I'd like your advice. I'm looking to purchase a stove for early spring and late autumn hiking that starts more reliably than an alcohol stove without a huge weight penalty. Alcohol stoves are hard to light when it's cold out because a cold stove has problems vaporizing the fuel. In order to get it to work, you need to pour fuel on your stove and burn it to heat up the stove. This means that you need to carry a lot more fuel and wait for your meals a lot longer since it takes an alcohol stove about 7 minutes to boil water.
I think the most important things I'm looking for in a new stove are light weight, ease of operation, reliability and the ability to interchange different brands of isobutane canisters. Auto ignition is another big plus, since I had a lot of problems this past year keeping my matches dry.
Here are the stoves I am trying to decide upon. If you have any advice about them or suggestions of other stoves you think I should be looking at, please leave me a comment below. Thx!
Weight: 3 oz.
Ignition: Manual (aka matches)
Weight: 3.75 oz.
Ignition: Auto Ignition
Cannister compatibility: Snowpeak, others?
Weight: 4.6 oz.
Ignition: Auto Ignition
You might want to look into Optimus Crux Lightweight Backpacking and Camping Stove<img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=ultrarevie-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000NNHYCG" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> 3.3 oz and it folds under the canister.
which stove did you buy?
I guess I should update this post. I bought the titanium gigapower from snow peak and just love it. But truth be told the Pocket Rocket would have been fine too. And the fuel canisters are all interchangeable.
We have the pocket rocket and it's just so much fun to flaunt. It's SO light. We really push it to the extreme and use a 3L pot on it. I can't honestly say its sturdy enough for that… but we use it with extreme caution and most people would never need a 3L pot in the backcountry but I won't go into how we've decided to carry such a huge pot. That being said, though its the worst idea ever, we still do it and it works great. So if you're big on going solo or at least not carrying around a massive pot, then the pocket rocket is awesome. Just don't bother with the little plastic container it comes with. Mind you I haven't used any other canister stove… but based on weight alone, I'd buy it again considering its so cheap.
Go with the giga, I own it and it is my main stove, it has never failed me over 4 seperate expeditions to the Rockies.
I bought the giga and used it for a few years, but then replaced it with Soto’s canister stove. Now that’s a great stove!