Esbit Stove Cooking Set

While visiting a nearby military base, I discovered Esbit has a new stove and backpacking cook set. The new Esbit stove is round and one piece compared to earlier folding Esbit stoves. Also, the stove is no longer heavy steel, but lighter weight hard anodized aluminum.

We opened one of the boxes which was a 4 inches cube. Inside we discovered a small drawstring bag. Opening the drawstring bag we pulled out a cup with folding handles. Inside the cup was the stove. We set the stove base on the shelf and set the cup into the stove. Clever.

The Esbit stove has a permanent rectangle inside the bottom that holds one Esbit solid fuel tablet. There is a large opening to allow access for fuel tablets, matches, or lighters. Near the top of the stove are small holes to improve stove burning. It looks like there is room for a small alcohol stove or tea light stove inside the Esbit stove for those who prefer a different fuel. We noted Esbit's catalog does show this same stove available with an alcohol stove, so the extra space is a deliberate feature.

As there was no scale nearby, we don't have a weight for the set. If you purchase one of these you'll need to add a folding spork, lighter and some foil to make a better wind screen. Also, the stove seems almost the correct diameter for holding a Heineken pot, but alas, no Heineken beer can was available for testing.

There are a few other reviews of the Esbit stove set online already:
Esbit Solid Fuel Stove Set Review
Test Esbit stove: Small 585 ml cooking set for a cup of coffee

UPDATE

We went ahead and purchased the Esbit Stove Cooking Set. We killed about an hour measuring, weighing, and playing with its components. Here's some of what we discovered.

Size: The cup is 3.5 inches deep and 3.5 inches across (diameter)

Volume: The cup is marked with 8, 12 and 16 ounce levels, but will hold nearly 20 ounces.

Weight: The entire cook set as sold by Esbit weighed 1/2 pound (232 grams / 8.15 oz). The aluminum cup alone weighs 4.35 oz (129 grams). Dropping the Esbit stove and adding a Supercat alcohol stove and windscreen and the cook set weighs 6 oz (170 grams).

We took the stove outside in about 40 degree F weather, lit our Supercat stove and set the cup with 16 oz of tap water on the stove. Much more stable than our wider cook pot. Due to the close fit of the wind screen, when we first set the cup on the stove, we had a 2-3 inch jet of flame shooting above the wind screen on one side. This died back in about 20-30 seconds. We had boiling water at about 4 minutes.

We also wondered if the new round Esbit stove would fit a Heineken beer keg pot. We dug our Heineken pot out and set it into the Esbit stove. Perfect fit! Extremely stable, like the two were made for each other. Placing the stove over the top of the Heineken keg, we found the stove engulfed more of the keg and almost fit inside our screw top container. We're fairly sure that we can unscrew the four plastic legs and the stove and Heineken pot will fit perfectly inside the container.

We also set a super cat inside the Esbit stove as there is a European version with a brass alcohol stove. The Supercat pushes the Heineken pot up slightly and there's a bit of a wobble with an empty pot. The solid fuel holder is held in place by a single rivet. It looks like, if the rivet were removed, the Heineken pot would fit snugly over the Supercat stove making a complete lightweight alcohol stove system.

We plan to purchase a second Esbit stove cooking set and separate its components so we end up with two 6 oz Esbit cup/stove sets and two Heineken pot/Supercat/Esbit stove sets. That should cover our family of four and allow each child to eventually inherit two lightweight cooking systems.

Watch for two upcoming articles and YouTube videos featuring each cooking system and its components.

Ultralight Backpacking Gear: Digital Scale

Our newest piece of backpacking gear is a digital scale. Harbor Freight has their digital scales on sale, so we bought a battery powered digital scale that weighs items up to 11 pounds in grams, ounces, and pounds for $19.99. This is less than most digital kitchen scales we have priced and can also be used in the kitched due to its tare (zeroing out) function.

Our scale was easy to use. After turning it on, we used its tare function to zero out the scale. Then, we methodically went through our backpack weighing most items. We had a few surprises, some good and some bad. Here's some of what we learned:

Bad - things heavier than we realized

Compass. Our basic orienteering compass is twice as heavy as our little $1.99 thermometer/compass zipper pull. As we don't need an orienteering compass' capabilities on the Appalachian Trail, we'll drop it for the lighter zipper pull.

Cook set. We thought our old-fashioned 1987 aluminum pot with folding handles cook kit would weigh about two pounds. It weighs about one. We plan to buy an Esbit cook set for its smaller cup and lid. We should be able to drop some weight and also free some pack space. UPDATE: The new Esbit cook set cup along with a Supercat alcohol stove and aluminum windscreen weigh just 6 ounces and take up far less space.

Good - things lighter than we realized

Poly Tarp. We knew our 8 X 10 foot hardware store poly tarp was heavy. We figured around 2-3 pounds heavy. Turns out its only about 1.6 pounds. We still plan to drop about half of that weight by switching to a 10 ounce Hennessy nylon rainfly.

Nylon fishing pants and shirts. We switched to nylon fishing pants and long-sleeved shirts to save weight over thicker fabrics.

Supercat alcohol stove. One ounce!

Yes, we are slowly turning into a gram weenie. Our pack was at 23 pounds when we last weighed it at Boiling Springs, PA. We'd like to be at 20 pounds or less with food and one liter of water when we start at Delaware Water Gap later this year.

Appalachian Trail Journals 2010

Below are the 2010 Appalachian Trail journals that we followed. There's plenty of good information inside each and we encourage you to browse through these and learn from the experiences of others who have hiked the Appalachian Trail before us.

• Anansi (bear ate food 3/30, left)


• Avatar (injured foot)


• Big Daddy (SNP)


• Canadian Geese (Summitted 10/5)


• EZ Hiker (ME - Katadin)


• Fahmah (NH, left 8/04)


• Frankie The Sleeper (left 4/30)


• iTrod (Summited 9/16))


• Jack Straw (ransacked 4/20, left)


• King (#51 - Summited 7/16))


• KingCrawler (Summited 9/16)


• Mom (MA - off trail 'til 6/11)


• MotoGypsy (injured knee)


• Ridley and Panther (Summited 08/11)


• Ripple (Summitted 10/14)


• Seeker (Summited 9/16)


• Veggie (Summited 8/30)

Follow Section Hiking the Appalachian Trail on Twitter

Follow Section Hiking the Appalachian Trail on Twitter!

Often a full blog post is not appropriate for the many short Appalachian Trail articles and discussions we find weekly. The new Twitter account allows us to provide more frequent links to items that section hikers might like to know, such as alerts from the Appalachian Trail Conference (ATC). We also will tweet the availability of new blog articles.

If you are a provider of hiking services and have a Twitter account, please follow @Section_Hiking, as we want to follow you! We hope to follow a growing group of parks, hostels, outfitters and deli's along the entire AT and provide a comprehensive source of information for section hikers.

If anyone knows of a Appalachian Trail resource (lodging, eating, sightseeing, trail angel) on Twitter, please leave a comment to this post.

Bear Bagging: Ursack Bear Bag

One of the most important skills for a section hiker to master before setting off on a section hike of the Appalachian Trail is bear bagging. Losing one's food to a bear is very demoralizing and has caused more than one hiker to abandon their hike. In areas like the 100 Mile Wilderness, losing one's food due to improper bear bagging could result in immobilization.

During our past 2-week section hike, we spent an inordinate amount of time (15-min/day = 2.5 hrs = 4-5 miles) selecting a suitable tree and branch to set up our bear bagging system. We used the Pacific Crest Trail or PCT bear bagging system, which uses one rope, a bag, a carabiner and a stake/stick. While standing beneath the selected tree and attempting to swing our rope up and over the desired branch, we often wished for a better solution. We were very excited to receive an Ursack bear bag as a Christmas gift.



Its one thing to watch a video showing a bear attempting to get into an Ursack, but its another to hold one in one's hands and examine it thoroughly. The sack is larger and stiffer than we had imagined. We can easily bag our cook kit and at least five days of food plus even more. Our problem is likely to be trying to stuff a very full Ursack into our small $30 Walmart backpack.

The instruction card mentions crossing the cord, which is rock climbing grade kernmantel rope with about a 5,000 pound breaking strength. Looking inside we saw that the installed cords do cross. We then pulled the bag closed and tied a double overhand knot as instructed. Not only does the bag keep out bears, but there was very little gap for even a mouse to enter. After tying the overhand knot there is plenty of rope to pass around a 5-inch branch or tree trunk and still tie a figure-8 knot as recommended.

This is a well made product and we look forward to trying it out on a scheduled weekend shakedown overnighter this spring. We'll update this post with anything new or interesting we discover.