Coleman Xtreme

[Elliott Wolin]

Five of used a Coleman Powermax Xtreme stove on a 14-day trek around Mt. Rainier this summer. Weather mostly cool, little rain, little wind. We brought 4-liter and 3-liter MSR pots and needed a large capacity, heavier stove to handle the large pots.

The stove mostly performed perfectly. Time to set up and start cooking was literally seconds…hook up the canister and you were ready to go.

It was a little balky when trying to squeeze the last few grams of fuel out of the canister, but this was not a big deal.

I’d give it a 5 but we had no significant wind while cooking, so I cannot comment on that.

[Cameron Cole]

Coleman hit a homerun with this product. Normally they make inexpensive good, but heavy equipment. However, this stove is light 13oz (by my scale with storage sack not including fuel) and is very sturdy. The canisters are either a love or hate deal. I leave in Atlanta, GA so getting canisters from REI or a big sporting goods store is easy. If I lived more remote, I might not find the canister system as nice. That aside, the plug and play design is really easy to use and has never leaked after numerous trips. The stove blasts heat out as well. A friends MSR backpacking stove takes almost twice as long to bring water to a boil. Additionally, with the “shorty” canisters the stove has a very small pack size. It fits easily inside of my .9 quart pot with fuel. After you use up a canister, pop a hole in it and it collapses. You can even get large canisters for long outings, but I haven’t gone through a short canister in a week yet. If I cooked more or for more people, I would probably consider the large canister.

To sum up, packs great, burns clean and hot, no mess fuel and typical Coleman reliability without the typical Coleman weight. Backpacker magazine gave this item a big thumbs up and after using it for quite a while I see why.

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