Gear Updates – Mountain Rendezvous 2014 Edition, Part One

JetBoil Flash stove in action on Toyotie’s tailgate. The yellow swoops on the side of the cup cozy change color as the water inside the cup reaches temperature.

For better or worse, being a gear geek comes naturally to me. In fact, it’s not just a hobby, it’s part of my day job. So with all these observations swirling around inside my skull, I figured I should get them written down. I’ve previously done the odd gear report or review here and there, but my intention is to add these posts more regularly after most (but perhaps not all) trips we do.

I’ve added a new Gear category to the blog, which I will use going forward.

This time around I’ll be covering some of the gear we used during our recent four-day Mountain Rendezvous 2014 Road Trip. This was essentially a “car camping” trip, although most of the gear I’ll be discussing is also suitable (and often designed for) backpacking.

Without further ado, here’s the gear in question:

• Camp Chef Everest stove and Manchester 5lb propane tank
• Snow Peak Giga Power Auto stove
• JetBoil Flash stove
• GSI Java Mill
• Big Agnes Insulated Air Core sleeping pad
• REI 3.5″ sleeping pad
• The North Face Dolomite double sleeping bag
• Various Goal Zero gear
• Kuhl Kontra Air pants
• Marmot Limelight 3P tent
• Adventure Tool Company map case

Camp Chef Everest stove and Manchester 5lb. propane tank

I had some intermittent problems with my Coleman 2-burner propane stove, including when I was at the previous two Mountain Rendezvous. The fuel stopped flowing while I cooked up a meal and that was no good! Then at our campout after the 3rd Hollister Hills Geobash, it all worked fine again.

This year I had a new (to me) Camp Chef Everest stove, also a 2-burner model but better than my old Coleman. I tested it at home and everything seemed to work as expected, but again it didn’t work at all at MR14. What the heck? Was it the elevation, or the cold, or what? I’d switched stoves, so now I was starting to suspect my small Manchester propane tank.

Luckily, I’d planned for this and had two backpacking stoves on hand as backups, and they worked fine.

Back home, I looked into things again and this time the fuel still wouldn’t flow from the tank. I weighed it to verify it was still half full. Then I examined the connecting adapter hose and saw examined the fittings on both ends. I realized that the tank-end fitting was going to have to really screw down tightly in order to properly engage the tank valve. Perhaps I’d not been forceful enough, being concerned about the thin brass inside threads on the adapter hose end.

Two test tries where I made sure to tighten the connected down hard enough resulted in obvious and immediate fuel flow, with no troubles as I fired up the burners on my stove for some tests. Aha!

So I think I’ve identified the cause of the troubles, which I will put down to Operator Error. My bad. I think it will be OK going forward but time will tell. Of course I’ll be bringing along at least one backup stove, as usual, in case I’m wrong.

Snow Peak Giga Power Auto stove

This isobutane-powered backpacking stove has replaced my trusty MSR Pocket Rocket as my primary compact stove for backpacking, and as backup to my 2-burner propane stove when car camping. The Snow Peak Giga Power Auto stove is about the same size and weight as the Pocket Rocket, and has the same 10k BTUs, but it brings two advantages. First, it has a built-in piezo igniter. Second, the four folding arms provide better pot stability than the MSR stove which has three.

JetBoil Flash burner.

JetBoil Flash stove

The JetBoil stove systems are very convenient, and I appreciate how the JetBoil Flash stove, accessories and a 100g size fuel canister all fit inside the one-liter cup. It makes for a great grab-and-go kit. It does have trade-offs compared to a typical backpacking stove like the Snow Peak Giga though. There’s some lack of versatility to the cup design, for example, but also there’s a tremendous increase in fuel efficiency. JetBoil claims that the Flash will use about half as much fuel to boil the same amount of water as stoves like the Pocket Rocket or Giga Auto.

One drawback is that although the capacity of the Flash cup is a full liter, the maximum fill line on the cup is about half that much. If you need to boil more water, you need to do a second round, which is problematic as putting cool water into a still-hot metal vessel can result in warping. Still, the aluminum cup cools down pretty quickly.

Despite the various limitations, the JetBoil Flash does exactly what most people need, and it does it with convenience and great efficiency. Mine will get a lot more use, particularly out on cold weather hikes.

GSI Java Mill

As I mentioned in an earlier post, “I used my new GSI Java Mill (as reviewed by Living Overland and Sarah at Exploring Elements) to grind up some fresh beans and make enough for Allison (a little) and I (a lot.) The Java Mill is a proper burr-style grinder and worked well, although the capacity is rather small. To grind enough beans for about 32oz. of coffee required two full loads of beans to be ground. Not a big deal.”

According to the instructions that came with the Java Mill, I worked out that I’d be using about 5oz of ground beans (the capacity of the mill) per 16oz of coffee that I planned to make. To accommodate the full capacity of my 48oz REI French press carafe (as we did when Carrie was along on a trip), that would require three full fillings of the Java Mill. That’s a bit of a nuisance, but the benefits of being able to grind our own beans as needed on a trip outweigh that limitation.

I like how the Java Mill works, and the construction seems reasonably good. I’ll be monitoring the durability over time. I like how the handle switches position for compact storage, although the orange end tip has popped off twice during use and I’m worried it may get lost someday. I am glad that tip is bright orange, which made it easy to find and recover!

Last nitpick: I wish there were some sort of markings to know what coarseness the grinder was set for. As it is, it seems a bit of a guessing game, and if the setting changes (perhaps during a good scrubbing) I may not notice, and wouldn’t know how to re-set it back to where it is now. Hopefully it won’t be an issue.

Several small concerns aside, for the price it’s a we;come addition to my camp kitchen.

Big Agnes Insulated Air Core sleeping pad

Over the years, I have been cursed with bad luck with inflatable mattresses. I always seemed to end up on the ground, at lease once, during the night thanks to a leaky mattress. So when I picked up an example of the popular Big Agnes Insulated Air Core sleeping pad for free, and it already had a leak in it, I was skeptical but determined to give it a fair chance.

I located the leak by dunking the pad into our bath tub and seeing the stream of bubbles that emerged. I carefully patched it, using my rather unwanted experience from patching various sleeping pads in the past. I tested the patch carefully and everything seemed in order, so I decided to bring the pad along on our road trip, knowing I also was bringing along a new (to me) REI Camp Bed 3.5 as my main pad.

I slept on the BA pad on our first night, inflating it for the most part with the diminutive Therm-A-Rest NeoAir Mini Pump, which worked well. That night, my air mattress curse was broken, as the patch held and no new leaks appeared. I slept very well, and was quite comfortable all night. Hooray!

I should add that mine is an older model of the BA Insulated Air Core pad, with an overall thickness of 2.75″. The current model is half an inch thicker, adding even more comfort.

It was nice to get good performance from this older, patched piece of gear, and I’m pleased to have it as another option among my selection of sleeping pads.

Coming In Part Two…

I’ll wrap up this gear report with the remaining items in my next post. Until then, cheers!