Suggestions for improvement to our stove/cookware setup 3 season and winter?

LOL Hal just showed my wife. During winter walks in Central Park in NY, when we lived there across from the park, wearing those jackets and black softshell pants and using the same trekking poles, we were mistaken for some kind of park patrol and locals and tourists would stop us all the time for directions.

Once during a 2.5 ft snow dump in the park we found a mother and daughter crying in a small semi-wooded central section of the park called the Ramble – they said they'd been walking for hours and couldn't find their way out and thanked us for rescuing them. Mind you, this is a small area and if they had walked in a straight line in any direction for 10 minutes they'd be out. Can you imagine having so little outdoor sense? Glad our bright orange jackets saved the day.

Every time we go winter backpacking, snowshoeing or cross country skiing someone comments about the color of our jackets.

Hi EJ

> nForm bowls with the foam band
No, slipped that off as useless and extra weight. It's just a neoprene foam band, like the Jetboil ones, and totally superfluous imho.

> you want to avoid scratching the surface of the bowls, what do you use to clean them?
Hot water with 2 drops of biodegradable detergent in the MSR pot, as a washing up bowl. A natural sponge as the wiper (bought in a French supermarket I think), but most any sponge would do. Wash up every night, never get sick.

> Do you have to avoid using a metal spoon or spork/foon with them?
GSI plastic cutlery – lighter than titanium. Actually, usually just the spoons, although on a few trips I have taken the forks as well, for long fettucini pasta. Forget the knives though. See
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/gsi_lexan_cutlery_spotlite_review.html
I have one steel (butter) knife, but it never touches the bowls. I use a 1 mm sheet of PE as a cutting board on long trips: sausage, cheese, bread … That IS cut up a bit!

> Why protect the outside of the bowls from minor scratches?
Yeah, well, … good question. :-)

> So in winter you still take the nForm bowls but don't nest them in the 1.5L pot?
We take the nForm bowls on all trips, even to Europe. In winter we sometimes put the bowls inside the pot with the Xtreme stove and the Powermax canister outside. Things aren't absolute … :-)

> My Xtreme stoves came with nylon stuff sacks – why not store the stove inside
> a stuff sack and then in the bowls, or are you worried about the sharp stove
> rim still scratching the plastic through the stuff sack?
Yep, I often use the Xtreme stuff sack, but not just to protect the bowls. By having the Xtreme stove hose neatly coiled up inside the stuff sack and then inside the pot I can be fairly sure the hose won't get kinked and damaged. That concern is actually far bigger than the bowls!

Cheers

With your Gigapower GST-100 and cooking 2 or 3 times per day for two people?

Hi EJ

There are two ways of looking at this. The first is how I normally do my calculations.

Morning tea for two on a day walk: two 12 oz cups. About 8 g of gas if in a hurry, slightly less if being miserly.

Full day & night for Sue and me outside snow conditions: morning tea as above, then dinner of soup, stew/etc, washing up. 25 – 30 g, depending once again on how careful I am being. Breakfast and lunch are cold. (Allow 30 g.)

Full day & night in the snow for Sue and me: a bit variable for two reasons.
* Melting snow can double fuel consumption, but we do take considerable effort to find water in creeks under the snow. This may require a bit of digging, but it is worth it. If the weather is mild we have a cold breakfast like in the summer. I would probably use a water bottle which had been stored inside the foot of my quilt.
* If it is cold in the morning I might warm up the milk for cornflakes/muesli, although Sue doesn't like her cornflakes soggy! Or I might make a cup of tea/coffee at breakfast if it is REALLY cold. Both add to fuel consumption.

So for snow use I usually double the summer allowance (ie 60 g), knowing that I may well bring a fair bit back. Since we always go by ourselves and see very few others, safety does play a part in my calculations.

The other method: when walking the length of the Pyrenees in France and sleeping in our tent each night, I found that a 450 g canister of gas would last the two of us for a solid 14 days, no worries. Since 15 * 30 = 450, that tallies pretty well with the previous figures.

Cheers