How to Choose Cooking & Heating Gear for your Hiking Trip

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Kate I’m here with Zoar Outdoor on behalf of Expert Village and we’re going to talk about hiking today. We’re going to be talking about backpacking stove equipment. In my backpack I want to have a nice clean setup so my stove is compact, it fits into my pots, which can easily be tossed in my backpack because it’s all in a stuff sack. Inside the stuff sack I have a repair kit for my stove which is really important if you’re on a multi day backpacking trip. I also have a lighter and I also have a lighter in the bottom of my backpack or somewhere else safe in case this one doesn’t work. This stove setup itself is pretty easy. The stove and I have a heat shield that’s on it, this allows for the heat to come into the pot instead of the ground and the fuel bottle. I’ve cleared out a space on the ground where there is not a lot of brush, there’s not over hanging branches, so that nothing’s going to catch on fire. I try to find a leveled spot but most of the time that’s not possible, so I like to use my little cooking surface, this fits on the bottom of my stove. When you light your stove, make sure you’re away from it and safe, you don’t want to get burnt. I also have my pots, these are titanium, they’re very light weight. I can fit all of my stove inside of this and then put in my backpack, which is really convenient. When you are cooking you want to use your heat shield around this whole thing, this keeps your fuel conserved, it keeps your heat at your pot, it keeps the wind from blowing out the flame, it makes everything much better. I try and keep my handles away from the flame and the heat shield so it don’t get too hot. Some stoves have pot handles, pot gripers you can use and ideally you want to get a lot of water to boil fast. So you use the heat shields, you use your cover, you use a great fuel. The faster your water boils the more faster you get your food and the happier you’re going to be. It’s important that everything is compact, light weight and can easily go into your backpack safely."