Minimalist camping without a fixed blade

[pinnah]

To not derail the thread, I guess it's possible to go camping today with modern water filters and tiny alcohol stoves, but I just can't bring myself to leave the fixed blade behind. I'm a 'what if" kind of guy, and worry about fuel canister leaking, stove breaking if fell on in a fall while wearing the pack,

Carl, your posts causes me to wonder what stoves you've used and what experiences good, bad, or ugly you've had with them.

There are some stoves I won't touch. I know some folks swore by the old Coleman Peak 1 but I've heard more people swearing at them. I refuse to use or gift an MSR anything. I've twice had to carry somebody's flaming MSR stove out of a winter hut (Crag Camp) and in both cases, the failure was the same - the plastic pump leaked and caught fire putting the fuel bottle in full melt down mode.

But there are other stoves I've used that have been among the most reliable and durable equipment I've ever owned. The Batchstovez and Trangia stoves are brutally reliable and after 30 years of consistent use, my Svea 123 has shown itself as super reliable. None of these stoves have ever failed on me.

Or just someone slipping a breaking a leg. The last has happened to me once, and I was caught short and had to make do with a pocket knife. Never again.

Happened to me too, which I why I prefer a robust folder but... saplings aren't always available and make for lousy cervical collars. The foldable SAM splint can be used in a huge variety of ways and weighs very little. Despite it's bulk, it's made its way into my 1st aid kit, just in case.

 

[Thomas Linton]

Knives also make lousy EPI pens.

 

[GREENJACKET]

For pure convenience I like gas canister systems. I'm not doing extreme high altitude, nor extreme cold. "Brew kit" and quick noodles I've carried forever it seems.

Jetboil for the truck/car.
Optimus Cruz for everything else. Snow Peak pots.

They can flair, they are unstable. Practice makes perfect. I'm not huge into cooking in the field and its ration packs or off the peg boil in the bags. Or fresh that can be done in a small non stick frying pan.
One day someone will do the British/Dutch Mess tin in titanium.
I use pots but in truth the mess tin is still the best for everything (including washing your nuts).

Open fire cooking is absolutely great. Annoyingly the best pots for this are cast iron heavy skillets which then you can cook a feast in. Used to cook this way in Africa every night.
Tangia spirit based are very good too, as are the pocket sized wood burners. I'm just lazy and don't like the clearing up. For snow melting then it needs a powerful whisper type jet system and high quantities of fuel, or wood burner.

Lastly, i do like a metal cup as in canteen cup. Sadly I don't have a picture of my military one that I used for decades. Heavy Cover Titanium Canteen kit are very nice, and my choice for those with deep pockets. The Steel Pathfinder School one is a brick, but very nicely done.

 

[leghog]

That square cook set ---- I have that (non-anodized), but Aussie mil issue that I picked up from my days traveling the Pacific.

Regarding stoves, my three season stove is a low pressure alcohol burner --- either a homemade low pressure jet soda can stove (~0.50 Ounce) or a heavier (but still only about 3.5 ounces) Trangia spirit burner. My winter stove is a SVEA 123 white gas stove which was designed about 60 years ago.

My 20+ year old MSR Whisperlight Internationale is now my son's winter stove. He uses an MSR Pocket Rocket canister stove the other three seasons.

 

[leghog]

Less than 12 grams (<0.50 ounce) in weight. Fuel is mostly from natural and renewable resources.

 

[pinnah]

I carry a wood stove: Vargo titanium. I burn twigs lying on the ground. When I finish, there is less than a handful of charcoal left behind. This is in hardwood forests that have suffered bushfires for millennia. The soil is not burned, no stone rings are left. Really, there is no trace. The little fold up stove is very light, & I carry no fuel, so it is probably lighter all up than any other set up.

I have and use the Emberlit Ti and I like a great deal as a guiltless (or less-guilt) way of having a small fire.
Untitled by Pinnah, on Flickr

But as you can see with the alcohol stove off to the side, I find cooking easier on the alcohol stove. Faster, less thinking, easier clean up.

On the trip to Ethan Pond where I camped on that tent platform that caused such a fuss in this thread, I had my Emberlit (and Silky saw and a fixed blade) and I badly bent (broke?) the rules forbidding fires at the site and I went deep into the boreal underbrush away from the camp site and grabbed me some dead fall and went about sectioning and splitting wood for the Emberlit, which I was still learning.

The problem I ran into is that the boreal growth is very, very dense wood, I'm guessing owing to the short growth cycles. A fun tasks that takes a matter of short minutes in the lower open hard woods turned in a laborious and wet (it rained and/or snowed most of the weekend) job that took nearly an hour. Really not worth the effort to eek out enough boiling water for dinner and tea. Lesson learned is something like, "wood, wood everywhere and not a stick to burn".

Boreal forest near Ethan Pond by Pinnah, on Flickr

A hatchet may be better with that stuff but I'm not lugging a hatchet with me. No way.

I know use my Emberlit pretty much only on trips at lower elevations.

 

[billym]

OK here is a fixed blade everyone can agree on

 

[Mecha]

Greenjacket, aren't there any completely wild places in the UK, perhaps the Outer Hebrides?

 

[GREENJACKET]

British Isles:
There are some remote places, some wild because of the weather, and some pockets that have little changed with unaltered ancient ecosystems of flora fauna. Good few too barren for anyone to make a go of it like the small islands. But few places where human settlement and change isn't pretty clear. British Isles just too small and populated for a very long time and intensively used. Been used since the last ice age at least.
Being an island then fishing has been good all around the coast. The moderate climate gives one consistent productive growing season per year. Cleared ground good for grazing too. A diverse raw material resource from wood to minerals like copper, tin and iron. Fuel, not only wood but coal and peat. Add it up a pretty good place for humans to thrive.

North America has swaths of land that are so remote, with some pretty hostile weather conditions and adverse growing conditions. Too hard for real human settlement to make a success of it.
Going way back it seems there were creatures that were higher in the food chain than humans as it took a long time for humans to get a foot hold.
I'm not sure who were the first to get there, but the North American Indians as we know hadn't been there that long. They were making inroads but they didn't have the technology and must have found it hard as their population never really got going to the levels one would expect from a land of plenty.
Much later with the new arrivals from Europe and their advance technologies then more of the vast continent was tested. Off the beaten track then it took something worth the risk to venture deeper. The fur trade, gold, or something short term to make it worth putting up with the conditions. If you can't scrape a living you aren't going to hang around.
Think you know your history better than I.

But however we look at history the human race hasn't been around very long at all. In that time we have made quite an impact.

 

[AreBeeBee]

This is fairly off-topic -- being about enviroments we hike through -- but I'll bring in a knife at the end, I promise.

Around here (upper midwest), there's a lot of fuss by some about '"invasive plants," usually tinged with a moralizing fervor. But as any geologist will tell you, 10,000 years ago this place was covered by a sheet of ice nearly a mile thick. It was simply the last of four such ice sheets in the last 2 million years. Back then, the upper midwest had no vegetation because under a glacier it's pitch-dark and just above freezing. Any life down there is microbial at most.

So around here everything in the botanical realm invaded at some time, either on its own or by people (Indians first in a couple of waves, then settlers from Europe). All that to me makes any notion of "invasive plants" risible. What those moralizers are doing is better described as historical gardening. They pick a year, draw a line on the calendar, and declare that everything that arrived after this date will be uprooted and driven out, with hisses and spells.

Anyway, whatever kind of woodlands, steppe, or desert you have to explore, taking a small lightweight fixed-blade knife with you may not be strictly necessary, but it's definitely wise. Just in case. Hey, even this former Boy Scout knows enough to Be Prepared.

And by the way, I can't help thinking that the ultralighters really have to keep an eye on the weather and other conditions, both for trip planning and while underway. By going light-light-light, they're trading on the accuracy of forecasts and their own luck. Because if I understand it right, ultralight hiking not only foregoes fixed-blade knives, but a lot of other gear that adds safety margins. Which encourages the hiker to keep moving and not to dawdle and gaze at the scenery. Not my bag, I guess. I'm a stroller, and have two speeds while hiking: slow and slower.

Edit: This comment was spurred by the contrast between Greenjacket's observations about the landscapes of the British Isles and how they have been worked and re-worked by people for several thousand years at least, and the rather less "humanized" landscape of North America. And how much of the disagreement and acrimony in this thread has come from people doing hiking in American areas that are heavily humanized vs. ones that are walking in landscapes that aren't as much humanized. It's the difference between a "European" America and a much more sparsely populated America. It's an old argument.

 

[FA Tre]

This is fairly off-topic -- being about enviroments we hike through -- but I'll bring in a knife at the end, I promise.

Around here (upper midwest), there's a lot of fuss by some about '"invasive plants," usually tinged with a moralizing fervor. But as any geologist will tell you, 10,000 years ago this place was covered by a sheet of ice nearly a mile thick. It was simply the last of four such ice sheets in the last 2 million years. Back then, the upper midwest had no vegetation because under a glacier it's pitch-dark and just above freezing. Any life down there is microbial at most.

So around here everything in the botanical realm invaded at some time, either on its own or by people (Indians first in a couple of waves, then settlers from Europe). All that to me makes any notion of "invasive plants" risible. What those moralizers are doing is better described as historical gardening. They pick a year, draw a line on the calendar, and declare that everything that arrived after this date will be uprooted and driven out, with hisses and spells.

Anyway, whatever kind of woodlands, steppe, or desert you have to explore, taking a small lightweight fixed-blade knife with you may not be strictly necessary, but it's definitely wise. Just in case. Hey, even this former Boy Scout knows enough to Be Prepared.

And by the way, I can't help thinking that the ultralighters really have to keep an eye on the weather and other conditions, both for trip planning and while underway. By going light-light-light, they're trading on the accuracy of forecasts and their own luck. Because if I understand it right, ultralight hiking not only foregoes fixed-blade knives, but a lot of other gear that adds safety margins. Which encourages the hiker to keep moving and not to dawdle and gaze at the scenery. Not my bag, I guess. I'm a stroller, and have two speeds while hiking: slow and slower.

Buckthorn by chance?

 

[Thomas Linton]

"Invasive" does not mean foreign or new. It means damaging. For example, Buckthorn tends to eliminate everything else, even Purple Loosestrife and Grey Dogwood, by shading out seedlings of other species. But it's good for spoons and tent pegs.

 

[trevitrace]

A combination of buckthorn and black locust is my favorite thing to find myself in the middle of.

 

[GREENJACKET]

AreBeeBee, nicely put.

We have the same issues and debate over here with invasive species. Presently getting hammered by tree diseases and ailments killing them off. Dutch Elm Disease killed off the vast majority of elm some years back; one of our most common trees. Right now its our Ash and Horse Chestnut trees being seriously threatened with a real possibility to getting wiped away.

Sometimes it gets laughable with good intended conservationists having it so wrong. This habitat must be protected. Sure, but its only 300 years olds! I'm all for conservation but at least make it plausible and realistic. I'm also not one for "leave it all to its own devices", as that is not management that is neglect. There is a balance to be made.

 

[AreBeeBee]

...Sometimes it gets laughable with good intended conservationists having it so wrong. This habitat must be protected. Sure, but its only 300 years olds! I'm all for conservation but at least make it plausible and realistic. I'm also not one for "leave it all to its own devices", as that is not management that is neglect. There is a balance to be made.

Thanks, Greenjacket. I completely agree, in particular on the plausible and realistic part!

 

[leghog]

We have the same issues and debate over here with invasive species. Presently getting hammered by tree diseases and ailments killing them off. Dutch Elm Disease killed off the vast majority of elm some years back; one of our most common trees. Right now its our Ash and Horse Chestnut trees being seriously threatened with a real possibility to getting wiped away.

Yup. The American Elm, Eastern Hemlock, and Chestnut are mostly gone from eastern forests in the USA for the same reason. Frogs, snails, and Salamanders are disappearing now.

 

[GREENJACKET]

We have world wide trade so we have world wide bug/disease base. Some would happen anyway, but I think we make it all happen far too quickly for evolution to keep pace. Its a rat race and the rats are probably doing the best, well adapting fast enough, out of all the species.

Massive subject.

I think if we keep killing off the insects and the birds then there will be a heap of trouble coming our way soon. Same with the sea with too many toxins being dumped. Its mainly for food production which is done, but to do it its very destructive. Maybe there is almost as efficient a way with less impact??????

 

[SwiftDream]

The bark beetle here in the Southwest has killed off an amazing amount of trees, really decimated some of the high country we have gone into over the decades.

But as far as remote country where you will not see another person, that is why we have stayed in the southwest. The whole western US is full of public lands and many, many Congressional designated wilderness areas that are huge, camp anywhere and endless off trail adventure possibilities. With 7 billion people on this planet now we do need to protect them more than ever.

 

[bearthedog]

I sure do, but in backpacker mode mostly. Traveling alone and far I use a Swiss Army Knife along with either a machete or tomahawk.

-RB

 

[flip888]

I never go minimalist camping but when I went minimalist backpacking I use to take just a Swiss Army Trecker. I never needed more.
Now when I go I take a bow-saw and a Kabar USMC. I use it for pretty much nothing but fire and food prep. I could get by with just a folder if I wanted to. But the extra 2lbs or so doesn't bother me.