Backpacking GearII

Basic Backpacking Gear

Your Pack | Boots | Tents | Kitchen Gear | Miscellaneous

The Kitchen

General kitchen items you'll want to have along:

* Spatula - I've tried the high tech plastic ones, but now carry and swear by a little metal spatula that I found in some hardware store. It was costly... it'll never wear out, melt, or bend over at the tip.
* Handi-Wipe - note: that's singular. Take one along. Dry your dishes with it. Wipe your brow. Strain your pasta (?). Clean your spectacles. Makes a good potholder. It's Handi.
* 1/2 a Scotch-Brite cookware scrubbing thingy. Gets the char off the bottom of your fry pan.
* Extra aluminum plate - I found one in a $3 camping cookware set. Had to remove a handle and its rivets. It fits inside my cook set with the stove, Handi-Wipe, spork (half spoon/half fork), and Scotch-Brite pad. It's about an ounce and a half that comes in real handy at every meal. You'll always be short a pan or plate. Cope.
* Compact, cheap butane cigarette lighter
* U.S. Army P-38 folding can opener. If you're not carrying one of these around on your keychain all the time, you're missing out. We seldom have a can of anything with us on the trail, but what could be worse than having some fine smoked oysters that you can't access because you can't get into the can. Get a P-38. Handier than your Handi-Wipe.
* 1 roll of Rolaids/Tums or the like. Your diet is going to change when you're on the trail. Lots more fat and just plain different than what you eat at home. Everything will taste wonderful and you'll be amazed at how much you eat. Heartburn in a tent in the middle of a wet, windy night is my definition of hell.
* Parkay squeeze margarine. Great for cooking, doesn't spoil easily, doesn't leak in the grub bag. Accept no substitutes.
* Get yourself one of those enamelware mugs. Be the envy of everybody you camp with. Mine holds a little better than 2 cups. Makes a great hot cocoa mug, stew mug, soup mug, &c. It's got more class than those dinky Sierra Club cups.

Stoves

15 years after I first bought it, I'm still carrying my trusty Coleman model 400A stove. It's worked without a hitch since the very first time I fired it up. It's fuel efficient, quiet, boils rapidly, and simmers wonderfully. I've been carrying a stove repair kit for the last couple of years, just in case it should act up, but haven't needed it to this point. I suspect that this is essentially the same stove as the current Coleman Peak 1 Feather 400 stove. At $40, this is a bargain.

Son Dave packs an MSR Whisperlite. It's 10 ozs lighter than the Coleman. That's a heap. He cooks well with it, and has learned some interesting new language from trying to get it to simmer properly. The MSR stoves require a special fuel bottle as they don't have a self-contained fuel tank. If you like to fart around with a stove, get the MSR. If you want to cook and eat, get the Coleman. It should have been named the Noisylite. Makes a fair amount of noise when cooking.

Crazy John uses an older model of the Coleman multi-fuel stove. I don't think he's ever put anything in it except white gas. It has a twist knob to adjust the flame rather than the lever that adjusts the flame on the regular Coleman. I don't believe they're producing these anymore... too bad. It is an excellent little stove.

Heaven is having two stoves along when you're cooking. One stove cooks the main dish (generally boiling water) while the other fries the bagels/muffins. When the bread is done, you can start boiling wash water. It's a fair amount of juggling to do it all on one stove... unless you're into linear eating.

The only problem any of us have had with the above stoves is in sub-freezing weather, when it takes a bit of farting around to get them going right. We've found that Mautz Fire Ribbon works like a charm. It's jellified alcohol in a tootpaste tube. Squeeze a little knurdle on the side of your burner ring, light it up, and after a minute or two, you're all set to go. Find it in your paint department.

A new item I saw cruising through Piragis Boundary Waters Catalog is the Sierra Zip Stove. You don't need to carry fuel. It apparently has a fan powered by a single AA battery and it burns small burnables laying around your campsite. The blurb in the article says the fan helps produce 18,000 btu's/hr and it's approved for use in fire ban areas of the BWCA and Quetico. Sounds pretty interesting though I'm of course concerned about that battery running out. If you've got any experience with this, please email me!

I have a natural aversion to the stoves that're available with disposable fuel tanks. It seems a terrible waste of resources to chuck the bottles when you're done with the fuel.

Cooking Kits

I've got a Sigg Tourist cook kit that was a companion piece, more or less, to the Coleman stove when I was buying that. I've got the aluminum set (stainless steel is available) because it was cheaper and lighter. The way it's put together, I don't think you'll have any problems with it. High class. The stove fits upside down in the center, the kit includes a wind screen for the stove, and the fry pan makes the lid for the whole shot. Room in there for a bunch of little accessories, your trusty pot grabber, and a couple of extra small aluminum plates. All wrapped up together, it's a concise little unit. Very handy, indeed.

Sigg also makes a Tourist cook kit for the Whisperlite. Very similar to the Coleman companion set, though not as deep (the Whisperlite folds down very small). Fry pan/lid, a couple of good size pots, and pot grabber. Son Dave has this set in stainless and it works very nicely. He'll be able to hand it down to his grandkids!

Check around on these things. The Boy Scouts used to have a fairly efficient mess kit, and it seems I've seen some pretty nice sets in Army Surplus stores. Scavenge up what you can, make it all fit in the most compact unit you can, and... happy cooking! Be inventive... stack those pots when you're able. Don't waste your stove's heat. Make it cook several things before it's done!

Food

What're you going to take for eating on the trail? That's one of those questions that is always fun to mull over. A large consideration is the length of time you'll be out and if there'll be an opportunity to restock enroute.

For the longer trips I've done, the freeze dried goodies available in any sport shop are wonderful. CJ and I had an affinity for Potatoes and Beef, simple fare that fills the belly and piles on the calories. Turkey Tetrazinni, Lasagna, and Beef Stroganoff have all been favorites. They're all tasty (boiled slug would be tasty after a hard day on the trail!) and the only thing to watch with freeze dried foods is the expense. Lord, they are pricey.

Son Dave has been packing a lot of food that he's dehydrated from fresh food. He bought up one of those electric dehydrators and had quite a stockpile of goodies last time I checked with him.

If the weather's mild enough that you've got some extra room in your pack, take a wander through the local supermarket. There's a bunch of good food that you can scarf up for some fine eating on the trail. We've always found that one of the things we miss most on the long hikes is bread, and since we haven't yet tried out those baking units (oops! mark that down on the acquisition list!) we've found some pretty good substitutes in English muffins and bagels. They both last a good long while and are mighty tasty. Our favorite way to eat'em is to slice in half, squirt some Parkay on them, and fry till golden brown on the little fry pan. The steam coming up from the butter heats the bread nicely and they are delicious.

A summer sausage tastes wonderful sliced off and eaten as is, or fried up with a little Parkay for lunch. If you can manage to get some good Wisconsin cheddar in that pack, too, it'll be a treat you'll look forward to.

Lipton Soup has a lot of wonderful choices in their Rice & Sauce line. Check the back of the envelopes to make sure milk isn't required in them, and you'll be better off if you don't have to boil a lot of water and then dump it out, like you'd have to do for pasta. Ramen soups are pretty good, too.

While you might not find Spam or Dinty Moore to be an epicurean delight at home, believe me, they're great on the trail. Fry up that Spam (you'll never want to look at the SpamCam again!) sliced thin or dice it up and toss in with your Lipton Spanish Rice with a hunk of muffin on the side. Just heaven. When it's cold and windy, nothing will warm you up like a couple plates of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. The main problem with these is they're canned and heavy, but for the first night out, you'll only have to carry the weight one day. Please be sure to crush and pack out the tins! See the section on backcountry ethics.

Get yourself some of that "add water only" pancake mix. It's easy to make, lightweight, and a great way to start the morning. I'm not a fan of maple syrup in the pack (it always finds a way to leak), but maybe a couple of those little jelly packets will do you. Bacon lasts for several days on the trail if you're hiking in the cooler weather.

Your Pack | Boots | Tents | Kitchen Gear | Miscellaneous

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