A cold wind and twenty below zero with drifting snow makes for a very uncomfortable situation while trying to heat up water on a tiny stove.
This is how my two buddies and I found ourselves on a cold winter day a few years ago.
We had set out to ski cross country on Cape Breton Island on the east coast of Canada.
Our trip would take us nine miles across open country.
To get to the access point we had to ski up a trail to an elevation of seventeen hundred feet first.
We planned to boil some water for tea using an old road grader that had been abandoned about half way in our journey.
We had not counted on finding the cab full of snow due to the busted out windows.
The tiny stove we carried was of a poor design and no matter what we tried we could not get it to do anything but warm up the water very slightly.
After suffering the inadequately designed stove we vowed never to get caught in that situation again.
We decided to try some other stoves and I settled on a spider design that proved to be the perfect stove.
It has three folding legs, a small top and a good little warm up cup under the head.
It attaches to a camp fuel bottle.
It is very lightweight with the main weight taken up by the weight of the fuel.
The proof is in the results.
We have used this stove at 30 below zero and it starts every time.
We bought the baking kit and in a wind we place the kit around the stove as a firebreak.
Works perfectly.
My buddies bought larger stoves that sit on a fuel tank.
They are good stoves but a little heavy.
Of course weight is always a concern to backpackers.
All things considered, check out the spider stove.
You cannot go wrong.