The Gearguy: "food & water"

Food and water, or at least some new tools for preparing them, are the subject of this month’s column. First, an update on my on-going durability reports.

After three or more years of faithful service, I’ve had two binding failures of my MSR Denali Classic snowshoes in the last six weeks. Neither, however, was at what I’ve always assumed would be the weak point, the clevis pin that joins the binding to the shoe. This joining mechanism has proven to be the most durable portion of the design. Instead, the first failure occurred when the rubberized fabric pulled out from the rivets that hold the fabric to the binding plate. This causes the front of the binding to droop, and by the end of the day I’d broken the binding in half because the front crampon kept catching in the snow. This didn’t keep me from getting up and down James Peak, however, despite the fact that the binding broke very early in the trip.

A little over a month later, the sole plate of the other shoe’s binding broke just in-board from the clevis pin. On the up side, although this also happened early in the hike, the remaining attachment point held together the whole way up and down Silverheels (which was a good thing as the snow was more than hip deep and not especially consolidated). Of course for the trip down, a good (and much lighter friend) swapped shoes with me to reduce the stress on the damaged binding. So, what did I learn? The Denali’s last for a good long time but not forever (considering the amount of use, I have gotten more than fair value from them). When one binding breaks, consider replacing them both. When the bindings break, the shoes are robust enough to go a good ways further. Hike with light and considerate friends.

Now, on with the reviews

Though potentially a life-and-death item for many backcountry and mountain trips, the basic cooking system has evolved very little in the last twenty years or so. You had a stove (canister or white gas) and a choice of a wide variety of pots and pans made of everything from cast iron to titanium.

A company or two also make heat exchangers that you wrap around your pots to improve efficiency. Last summer, I learned how valuable heat exchangers are when a friend brought one on our trip to Vestal Basin and got twice as many liters of hot water per fuel canister as my heat-exchanger-less system. Unfortunately, these devices are big, heavy, and a bit awkward. Wind screens are also available that improve efficiency but are rickety, fiddly, and may cause the canister to explode.

Finally, after all this time, someone has taken a systems approach to stoves and cookware and radically re-engineered the whole works. Jetboil, a company new to the outdoor cooking scene may have just changed forever how we cook in the outdoors. To quote their website: “Frustrated with heavy vacuum bottles and clunky stoves, Jetboil founders Dwight Aspinwall and Perry Dowst set out to make outdoor cooking easier. They quickly discovered that the secret to a fast and friendly design lies in increasing heat transfer efficiency.” I’m happy to report that they have achieved their goal in a lightweight, compact and innovative package.

The Jetboil “system” (it’s more than just a stove), integrates a windscreen with the gas burner and a “FluxRing^ª” heat exchanger with the system’s one liter, hard-anodized aluminum cooking cup. The cooking cup mates securely to the gas burner and includes a neoprene “cozy” and plastic lid. The really cool thing (apart from the efficiency and the integration) is that all the pieces of the system, including the gas canister, fit into the cooking cup and the cozy sports a webbing strap that can be used to clip the whole enchilada to your pack.

Early marketing claims of a boil time of ninety seconds really raised my eyebrows. So once the package landed on my doorstep, out it came, I screwed it onto a Snowpeak gas canister (ignoring a dire warning discussed later), filled the cooking cup with water (more on that later too), got out my stop watch and fired that puppy up. Sure enough, the water boiled in ninety seconds, or close enough that it doesn’t matter. The fuel consumed was 0.3 ounces which corresponds nicely with the claimed efficiency of eighty percent and the claimed number of liters boiled (12) per 110 gram (3.99 oz.) canister. This is indeed roughly double the efficiency of a regular stove/pot combination (without an add-on heat exchanger).

Now, the catch is that this is the boil time for two cups or (roughly) 0.5 liters of cold tap water. Although the system is shipped with a one-liter cooking cup, it is inscribed at the 0.5 liter level with the words: “Max Safe Fill,” and we are told in the warning-ridden instructions: “WARNING (!) Do not fill above SAFE fill line.” They do not explain what is inherently unsafe about filling a one liter cup with one liter of water, but if I had to guess, it’s to do with the system tipping over.

Other dire warnings abound in the instructions including the admonition to use Jetboil (110 g) fuel canisters only as “other manufacturers’ large fuel containers can produce higher levels of Carbon Monoxide.” Hmmm I can understand the logic of this: arguably, higher pressure (maybe) thus higher gas flow and improper fuel/air mixture, but it’s a bit thin.

We are further warned that “Flame can erupt during ignition.” Well I certainly hope so, or it’s cold Ramen for me. Regardless, it’s safe to say the Jetboil’s product liability consultants earned their pay.

In any case, with a ninety second boil time, you can heat up water for your dehy meal and have another two cups of hot water ready for cocoa before your Turkey Tetrazini is properly re-hydrated and ready for scarfing. Jetboil lists some other one-pot (or cup in this case) backcountry recipes on their website (www.jetboil.com) that sound reasonable, but the obvious trade-off with this system is that you won’t be using it to whip up any complex Cordon Bleu cuisineÑnot that very many folks go to that trouble on the trail these days either.

The system tips the scales at just a tad more than the claimed 14 ounces (my scale read 15.2 without canister). This is just over five ounces more than my current ultralight set-up of a mini-stove and titanium pot. This is a more-than-reasonable weight premium for a doubling of the fuel efficiency.

The system is targeted at adventure racers and fast-n-light backpackers, but it has earned at least a trial-run or two with yours truly.

The other nifty new gadget is MSR’s MIOX¨ water purification system. Clean water and the means of reliably obtaining it for the least weight carried are the holy grails of wilderness travel. Filters are heavy and can clog or freeze; boiling takes extra time and fuel; and iodine tastes yucky. There have been some recent improvements like Aqua-mira drops (which form chlorine dioxide when mixed together) and the Steri-pen (which uses UV light, but can only treat one liter at a time), but the ideal solution hasn’t been at hand.

Originally developed for the military, the MIOX¨ (stands for MIxed OXide) unit uses salt and electricity (in the form of two included photo batteries) to produce a fresh batch of liquid purification solution at each need. This solution is presumably a mixture primarily of sodium hydroxide (caustic) and perhaps some sodium chlorate, sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and dissolved chlorine and chlorine oxides as well: all chemicals commonly used for water treatment. You can make enough solution for up to a gallon at each use of the unit. Basically, you pour some salt in the top, add an ounce or so of water to the main chamber, shake to make a brine (saltwater) solution and push the little button on the side. It’s got LED’s to let you know if your mixture is too salty or not salty enough. The brine solution bubbles and boils and when the green light goes out, you pour the oxide mixture into the water to be purified. Simple as that. Of course, you still have to wait fifteen minutes for bacteria and viruses to be killed or inactivated, thirty minutes for giardia, and up to four hours for cryptosporidium. Still, it’s very light (3.4 ounces on my scale versus MSR’s claimed 3.5 ounces) and compact. It’s almost certain to replace my current purification system for fast-n-light backpacks if not climbs. On the down-side, it is made almost entirely of plastic and relies on batteries with all the attendant potential issues that this implies. I can leave my Aqua Mira drops in my pack for a couple of years and not worry about the batteries running down or the bottles breaking if I plop down on my pack for some lunch. A valuable addition to the recreationist’s water purification arsenal, but maybe still not the ultimate solution (no pun intended).

I’ll keep you posted on my experiences with these new innovations. P