Mini-Bic lighter

I prefer my trick butane lighter that has a photo of a girl in a bikini on it. When I click to light it automatically makes her bikini disappear… ;)

But it's far too "valuable" to take backpacking so I take two mini BICs and FireSteel W/tinder.

"In fact I've never had a piezo lighter work above, say, 7k feet."

I had the piezo lighter on my Jetboil work just fine at 11,500 ft. Perhaps there are differences in the quality of the lighters.

I could see where the spark generated could vary significantly and I wouldn't expect a mass market cigarette lighter to have much oomph. I disassembled one and the piezoelectric section is tiny.

The real downfall on the piezoelectric Bic is that it takes a fair amount of pressure to hold it down– the spring is fairly strong.

One trick to increasing the reliability of the flint wheel Bic is to put an o-ring around the lighter and under the gas lever, so it can't release gas accidentally, leaving you with an empty lighter.