jetboil

As a follow up to our field review on the Jetboil PCS we took it up above tree line in winter to see how it performed. We had high hopes of melting a lot of snow with the Jetboil. In winter conditions in the backcountry a stove is not just a way to cook a meal, but it a critical piece of safety gear.

We were disappointed with the jetboil camping stove in these conditions.

Hard to light
Josh spent quite some time trying to light the jetboil. He was outside the tent in gusty wind conditions. As mentioned in our earlier review the piezo ignition had already failed on the stove. So he tried using a lighter and matches. The wind made it very hard to light. In fact Josh couldn't get it lit in these conditions and so resorted to the relative protection of the tent's vestibule to finally get the stove lit.

It should be noted that while the conditions were poor they were by no means extreme. We were at 2000m elevation with the wind gusting around 20-30kph. We were in a sheltered position behind a rocky outcrop.

Slow to melt snow

Recently the Jetboil personal cooking system accompanied me on 2 hiking trips. It was a good test to see what the stove is like in a real situation. How did it go and is it worth all the hype that it's getting?

Jetboil stove overview
Jetboil has created a new category in hiking stoves - the high efficiency canister stove. These stoves waste almost no energy and use far less gas to boil your water, in fact as little as half as much. They are also fast. The reason is the FluxRing™ technology which evenly distributes the heat to the whole pot.

The good - what we liked

• We get 12 boils of one canister, very efficient
• We liked the package and how it packed together
• While variable, the boil times were quite low compared to many other stoves

The not so good - what we didn't like