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Jetboil piezo lighter12/25/2023 ![]() ![]() The button is positioned close to the burner - clearly too close - it melted on day 10 of our trip. The major issue we experienced was that the piezo lighter mechanism melted. This appears to be a necessary compromise, however, to keep the size down and allow the cannister to be inverted. Also, the stove only can use the small or medium (230 gram) canisters. In fact, apparently the Joule would potentially melt a hole through another Jetboil pot if you attempted to use one instead instead of the dedicated bucket. For one, the pot is incompatible with other versions of the Jetboil, and vice versa. The Joule system does have some disadvantages and things I would like to see changed. Also, since the burner is quite a ways from the stove base, it doesn’t tend to get hot and melt into the snow. We never needed to use a stove board or anything else to support it in snow. The size of the stove base also makes it stable. The Joule is a hefty stove, but it fits inside it’s pot without disassembly, so it was nice and easy to melt water during short rest stops. We made fairly massive portions of dinner, and didn’t fill up the pot. The pot size proved to be great for our group size of 3 hungry dudes. We didn’t have any issues with the stove in the cold, even on frigid mornings. We even managed to make quesadillas in the bottom of the pot without burning them. Although the stove has a very hot burner, it can be turned down very low to simmer. It melted snow incredibly fast, and sipped fuel. The Joule proved to be an excellent stove. This is a significant discovery in terms of reducing overall baggage weight for these big human-powered trips. Even so, we ended up having 3 full canisters, plus 2 partly full canisters left over at the end of the trip, so we could have conceivably brought even less fuel. Through the rest of the trip we didn’t skimp on fuel usage. After a few days into our trip, we realized we weren’t using our daily allotment of fuel. Thus, we saved almost 5 pounds of weight by going with the Jetboil. That totals to 2290 grams, which is a little over half as much as we would have hauled with white gas at the generous standard of 100 grams of fuel per person per day. We ended up bringing 8 small 230 gram fuel canisters and 1 large 450 gram canister. We estimated our fuel needs, and then erred well on the side of caution. On the other hand we wouldn’t exactly be sipping fuel as we needed to melt lots of snow, as well as making hot drinks and lunches during storm days. We hoped all that would mean that we didn’t use too much fuel throughout the 15 day trip. Additionally, only one of us drank coffee in the mornings. We ate granola and milk most mornings, with the occasional hot breakfast. To do so, we decided to utilize quick cooking foods along with an insulated pot cover for “coozie cooking.” I fashioned a coozie out of a reflective window shade and duct tape that fit the Joule pot well. We wanted to reduce how much fuel we hauled along with making life easier in camp. The most popular canister stove, Jetboil, also doesn’t traditionally work very well in the cold, and has cooking pots that may be too small for group winter camping. Unfortunately, due to bulky packing cannister fuel isn’t easy to carry in large quantities. As fuel spills are less common and they don’t have a pump to malfunction, they’re also safer in a tent or vestibule (as long as it’s well ventilated). Jetboil and other integrated canister stoves, on the other hand, have the advantage of being easy to use and mega efficient if set up with dedicated heat retention systems. Unfortunately, it’s difficult (and sometimes dangerous) to light them. ![]() The best white gas stoves also are powerful snow melters. White gas has the advantages of being fully functional in the cold, and easy to carry in large quantities. Traditionally, white gas stoves are the go-to option for a trip like this. While planning for our Monarch Icefield ski mountaineering trip, Eric, Coop and I went back and forth about what cooking system to bring. Cooking up a meal on the Monarch Icefield ![]()
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