Planning for my first solo in September and quickly finding how important it is to nail down exactly what gear I NEED to bring. I was inspired by this board to get my cookset together.
Research on this board leaves me with the impression that while solo, apparently you eat less, and want to make cooking as simple as possible. I'm planning on mostly FBC breakfasts and dinners- some with separate sauce/ingredients but not requiring much beyond hot water. Drinking coffee is very important to me at home and in camp, and I can be satisfied with VIA packets on the trail. Here it is:

Toaks 850 pot/lid
Snowpeak 450 double wall mug/lid
BudLight alcohol stove (homemade)
Aluminum Windscreen (homemade)
Cozy/lid for pot or freezer bag (homemade)
Toaks folding spoon
universal fire igniting device
fuel measuring bottle
stuffsack (homemade)

Total: 11.59oz
Ranger for reference (following Kanoes' precedent)

Optional to bring the old 7" Aluminum Fry pan for fish feast (6.7oz)

I've been making a lot of gear this year and get excited at being able to customize things to be exactly what I want.

Thoughts? Advice?

that looks about perfect. i have the almost exact setup, minus the fry pan. instead of the tit mug, i have a gsi lexan mug. 2-fancee feest alcohol stoves fit in my solo kit,msr tit. solo pot.
my dried foods only require 2 cups of water, instant oatmeal, good espresso instant coffee, does'nt take much to make a meal, although as folks have said, you may eat less, you need fuel.

looks good.

Very nicely done - it should work well for you.

I do very much the same style and appreciate the light weight, simplicity, ease, and lack of cleanup. I do use a canister stove instead of an alcohol stove though.

I've found I can burn considerable extra fuel just making coffee, especially on bad weather layover days ;).

Thoughts/advice - I only recently became aware through another post here that alcohol stoves are not legal during fire bans, which often occur in Sept., so you might want to consider a back-up plan. I had always thought they were OK, but apparently they are not.

Nice, that should work good for you, enjoy your trip.

Looks great! Light and versatile. The fry pan adds a lot to your ability to cook, e.g. fry, bake, sauté, Cajun blacken, etc.

Nice rig. And the Ranger is an excellent reference.

Leaving for ep23 midweek and have just about everything ready to go.
The food menu came in at just a shade over 6 lbs for 5 days.
I took some time to create and test FBC recipes as this is new to me, but I posted them here:

I did decide to bring the frypan with a little oil because this year I learned how fun it is to catch, clean, and eat a fish in the wilderness. Any of my dinners would go well with(or be substituted by) fresh fish.

Looks good - let us know how it works for you. How much fuel are you taking?

quote boonie: "Looks good - let us know how it works for you. How much fuel are you taking?"

14 fl oz.
Testing the BudLight alcohol stove:
1.8fl oz of fuel will bring 800mL of water to a boil. (800mL is enough for a hot meal and hot drink)
0.7fl oz will bring 300mL to the perfect temp for coffee/tea.

14 should be plenty to cook all my meals, plus 2-3 hot drinks per day. It works out nicely to 1 bottle (12fl oz) of yellow HEET plus 2 fl oz in my measuring bottle.

Backup heat source is the fire grate.
Planned the last day's food as cold/no-cook just in case I run out of fuel.

OK, let me see if I'm following you correctly, muddy -

It's a 5-day trip and you've got 4 breakfasts and 4 dinners. That's the way it works for me anyway, since I eat breakfast the first day before I enter and dinner after I exit the last day.

One of the breakfasts is cold, so you have seven hot meals to cook. It will take 1.8 oz. of fuel to cook each of the seven hot meals and have a hot drink with it, or 12.6 oz. for all 7. Plus 2 more hot drinks at .7 oz fuel each, or 1.4 oz. total, equals 14 oz.

Which is exactly what you are taking. And fire is your back up.

Is that correct?

One more breakfast is cold, so there is a little more buffer, but yep, that's how I got there. Should I bring more?

Also, I'm not sure what I was thinking with the M&M's... I have a sweet tooth, but looking at the photo- I probably wouldn't ordinarily eat that many in an entire month!

what is FBC? VIA? google gets me first baptist church.

quote jwartman59: "what is FBC? VIA? google gets me first baptist church."

FBC

VIA is the starbucks instant coffee packets. Processed like regular instant coffee but instead of granules, they grind it to some microfine powder. The lighter roasts really are not bad at all- And at home I roast my own coffee so I'm kinda picky.

For a bunch of Freezer Bag Cooking recipes go to: trailcooking .com

quote muddyfeet: "One more breakfast is cold, so there is a little more buffer, but yep, that's how I got there. Should I bring more?


Also, I'm not sure what I was thinking with the M&M's... I have a sweet tooth, but looking at the photo- I probably wouldn't ordinarily eat that many in an entire month!"

Should you bring more? I don't know - you may use a little more or less depending on how closely the conditions out there match your test conditions.

Colder temps, wind sometimes use a little more; sometimes a little insulation between it and the cold ground helps, but you'll probably just be setting it on the fire grate. Sometimes people use a priming pan when it's colder.

I usually hedge my bets by taking a little more fuel (of any type) as a buffer against conditions and loss (spillage), say maybe 10-20%.

I have a sweet tooth, too, but don't usually feed it too much on BW trips. I do however make the Java Moose my first stop after exiting and have the biggest ice cream they've got and a double espresso ;). You might as well go ahead and take them on the first trip and see how it works for you.

Hope you have a good trip, muddy!

As it turns out: a new 12fl oz bottle of HEET has a lot of air space up on top. I was able to fit at least 3 more oz of fuel in there for a total of 17oz.

Total weight came in alright I think:

Main pack (backpacking pack) weighs 28 lbs.
+2 dry bags that can fit in the pack and easily come out for boat trim weighing 17lbs.

= total 45lbs food and gear for 5 days + magic canoe and trimmings about 42lbs.

One of the goals for the trip is to try a single portage. Might find I don't prefer it, but I do want to try, and think it should be possible.

Picking up the boat tonight and beginning the adventure tomorrow. See you later!

Have fun, let us know if the single portage works.

Enjoy yourself! Do whatever you want, whenever you want ;).

I'm surprised there was that much extra space in the HEET bottle. I think you'll be fine. I was trying to remember how much alcohol I used to boil water for a meal and I think it was about an ounce, but it's been a long time and fuel usage varies a lot with different stoves and conditions. Next time you'll have a much better idea.

I have developed the habit of having everything ready - coffee in the mug, food bag open and in the cozy - before I light my stove so the thing isn't boiling away for a minute while I'm fooling around getting things ready. It wasn't that much of a problem with the alcohol stove, but the JetBoil has my coffee water ready so fast that I was caught off guard at first.

You've prepared well; let us know how everything goes.

Alcohol stove worked as intended, but next time I think I'll just use the pocket rocket for simplicity's sake.

I didn't really like having to measure out fuel for each meal/drink and while I had plenty of fuel, I had some troubles with the storage bottle leaking. FYI the HEET bottles have a screw cap that goes on pretty tight and will keep it from spilling if you knock it over, but really isn't meant to be stuffed in a pack and jostled around. Thankfully it was also in a plastic bag. I ended up dripping the spilled fuel around the stove for a primer for most meals.

It was fun to use the homemade stove, and it performed as I needed it to, but it just took more 'fiddling' than the pocket rocket stove. and is slower.

The rest of the cookset was great and I like the FBC method. I'm glad I tested meals ahead of time: It was great to look forward to an easy, satisfying dinner.

Thanks for the update, muddyfeet.

Your experience parallels mine. I ultimately opted for the canister stove too for the same reasons.

As a thread followup for this year's trip:
I wanted to adapt the cookset to use with an MSR pocket rocket stove. I thought I would need to make removable legs to get the windscreen up to the level of the much taller canister stove, but ended up finding a much more elegant and simple solution:

Cutting three small slots in the windscreen allows it to simply be hung right on the legs of the stove. It attaches/removes easily and works quite well. It is still compatible with the alcohol stove AND, it technically made the windscreen a teensy bit lighter :)

That's such a good idea, muddyfeet, that you'd better hurry up and patent it ;). It accomplishes what it needs to without enclosing the canister and the risk of over heating it.

Thanks, boonie. I thought I read somewhere a long time ago about the danger of overheating the canister with a tight fitting windscreen or something. That could probably be a bad day... I spent a good two hours prototyping some stilt-like legs before it occurred to me that I could just poke some holes in it. I'm certain the jetboil engineers figured all this out a long time ago! With the high pressure gas, I'm not sure how much of a screen you need to make a difference- the alcohol stoves are so sensitive to wind, though.

quote boonie: "That's such a good idea, muddyfeet, that you'd better hurry up and patent it ;). It accomplishes what it needs to without enclosing the canister and the risk of over heating it. "

Slick the way that works. But you might get a 103 rejection at the PTO.

quote NotLight: "

quote boonie: "That's such a good idea, muddyfeet, that you'd better hurry up and patent it ;). It accomplishes what it needs to without enclosing the canister and the risk of over heating it. "

Slick the way that works. But you might get a 103 rejection at the PTO.





"

Nice!