Meditations on Appalachia

* = On Sale
— = Already Owned
? = Weight not included

I also got three stuff sacs for my food, clothes, and sleeping bag, which is compression. I’m using the sea to summit brand, and together they cost $50. My tent and pad came with sacs, and I’m using my sisters dry sac for electronics.

So I don’t have a cool gram scale or anything like that and was doing this all on a regular bathroom scale. Needless to say the weights don’t add up, so something is off, but the total pack weight should be about right, which is to say 4lbs more than I’d like it to be without food and water. Hmm…

Tags: accessories, clothes, first aid, Gear, hygiene, kitchen, pack, sleeping, stove, tent, weight
Posted in Gear | Comments Off on Initial Gear List

I’ve made two stoves so far for the hike, trying out two separate designs.  Sideburner on left, topburner on right.

The first one I made is a top burning penny jet stove.  I used directions at YGingras, they are really easy to follow.  This stove works really well, but it needs a pot stand, which is more weight, and due to the small size of my pot I had a bit of trouple making one that I felt stable enough.  I could get into the science and benefits of alcohol stoves, but Zen Stoves really has all the information you need to know.  For me, the idea of making some of my own gear was really appealing, and in this case very affordable.  Woo hoo for making things!

The next one I tried is really a minor variation on the topburner, called a sideburner.  I followed these directions at Home Made Alcohol Stoves.  The one modification I made was to use a slightly bigger hole in the center, covered by a penny like the topburner.  I like the side burner design a lot more becasue you can place your pot right on top of the stove, however these stoves may be slightly less efficient as heat escapes around the sides of the pot.  A tip for anyone trying to make one of these:  For cutting cans, the scissor technique works a lot better, faster, and easier than the utility blade technique.

I tried making a mini sideburner following the instructions at Zen Stoves, but had a very difficult time of it.  As it turns out V8 cans are much thinner than your average soda can, and thus much more likely the crimp , buckle, and crack through the many stages of putting a stove like this together, and I just couldn’t get mine to stay lit.

Tags: alcohol, can, coke, diy, pepsi, soda, stove, zen
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