Jetboil Sol vs Fire Maple FMS-117 or…

No experience whatsoever but the key point there in my view is "and little air flow"
look up the "stove,tents and carbon monoxide" series of articles here.

It's a cave, not a coffin. A cave is, in my opinion, always larger than a tent. If it isn't, why are you cooking, let alone caving there?

So, I think the Carbon Monoxide risk is negligible.

I would absolutely go with the Stove + Pot combo. Jetboil stoves are efficient, but realistically, you're looking at 2 minutes vs. 2m30s or something like that. You won't even notice. You'll turn on your canister stove, and it'll fire up your dinner in a jif, and you'll eat.

Save the ounces and go with simplicity.

P.S. the Snow Peak LiteMax is only 1.9oz. Fire Maple's hornet is only 1.5.

The cave is 121 miles long with huge rooms, so I'm not really worried about CO. I do like the idea of low CO, in case I want to use it in a tent vestibule, though.

Compactness is important in caving. More so than weight.

Even more important is toughness. Can you toss it in a pack with a water bottle, carabiners and a descent rack, then roll on top of the pack with all your weight a dozen times?

Any cave you can spend a week in has more air volume than all REI stores combined. So as long as you're not cooking in some tiny, dead-end grotto, I wouldn't fret about CO.

Can you tell us where you'll be caving? Or if you did, would you have to kill us? (cavers tend to be very secretive).

Ah, now I see "121 miles". Fisher Ridge System in Kentucky, apparently. Warmish, wet, muddy.

I still think toughness trumps compactness which trumps weight. But the ability to swish it around in muddy water, shake it off, and have it work trumps all.

Geez, 121 miles would make a good trip for a thru-hiker.

Whatever happened to the tradition of heating up food over a carbide lantern flame?

–B.G.–

Close, David; I might be going to Lech!

I might go to Fisher Ridge sooner. There's some crazy projects going on there.

I've heard that carbide works for cooking, though it imparts a little…flavor. :)