My Review of Esbit Pocket Stove

Originally submitted at REI

Ideal for your home or auto emergency kit, this pocket-size stove folds down to a small, compact size.

Esbit Pocket Stove

Perfect for its intended uses.

By Dog Star from Green Mountains, VT on 9/5/2010

 

5out of 5

Pros: Stable, Compact, Lightweight, Durable

Best Uses: Backpacking

Describe Yourself: Professional/Guide

What Is Your Gear Style: Minimalist

Was this a gift?: No

I was first made aware of this style of stove while reading the "SAS Survival Handbook" where it was recommended as part of a survival kit. Much later, while looking for ways to minimize bulk and weight in my pack I revisited the Esbit stove as an alternative to an isobutane/propane canister. At half the size of a 220g canister it nests easily in any cook kit and adds almost nothing to the overall weight.

This stove is intended for people on the move. I make a distinction between hikers and campers, with hikers being focused on the hike and campers focused on their camp.
For trips where the plan is to make a moderate hike to a campsite and remain there for several days, a more robust stove than this is called for. Persons transporting fresh meats, eggs, bacon and other "luxury" foods will find this stove unsuitable.

For the packer who plans on covering large distances each day and eating freeze-dried meals at a new campsite each night, this handy little thing will be ideal for boiling water and warming up tea.
On a calm day at 60 degrees Fahrenheit one tablet should be more than sufficient to bring 2 cups (1 pint) of covered water to a boil. It is essential to cover the water pot, with this stove or any other. Naturally altitude, wind and freezing temperatures will extend the time required and it is always important to prepare based on your destination and the time of year.

Although simple, the Esbit stove is far from idiot-proof. To get the most utility from the stove, it's necessary to use it properly.

Before lighting the fuel tablet, the water pot should already be on the pot stands, filled with water and covered with a lid. The Esbit opens in two positions; typically the half open (angled) position is stable enough for a quart pot and should be used. This position directs the airflow over the fuel tablet better, generates more heat and focuses that heat to the bottom of the pot.
If needed a windscreen can be fashioned from aluminum foil, but it must be placed in a way that does not prevent air from flowing beneath the stove.
Lighting the fuel tablet is best accomplished by striking a match and holding the flame near one corner of the tab. Because of the narrow space inside the stove and the angle it would have to be held at, using a lighter is not recommended and will result in burned thumbs.

With proper use, 2 cups of water can be brought to a boil before the tablet is fully consumed. The remaining tab can be extinguished like a candle and it will be stuck to the depression in the stove. The stove can be folded up over the used tablet without worry of it rattling around inside, and that remaining fuel can later be used to warm up some coffee, cocoa or tea. It is worth noting that the heat output from the fuel tablets is highest at the start and drops off sharply in the last few minutes of burn time. It is unlikely that a second pot of water can be boiled on one tablet, but a fresh tablet can be placed on top the remnant of the first before relighting.
Partially- or mostly-consumed fuel tablets can also be used as an excellent firestarter.

The Esbit fuel will leave a tacky black residue on the bottom of your pot. This easily washes off with biodegradable soap, water, and a fingertip rubbed in a circular motion. Sand or dirt can be used to scour stubborn patches, but if cleaning is done shortly after cooking it should not be necessary. I have even found that cleaning off the Esbit residue also pulls off blackening from old wood fires which I had not been able to remove.

(legalese)

My Review of Gerber Mongoose Flashlight

Originally submitted at REI

The water-resistant Gerber Mongoose™ light offers five different colors to let you accomplish nearly any task at hand.

Gerber Mongoose Flashlight

Useful, but not without its quirks.

By Dog Star from White Mountains, NH on 12/18/2008

 

4out of 5

Gift: No

Pros: Durable, Multiple colors, Bright, Stable

Cons: No Beam Adjustment, Poor clip design

Best Uses: Fishing, Backpacking

Describe Yourself: Outdoor Professional

I purchased the Mongoose because I was looking for a red LED light to supplement my headlamp (which also has a red LED mode). I considered the other colors - blue, green, white and UV - to be a nice bonus.
For its size, this light is quite bright. It's perfect for nighttime tasks around the campsite and the ability to switch from white to red ensures you won't be blinding your campmates. It's small and lightweight and since it's so thin it's easy to stow away in any leftover space in your pack.
Depressing the power button halfway illuminates a small indicator light on top so you can be sure you've got the right color selected before you activate the full beam, which is a nice touch. I've found the indicator light itself is bright enough for checking a map or reading a note at night as well.
There's also a sliding toggle which can be used to keep the power button depressed without requiring your thumb to stay on it. Like the switch, the slider has two stages so you can leave either the indicator light on only, or have the main lamp burning handsfree too. There is no way to have the main lamp on and the indicator light off which isn't a big deal normally but might be inconvenient in some situations.

It's not without some other design flaws either. The rotary selector switch takes some getting used to and is impossible to operate one handed. The clip which attaches the light unit to the flexible tail is weak and the light has a tendency to pop off if subjected to any pulling pressure or even swung around too quickly. The rip-and-stick patch on the back is extremely stiff - painful if it rubs against exposed skin and I've had a hard time finding materials it will actually stick to. Not fleece, not webbing and not the waterproof material of my pack. It would probably stick well to a wool cap, but if you need a light on your head just buy a headlamp.

There's also a magnet on the tail end which is a strange choice, since there's not a lot of ferrous metal around the modern campsite. It's a very strong magnet at least. It could definitely be used to magnetize a needle for an emergency compass, and it has all kinds of applications around the house or garage. I wouldn't keep this light and my laptop computer in the same bag though.

Lastly, and most concerning, is that even if you have the selector dial set to 'off', depressing the power button still illuminates the indicator lamp. There's a real concern that accidental pressure on the switch while in your pack could drain the battery, so be careful when packing this light.

(legalese)

We lost a puppy this morning. I went down to feed the litter and while three of them were active, the fourth was just lying there seemingly asleep. Puppies do sleep a lot, but they almost always sleep in groups. If they're active, they're all supposed to be active, so I knew right away something was wrong.

I picked her up; she was still warm and gave a little grunt to let me know she was alive. I got J and in a hurry she bundled the dog up and took off for the vet, on the other side of town. The pup died before she got there.

The vet thinks the mother may have sat on her last night. We'll probably never know what happened, but we're keeping an eye on the other three just to make sure it wasn't viral. Parvo is a very real danger for puppies and can wipe out an entire litter.

This is also one of the reasons I don't take too much time to bond with the puppies. J's naturally upset. At 5 weeks old, she'd gotten attatched. She also had to inform the woman who was going to take the puppy what happened. I don't envy her that at all.

I feel like I could go for a drink but I still haven't figured out what places are good to go around in town yet. I need to start spending more time out meeting some people and getting a feel for the area. I've done a lot of driving and exploring but not a lot of socializing.

I'm also still refining my plans for what I'll do when the season ends. I'm decided on staying in New Hampshire for a while, at least. Talked with my friend Bill who's lived in Vermont for several years now; not only is he thrilled to have an old friend in the area but is also excited to help get me into deer hunting. The deer season ended yesterday, but there's always next year.

Live Free or Die

It's been a hectic first week up here. Plenty of things that needed doing weren't being done prior to my arrival and so there's been a lot of catching up to do: fences to mend, holes to fill, ditches to dig. It's a lot like working on a farm, except that cows don't decide as a herd to howl in unison at 2 in the morning.

The dogs are, of course, great. I'll have some pictures of them later on. It only took me a few days to learn all of the names of the adults, but I'm not even going to try to bother with the 19 puppies we have until most of them go off to their new homes. I'll get to know the ones that are sticking around.

New Hampshire is a gorgeous place. I'd forgotten how nice it was here, and I'm slightly amazed that it didn't make more of an impression the last time I was here. I have to assume that the pressure and stress of EMT cram school was keeping my mind off of things like local scenery and culture, so I'm glad I made the decision to come out this way a second time.

The state very much lives up to its motto: Live Free or Die. It's almost astonishing. There's no state income tax, there's no general sales tax. To buy a gun, all you have to do is walk into the store with enough money. No license, no permit, no questions. That seems to be the general attitude here; people are left alone to do what they want so long as it hurts no one else. I'm seriously thinking about abandoning my plans to go on to Alaska and just stay here instead. I see no reason why I'd want to leave.

Amusingly, there are no less than three Wal-Marts within a 20 minute drive of Ashland, one to the north, south and west (with a mountain to the east, where no one's built anything at all). The people are perfect Wal Mart shoppers. There's no doubt that it's rural country living around here. The women my age are fat, unmarried mothers or some combination of the two. The men are rough and pride themselves both on hard labor and on their beards in equal measure. Plymouth, just up the highway from me, is a college town and manages to get a little more diversity and urban influences which is a bit of a relief.

While driving down to the nearest GameStop to get myself a copy of the newest zombie horror splatterfest game Left 4 Dead, I drove past a big place featuring bowling, bingo and I couldn't tell what else. The name, Fun Spot, tickled some faint memory in my head and it took me a minute to remember where I'd heard of the place before.
Months ago, I'd watched a documentary "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters", a story about two men and their epic battle to hold the record of the high score on the ancient arcade game Donkey Kong. In the course of the movie, these two men, as well as everyone else who was anyone at all in the high-stakes world of retro arcade gaming high score record holding, converged on a certain video arcade in New Hampshire because it was, by some decree, the Mecca of their world and the only recognized place where a score could be observed, recorded and declared official.

That place was Fun Spot in Weirs Beach, NH. 20 minutes down the road from me. For anyone who knows me, well... you know what this means. I had to stop and go inside. I had to see the machine that Steve Wiebe had busted Billy Michell's score on.

The scene inside was surreal. I kept telling myself that it probably wasn't the place, that maybe there was a whole chain of Fun Spots around the state or maybe I had misrembered the name or conflated it with the name of the GameStop I was heading towards. But sure enough, sitting in the very same spot it was in the movie was Donkey Kong game.

And someone was playing it. So ended my hope of giving it a shot.
I decided instead to take a look around at the rest of the place. Memories came flooding back to me as I passed among these ancient games from the 1980's; memories of playing each and every one of them when they were new, when I could cajole my parents to take me to this arcade or that or filch a few quarters to run down to the resort game room. And clearly I wasn't the only one, and clearly the documentary had not overstated the importance of Fun Stop to the retro arcade gaming community. Here I passed someone setting up a camera on a tripod to record his perfomance in Quartet - the video proof needed to challenge a high score record. There I passed three guys sitting around just talking about the finer points of Frogger. And there, someone else set up on his laptop checking the current score records online. And everywhere, guys standing at their chosen games playing round after round and getting just a little bit better each time.

Me, I spent $3 on Xenophobia, snapped a few pictures and walked back out. I had a new game to play, after all. No one made zombie games in the 80's.

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