GearFlogger

MSR XGK Stove Expedition Service Kit

Sometimes bad things happen to good expeditions. All too often that bad thing is your stove taking a little trip to the island of Tango Uniform. Altitude, cold and your partner's gross incompetence are contributing factors.

For those unhappy times the wise expedition pre-pares for re-pairs. Larger expeditions can simply go redundant and bring multiple, preferably identical stoves. That might be overkill for two and three person teams, which is where the MSR XGK Expedition Repair Kit comes in handy. It's 4oz of prevention if you're carrying an MSR XGK stove, which is likely given its deserved popularity.

Pretty much everything you can replace on an XGK is included: flame spreader, jet cleaning tool, jet and cable tool, safety pin, pump cup and oil, fuel filter, check valve ball and spring and plug, fuel tube bushing, X and GK jets, shaker needle with cover, air tube, dip tube, 2 fuel tube o-rings, 2 fuel bottle o-rings and 2 control valve o-rings. Sorry, no partridge, no pear tree.

$30.00 at REI

Jetboil Flash stove

Jetboil shook up the stove world a few years back with its revolutionary namesake stove. The little one-pound stove always knew it wanted its own handle, so after working as a runner, sucking on a 40 down at the corner and yelling "five-oh" it finally proved itself and was awarded a street name: the Flash!

The original Jetboil was a great design, and the Flash wisely keeps all that worked and makes some small but real improvements. If only all products evolved this way! The 1L cup with integrated heat exchanger is pretty much the same, but the neoprene insulator has been updated with a fancy little three-stripe thingie that turns orange when the contents are about to boil. At first it seemed kind of gimmicky, but it was cool to be ten feet away from the Flash and be able to see at a glance when it actually needed attention. More useful is the little tab for holding utensils.

There's nothing gimmicky about the performance. The Flash still cranks up hot water in no time at above-freezing temps. Even down towards single digits Fahrenheit it did a respectable job, bringing water to a boil in about five minutes (Jetboil makes another stove for colder temps). The reliable push-button ignitor is new and improved, as is the burner, and best of all the temperature control knob now has a flip-out wire bail that can be used easily with gloves on. The bottom plastic cup removes easier as well, and the stove base, fuel canister and very cool new included folding tripod base all conveniently stow inside the cup with room to spare. The tripod has notches for two sizes of canister and provides a very stable base; you can pick the whole thing up while it's burning and move it easily. Bottom line: a fantastic three-season canister stove.

$99.95 at REI

Brunton Gannett Grill

Brunton has a great tagline: "Why buy Brunton? No suits or ties were worn by anyone involved in the design, development or production of our products." Brunton makes a lot of reasonably-priced stuff, and a necessary decision in being a price leader is deciding where to put limits on features, quality or both.

The propane-fired Gannett grill is a perfect example. It does what a grill needs to do, which is cook, very well. It feeds gas and gets plenty hot. It has some added advantages in that it's light at 11lb and compact, about the size of a thick briefcase. The legs fold up and over the lid for portability. Some assembly is required, but the included instructions are good.

You'll notice putting it together that the metal is thin, some edges are sharp and the whole unit feels far from burly. The manual Piezo ignition on our unit generated a feeble spark yet never did ignite the gas, but using a long-neck fireplace lighter quickly fired it up, and once hot you're good to go. Bottom line: if you want small and light for a decent price, don't mind manually lighting it and treat it gently, the Gannett will pump out the brats and burgers to fuel your road trip.

$107.95 at Backcountry

Coleman Rendezvous 2-burner stove

How does 25lb of lovin' sound to you? If you're looking for a basecamp-class stove that has everything including the kitchen sink, Coleman has a not-so-little somethin-somethin for ya.

The Rendezvous 2-burner is a massive suitcase style stove that opens to the side. You can remove the lid easily by sliding it off. To help you carry this monster there is a comfortable large diameter rotating handle on top. You want features? We got features: the lid doubles as a sink and food storage area with adjustable bins, an anti-microbial cutting board and a griddle for eggs and pancakes. There's even a little rail on the front with hooks to hang utensils on.

The Rendezvous takes propane in any size with included adapters. But does it burn? Yeah baby! The battery-operated ignition fires it up effortlessly, and the flames are totally adjustable from low simmer to full afterburner. If you can't cook like a pro on this thing you may be hopeless. The Rendezvous might be over the top for a lot of folks, but if you don't mind the weight, space and cost of this behemoth it will make feeding time at your zoo a pleasure.

$328.49 (on sale from $364.49) at Backcountry

MSR XGK EX stove

I bought my first MSR XGK stove in 1989, and if I remember correctly it was on at least its second iteration even then. And that was before your fancy shaker jet technology, punk. The new XGK EX has evolved nicely for its intended use by high-altitude, cold weather expeditions.

The XGK EX runs on gas, low-grade kerosene, auto fuel, aviation gas, diesel #1, Klingon piss and other unlikely fluids. If you're looking to commune with nature, better do it before you fire this bad boy up, because quiet it ain't. But at 8,000 meters you really don't care, you just want it to melt snow and boil water. That it'll do and tout suite, which is French for fart quickly, which you have to because the XGK on white gas will boil 1.5L in a fast 3.5 minutes.

The stove itself weighs 10.9oz, the fuel pump 2.2oz, heat reflector and windscreen 2.1oz, small parts kit .5oz for a total of less than a pound, all of which fits in a 2L pot alongside a pot handle, lighters, etc. It doesn't simmer, but that's not a real issue when you're mostly melting water for dehydrated meals and drinking. The only real quibble is that it's somewhat awkward to light through the little slots in the body if you're using a lighter. The XGK is still the undisputed heavyweight champion of the expedition stove world.

$149.95 at REI

MSR Trillium stove base

The trouble with Trilliums is that they reproduce so quickly they overrun... no, wait, those are Tribbles. My bad. The Trillium is MSR's universal (works with all non-canister models) stove base. Never used a stove base? You've never cooked in the snow.

There are only two things that really matter in a stove base, and the Trillium excels in both: it weights only 2.8oz, and it folds up small enough to fit in a 2L pot. The Trillium works as advertised, providing a stable base and even a bit of heat reflection.

Truly minor quibble: it doesn't fit quite flat in the bottom of my MSR Titan, but it fits on edge alongside the XGK EX stove. Were it to fit flat it would protect the bottom of the pan from the feet of the stove, and that would be nice. It's still the best of the breed out there.

$25.00 at REI

MSR Fuel Bottle

Does anyone else besides MSR even make fuel bottles? Can they be made out of titanium or is there some good reason no one makes such a thing? I must ponder.

My strategy on fuel bottles is to take a few big ones, rather than many smaller ones, to lighten the load. E.g. a 33oz capacity bottle weighs 7.3oz while an 11oz weighs 2.8oz; ergo, hencewith, carry the 2 and viola! Three smaller bottles would weigh 8.4oz, a full 1.1oz more than the single bottle solution.

Important note: the 33oz has a fill line at the 30oz mark; the 22oz at the 20oz mark; and the 11oz at... the 11oz mark (WTF?). Remember this when planning a bottle schedule for your next expedition.

$15.00 at REI

Jetboil Personal Cooking System

What is it about this thing that makes it so great? If you break it down it doesn't seem that revolutionary: there's a stove and a cup with a built-in heat exchanger. Sure, everything stores inside the cup, about the size of a 32oz. Nalgene bottle, but that still doesn't fully explain its attraction.

But attractive it is, and the key is ease of use. This thing just works. Pull off the lid, pull out the canister/stove assembly (you can leave it connected while stored in the cup) connect it and push the lighter button. Presto, you've got a rolling boil in a minute or two depending on air temperature. You can drink right out of the mug with its insulation jacket and hand-strap.

I had difficulty getting a Jetboil to actually boil when the temperature was in the single digits, but for "normal" use in the teens and above it's hard to beat the Jetboil's simplicity and convenience.

$69.95 at Backcountry.com

Brunton Optimus Nova stove

A tale of two stoves: This little stove went to Denali. This little stove should have stayed home. This little stove wouldn't light at 17,000 feet. This little stove was returned.

In this case there were two of these little pigs. My climbing partner and I each bought a Nova multi-fuel stove. Long story short, they both began to fail intermittently starting at 11,000 feet and both failed completely at high camp. We tried everything we could think of to get them to go, until some Brits took pity on us and loaned us their MSR Whisperlite to melt snow for water. Kudos to the MSR, which got to a rolling boil in no time.

To shut off the flow of fuel you flip the fuel bottle over, and I suspect this mechanism was the cause of the malfunction. Nova means "it doesn't go" in Spanish, and that accurately describes this stove's high-altitude performance.

$129 at Backcountry.com