, which I didn’t get to test the product in, I think this product would produce enough of a flame to start a well tindered fire.

The Conclusion

ChemFire is a fun light product that is easy to use. Starts a fire quickly. I found that I couldn’t be sloppy with my fire building; I still had to gather good dry tinder. For campers with kids or scouts this product would provide entertainment and a science lesson. The weight and size is small, so it’d take up little room. If I were to carry this on trips, it’d be more for fun than as a replacement for a lighter or matches, but it might just come in handy on those wet cold days were I want a fire to warm up, and the tinder is just damp enough to make fire starting a hassle.

This is a product worth trying out.

Product’s Website: ChemFire Fire Starting System

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Review ChemFire Capsules Fire Starter

12 days of food using the NOLS ration planning system.

I planned twelve to thirteen days of paddling, but ended up spending only nine days completing the trip. Living in a small town with two big grocery stores and one Co-op, buying the food is actually more difficult than it sounds, and as it turns out, much more expensive than I anticipated. For almost all that I had to go out and buy, which didn’t include sugar, flour, cornmeal, hot cocoa, and a few other items, it cost over $100. I guess I should have driven two hours to a big town to get a price break. Even with gas at $2.90 a gallon, I’d have probably come out ahead. Moral of the story, plan ahead on bulk food buying.

Anyway, for this planning I used NOLS Rationing system based on 2 pounds per person per day for food. Claudia Pearson outlines this in the Nols Cookery book, which is available from Amazon.com.

This is my bulk list:

Breakfast

• 1 pound Oatmeal
• 1/2 pound Couscous
• 1 pound Grape Nuts
• 1 pound Fry Bread
• 5 ounces Hash Browns

Dinner

• 1/2 pound Instant Beans
• 1 pound Pasta
• 1 pound Rice
• 1/2 pound Falafel
• 1/2 pound Instant Potatoes
• 1/2 pound Ramen noodles
• 3 Lipton dinners (Just in case)
• 1/2 pound Hummus

Cheese

• 1 pound Sharp Cedar

Trail Foods

• 2 ounces Sunflower Seeds
• 8 ounces Mixed Nuts
• 12 ounces Dried Fruit
• 5 ounces Raisins
• 2 ounces Corn Nuts
• 14 ounces M&Ms
• 4 ounces Goldfish
• 22 Granola bars
• 11 ounces Crackers

Baking Goods

• 1/2 pound Sugar (50/50 white and brown)
• 3 ounce Cornmeal
• 8 ounce Flour

Drinks

• 6 servings of Tang
• 6 servings of Crystal Light Lemonade
• 12 Tea bags

Soups, Bases, Deserts

• 2 ounces of Jell-O Pudding
• 6 beef Boulin cubes
• 1/2 pounds Cups of Soup
• 11 ounces Cheesecake
• 5 Pasta Sauces (alfedo, 2 x pesto, chili, spaghetti)

Milk, Margarine, Cocoa

• 1/2 pound Powdered Milk
• 12 ounces Margarine
• 10 ounces Cocoa

Meats

• 1 pound Tuna
• 1/2 pound Summer Sausage
• 1/2 pound Pepperoni

Because I finished three to four days early, I had some left over food. This is the list of leftovers:

Leftovers

• 5 ounces Raisins (Used none.)
• 1/2 pound Couscous (Used none.)
• 1/2 pound Falafel (Used none.)
• 4 ounces Fry Bread
• 6 ounces Pasta
• 5 ounces Hash Browns (Used none.)
• 3 ounces Grape Nuts
• 4 ounces Milk
• 5 ounces Sugar
• 5 ounces instant Potatoes
• 10 Flour and Cornmeal (Used none.)
• 4 ounces Rice
• 2.5 ounces Sunflower seeds
• 3 packs of Pasta Sauce
• 6 ounces cups of soup
• 2 ounces pudding (Used none.)
• 4.6 ounces of hot choc
• 6 servings of Tang (Used none.)
• 6 servings of Lemonade (Used none.)

This comes out at just over five pounds of food, which means that at 2 pounds of food a day, this would give me two and a half days of food, but because I knew I was ahead, I ate bigger meals towards the end of the trip. So, two pounds per person per day would seem to be the right amount of food.

There are a few changes that I’d make, I had planned on using the flour and cornmeal to make tortillas for the falafel, but with the high mileage days that I paddled from 7:30 to 5:30 almost every day, I didn’t really have the energy or time to prepare the tortillas before sunset. I think I would substitute out all the baking goods, except some of the sugar, which got used on Grape Nuts and in Cinnamon and Sugar for the fry bread. The baking food weight, I’d move to snack and lunch food. Margarine should be cut in half, and I didn’t list my spice kit above, but I would take only the oil, olive oil, cinnamon and sugar mix, and the hot sauce next time. And I’m not sure what I was thinking about when I decided Couscous and Raisins for breakfast, because I’m not a fan of either, so they didn’t get eaten – Grape Nuts would have been fine.

The meal making went very easily, except a mess up with making Mac & cheese from cheese blocks. I didn’t let the cheese melt enough so it was more like Mac and cheese chucks. Reminded me of the dinner that Lieutenant Henry was eating before he was hit by a mortar shell in Hemingway’s Farewell To Arms.

Overall, I like meal planning this way. It’s much easier than planning each day’s menus, and I ate better on this trip than most of my other trips. Certainly, I ate better than the North Men leaving Grand Portage for the northland who were issued rations of corn and fat for the journey home. The book mentioned above outlines this plan nicely, and I highly recommend buying the book just to learn this system.

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Ration Planning NOLS Style

To Be or Not to Be

The first question I asked myself was “Do I really need a bowl, when I can just eat out of the pot I cook food in?” I quickly answered the question with “maybe.” Although, I wouldn’t carry this item when solo, it shines when paddling with a friend. It actually saves having to carry a second and heavier pot or a lexan bowl for the second person. At 1.2 oz., it comes in 1.7 oz. lighter than the titanium pot I bring with me when a second person comes on the trip. When a third person is along for the ride, we generally bring a third pot, but on the trip I tested this out on, we carried both titanium pots and three Fold Flat Bowls for .7 oz more weight than our two person set up. This also allowed us to cook two menu item meals. For example, Mac and Cheese with Ham, and Cheesecake.

All that and More

Besides saving weight, the bowl has several other features going for it. The plastic it is made from is similar to a plastic that I have from a cutting board designed for camping. I’ve had this cutting board for over five years and although I don’t use it camping, I do use it weekly at home. After five years, it has held up perfectly, so I expect these bowls to do the same. Also, because the plastic is similar to my cutting board, I’ve decided to use the bowl as a cutting board for the woods, in addition to using it as a bowl. Also, if you’ve ever done any origami, you know how hard it can be, but this bowl is simple to set-up and stays set-up in use.

The Bad and the Not Really Ugly

The only downside that I found in use is that it is hard to clean. Food tends to get trapped in the folds if you leave it together and if you disassemble for cleaning, then water doesn’t stay in. It’s much easier just to clean a pot.

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now

But the added ability to cook multi-pot meals with little weight gain, the addition of a cutting board and cup, and the low cost combine to make this bowl a nice gem for multiple person trips. This gets a Nessmuking approval, but skip the cup and dish.

Review:
Orikaso Fold Flat Bowl
Date Reviewed: 7/25/05

Price: $7.99

This article originally appeared on PaddlingLight.com. Leave a comment and an opinion by clicking through here: Review: Orikaso Fold Flat Bowl