Well my latest lighter-weight-than-previously-perfectly-fine-gear finally arrived today… The first item that I’ve been really wanting for quite some time is the MSR Titan Kettle. This thing is deadly light! I love it! It’s lighter than the steel mug I was using previously and it holds twice the volume, and has a lid. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a decent place to order just the kettle from, and had to pay extra for the MSR PocketRocket/Kettle package. (MEC, please carry the Titan seperately!) I doubt I’ll ever use the PocketRocket, but ordering just the kettle from the US I would have risked paying even nastier duty charges. One of my favourite things about this pot is that fact that titanium doesn’t retain a lot of heat, only seconds after emptying boiling water out of it I can handle it without burning myself (something I tended to do often with my other steel pots).

The next new item is a Them-a-rest RidgeRest short. Even though it is physically more than twice the volume of my Prolite 3 it is more than half the weight and a slightly higher insulating factor too. The real test will be to see if my hips can handle it… only time will tell.

The last item isn’t really light, at 240 grams I think of it as quite heavy, but the MEC Kokanee Gore-Tex gaiters are mighty nice. I plan on putting them to good use this winter and will definitely make the pack list should I ever return to Purcell. Take that Stinging Nettle and Devil’s Club!

I’ve also be spending a lot of time tinkering with homemade alcohol stoves. I think I’ve finally got a really well built stove based on the Mini Zen side burner stove design that will replace my MSR SimmerLite for spring/summer trips. The SimmerLite with burner, pump and a 650ml fuel bottle is 370 grams, whereas the Mini Zen is only 8 grams! I picked this stove design mainly because it doesn’t require a pot stand and seems pretty failsafe. And in my tests it only takes 16ml of methanol to boil 2 cups (500ml) of water.

Now that I’ve pretty much settled on the stove design I’ve started tinkering with windscreen size and design. Currently I think the one I’ve make from cutting down the MSR windscreen is too tight to the pot and is causing a build up of heat (a good thing right?). Well maybe not, since the increased heat is causing the alcohol to vaporize much faster than usual. In turn the flames are jetting up the sides of the pot and thus wasting heat and burning out much faster. I haven’t tested it quite enough yet to say how much shorter it is but it’s enough that 16ml of fuel will no longer boil 2 cups of water.