GearFlogger

Light My Fire Swedish FireKnife

Enabling two out of three behaviors in the homicidal triad, Light My Fire's Swedish FireKnife is a great value for a quality combination fire starter and knife.

The single-edge fillet style blade is made by Mora of 12C27 stainless steel, a sturdy and utilitarian design. It uses a modified Scandanavian grind, easily reestablished by hand sharpening, with a secondary bevel on the front third of the blade.

The firestarter is a Swedish FireSteel Scout, good for about 3,000 strikes, that twists off the base of the handle. You strike it by using the spine of the blade, which has a good right angle for that purpose. It works great with a little practice.

The grip is a nice nonslip rubberized coating, and the knife fits securely in the plastic case but still removes easily with a thumb-push. The lanyard and belt-clip provide attachment options, and the case itself has a drainhole at the tip. Overall the knife is designed very nicely for people who actually use their tools in the field. The icing on the cake is the price, a smokin' bargain for two tools in one.

$34.90 at Amazon

Primus ExpressLander stove

Teeny-friggin-tiny, that's the Primus ExpressLander stove. At 6.2 ounces it's getting into the insectoid weight division. I've seen cockroaches in Hawaii heavier than this thing.

The ExpressLander is built on Primus' Express stove technology, but where the Express sits on top of a canister the ExpressLander hooks up with the ubiquitous white gas. It comes with a carry case, windscreen and fuel canister pump. Everything together weighs in at 11.1 ounces.

The ExpressLander boils a quart of water in under five minutes, and cold weather performance is enhanced by wrapping the fuel feeder tube around the burner. It's a manual lighter, but that's no problem since everything is out in the open. For general backpacking use with white gas, the ExpressLander is a great little stove that won't break your back or your bank account.

$56.72 at Amazon

MSR Flex 4 System cookset

MSR knows cooking, and the MSR Flex 4 System cookset is a strong entry in the trend of transformer cooksets, where everything nests within everything else until a singularity is created that will devour the world. Until then, enjoy!

The four-person set includes twelve - 12! - pieces: four 12.5oz insulated mugs with drink-through lids sandwiched between two 7.5" plastic DeepDish plastic plates inside a 3.2L nonstick DuraLite DX pot with a strainer lid sandwiched between two 8.75" DeepDish plastic plates inside a 5.3L hard-anodized pot with a strainer lid. It's like the twelve days of Christmas, backcountry-style!

The design is very clever: the DeepDish plates protect the pots from being scratched, the small pot has an integrated potholder that folds over the lid, and the large pot has two insulated handles and two roller-clips that hold the whole enchilada together, no need for annoying straps. Being able to drain water from pasta through the strainer lid is a big bonus. There's a little extra space between and inside the mugs for spices, sponges, etc. You can even lay a few utensils on top of the small pot before you put the lid on.

Aluminum is the best choice for people who actually care about cooking, because it conducts heat quickly and evenly, is durable and cleans up well. DuraLite is MSR's most efficient material for boiling water. At 3lb 10oz the Flex 4 is definitely a basecamp item and is properly classified as such by MSR. If you're a backcountry gourmand serving it up for a hungry crowd, definitely check out the Flex 4.

$159.95 at REI

Mountain House Wraps

Mountain House has always had the best freeze-dried food out there in our not-so-humble opinion. Now they have Wraps, new roll-your-own meals designed to be slapped into a tortilla and chowed down.

We're talking Breakfast Skillet, Barbecue Sauce with Beef, Buffalo Style Chicken and Mexican Style Beef. Just bring your own tortillas, a little oil to fry it in, a little Tabasco sauce (hey, when you need to convert food to farts, don't bring a knife to a gun fight...), OK, maybe some cheese, and you're good to go. Be warned: this is a lot of food and will probably feed two of you.

The Breakfast Skillet even includes hash browns, so you don't necessarily need the tortilla if you're in a hurry or just traveling light. Either way the Skillet serves up 680 whopping calories including 26 grams of protein. Like we said, enough for two, or maybe it's all for you when you're facing double hauls on a big mountain day.

$6.50 at REI

Primus EtaPower Pots

We always thought Primus was the only band ever to get its own ID3 genre tag. Yeah, they're that strange. Turns out there's another Primus in town covering the not-so-heavy metal scene. They're primarily into aluminum, with a titanium coating.

Primus the gear company is known for its stoves and cookware. We tested the EtaPower aluminum pots with titanium nonstick coating. They have a flux ring around the bottom to transfer heat more efficiently to the pot, speeding up boiling times and distributing heat more evenly through the pot contents. Sounds great; does it work?

Kind of. The pots boil marginally faster than other aluminum models. They do seem to distribute heat more evenly, important for non-water contents like soup. They're definitely tough thanks to the coating and solid build. They weigh a bit more than advertised: 9.4oz for the 2.1L pot, plus another 3.5oz for the lid and 1.6oz for the sturdy little pot grabber. That's a total of 14.5oz for the 2.1L, 12.6oz for the 1.7L. All in all it's a solid if weighty package, but you're paying a premium for only marginally better performance, and you're not even getting a fry pan lid.

$50.00 at REI

GSI Dualist cook system

The clever little hobbitses at GSI are up to their tricksy ways again. They make many small (and some large) useful items related mostly to eating and drinking outdoors. Their solutions range from ultralight to basecamp, but all benefit from highly thoughtful design.

The award-winning GSI Dualist (also comes as a Soloist) cook set is a lovable little setup that will allow you and a partner to do the mostest with the leastest. For 20oz on your back you get two bowls, two mugs (basically an insulated nesting bowl), two sippy lids, and a pot with a lid. But wait; that's not all, the whole thing stores inside a Sink Sack that can haul water, wash dishes and hydrate Fido.

The details really set this set apart. The Lexan pot lid has steam/strainer holes and the pot handle folds over the top to lock everything in.The sippy lids on the mugs protect both adults and kids from spillage, and the bowls and mugs are color-coded so you don't mix up your oatmeal with your chipped beef. You can even store a 220g fuel canister and ultralight stoves inside, and/or cookware, spices, etc. The Dualist is fairly tough, and it cleans up nicely. The only thing we would add is a handle strap for the Sink Sack to make carrying water easier, but that's really a minor quibble with our new favorite cookware.

$49.95 at REI

MSR XPD heat exchanger

MSR has alpine cooking dialed in. Stoves, cookware and accessories guarantee you the shortest path possible between you and another crappy, bowel-cramping meal on the mountain.

Yet for all its practicality you just don't see enough alpinists using heat exchangers. So as a public service, as the poet-philosopher Eminem likes to say, let's do the math. The XPD heat exchanger will increase efficiency "up to 25%." Let's say it's only 10%: a quick two-week jaunt up Denali works out to at least 6oz of fuel per person per day or 6*14 days = 76oz per person. At .75 dry ounces per wet ounce that's .75*76 = 57oz of weight.

10% of that is almost 6oz per person, coincidentally what the XPD weighs. For a larger party and more time you just save more weight, especially if its the difference between carrying another fuel bottle or not. Plus cooking is more efficient, saving precious time and allowing you to collapse into your fart sack faster. The XPD fits even a 2L pot and collapses to fit inside. What's not to like?

$39.00 at REI

MSR Titan cookware

Much better looking than its sisters Scandium and Vanadium (if you get that reference you've probably had intimate relations with a slide rule), Titanium is not just for body piercing anymore. The MSR Titan cookware is sized right for alpine use, and if you're not on a budget the weight can't be beat.

Significantly lighter than both steel and aluminum the big Titan 2L tips the scale at a feathery 8.4oz, plus 1oz for the pot grabber. Like all MSR cookware it has all the right details, including a rounded bottom (baby got back!) for better heat distribution and a rolled top edge to resist warping and ensure consistent lid fit.

The downsides of titanium are that it costs an arm and a leg and heat dispersion is not as good as aluminum or even stainless steel. That said, if you take a little care in how you cook it shouldn't be a problem. MSR sizes its pots to nest, with the 1L holding fuel canisters, the 1.5L holding stoves like the XGK EX, and the 2L holding just about anything. The lid doubles as a plate, and the lid handle even has a little notch to keep it upright.

$89.95 at REI

GSI Deluxe 11-piece kitchen set

My idea of cooking involves boiling water and pouring it into a foil pouch. Believe it or not there are people who go beyond these heroic measures to prepare - wait for it - actual meals!

For those people there is GSI Outdoors, makers of all things gastro-outdoorsy including kitchen sets like this 11-piece setup in a hard case. They also make the must-have Lexan wine glass.

First the good news: the telescoping ladle and spatula are ingeniously designed and ideal for soups, pancakes and the like. They weigh basically nothing and pack small. Other useful items include a double-ended salt/pepper shaker, small whisk and grater, and cutting and cleaning items.

The bad news is the case itself weighs 1lb 2oz of the 1lb 12oz total weight, and you really don't need it. But wait! GSI is an American company, and that means consumer choice: you can buy the 11-piece set without the case, and it's even less expensive although you might have to look around for it.

$24.00 at REI

Bic Lighter

Hear me now, believe me later: do not spend your ducats on some fancy-schmancy "stormproof" lighter for high-altitude mountaineering. They will have their way with you and leave you with nothing. No fire. No food. No love.

On Denali my partner had his Brunton stormproof lighter and I had some cheap imitation; both failed completely by 14,000 feet. We had brought about six back-ups, plastic push-button gas-station types, but they failed as well.

Luckily there was an all-woman expedition camped next to us and my partner, who is only marginally better looking and has much looser morals, went over and prostituted himself for a 99-cent purple Bic lighter with the mechanical wheel. This low-tech wonder got us to high camp. As Lenin said, quantity has a quality all its own. He was talking about tanks, but it also applies to lighters.

Bic lighters