Because everyone deserves a hot meal at the end of the day (Part 3)
“A woman’s place is in the kitchen. A man’s place is in the kitchen. Everyone’s place is in the kitchen – kitchen has food.”
Everyone sets up their kitchen differently, depending on heating method (or lack thereof), fuel needs, cookware, and accessories. Here’s a look into my backpacking kitchen. Continue reading “Trail Tips: Creating your backpacking kitchen”
Because everyone deserves a hot meal at the end of the day (Part 2)
I have some friends that go stoveless while backpacking. It saves weight, money, and is sometimes required on certain sections of trail out West where the fire hazard is too high to allow backpacking stoves. While I could go stoveless, I never want to. Sometimes the only thing that gets you up the last mountain or across that last stretch is the thought of a hot meal that evening. I reviewed the MSR Pocket Rocket earlier, and now I’m going to talk about the second part of the hot meal camp kitchen: your cooking pot.
Whether you are cooking food in the pot (hello, Ramen Bomb) or just boiling water to pour into an expensive Mountain House meal bag, a great cook pot is a must. Enter the SnowPeak titanium pot and lid. Continue reading “Gear Review: Snow Peak Titanium Cookset and Spork”
Because everyone deserves a hot meal at the end of the day (Part 1)
My name may be Firestarter, but I hate starting fires. I’m far too lazy to enjoy the effort that goes into finding an existing fire ring (or place that will be minimally affected), gathering downed wood, finding kindling, starting the fire, perilously boiling water or cooking food in/on/near the fire, maintaining the fire, staying up until the fire is out, and dispersing all the coals in the morning. Why do that when you can have a camp stove up and going in under a minute?
There are several types of backpacking stoves out there – Jetboils, alcohol, wood, liquid fuel/white gas – but I love the simplicity and light-weight (only 3 oz.) design of the MSR Pocket Rocket. Continue reading “Gear Review: MSR Pocket Rocket”
6 steps for hungry, hungry hikers
There were three different days on the Appalachian Trail when I ran out of food. After implementing my Ziploc system, it didn’t happen again.
When I started my trek, I had all my food crammed into my bear bag. It wasn’t sorted or organized in any way, but I knew the food I had: two boxes of poptarts, 12 packets of cheese crackers, five Knorr pasta sides, etc. I carefully wrote down the things I needed for resupply on a list, and purchased those items plus anything that caught my eye in the store (looking at you, gummy bears). I had enough food to get me to the next resupply, all nicely removed from the original box packaging and crammed into that 18L dry bag.
I still ran out of food. Continue reading “Ziploc bags, or how not to run out of food”
And my backup water filtration plan, Aquamira
Water is crucial to survival, and you never know where you may have to get it – like out of a mud puddle on the Appalachian Trail in New York because a drought has dried up all the streams. Clean water is critical, and here are the two ways I treat my water.
There are a lot of ways to filter water in the back country – pumps, tablets, drops, straws, UV lights, and other filters. My main choice is the Sawyer Squeeze water filtration system, and my backup is Aquamira drops. Continue reading “Gear Review: Sawyer Squeeze”
Firestarter's Guide 