Hello and welcome to my Trailstove site. This site is about the greatest camp stove ever made and different ways you can modify this camp stove to better fit your exact needs. The Trailstove is a light weight wood burning camp stove for backpacking. It's only made in one model though the manufacturer tells me that they will introduce some more models in the future.
This power efficiency of this camp stove is optimal, that cannot be improved upon but you can reduce it's weight a bit and you can make it more fire safe.
If you go backpacking in a dry area
It's important to be well prepared when you go out in the wilderness, make sure you bring all the items listed here on my list of stuff you need to have.
| FISH NET | Bring a fish net even if you don't plan to use it, especially if you are going somewhere where there are very few other people who can help you out if you get stuck. | |
| STEELWIRE | Excellent for fixing stuff and building shelters and other useful things. You don't need a lot, just a couple of feet. | |
| BACKPACKING STOVE | If you look at almost every back packing stove on the market you will find that they all brag about their weight and their thermal output (how fast they can boil a quart of water). They're right about the weight, it's very important, but they never include the weight of the fuel you need to carry with you. If you include the fuel for a long trip your 3.5 ounce super light stove suddenly becomes a 2 pound monster. As far as the thermal output is concerned it makes absolutely no difference if it takes 3 minutes or 10 minutes to boil a quart of water. The perfect stove in my opinion is the Stratus Trailstove ,
it weighs a little bit less than 1 pound and it runs on wood. You pick the wood up yourself on site just like people did in the old days before fossil fuels so the total weight of the stove and the fuel you carry is always below a pound, no gas stove in the world can beat that. It takes about twice as long to boil a quart of water on it than on a gas stove but so what. I have some more info on this camp stove a bit further up on this page. | |
| FOLDING TOOL | I don't go anywhere without my Leatherman tool, especially not into the great outdoors. | |
| COOKING POT | A little cooking pot for boiling water and doing some light duty cooking is very important to have, especially if your water filter stops working. | |
| CAMPING SAW | It's good to have either a camp saw or a camping axe with you to cut wood. Camp saws are a lot lighter than camp axes but axes are faster and less tiring to use. If you're not planning to do a very large amount of woodcutting a saw is probably a better idea. But in the wintertime it may be worth it to bring an axe. | |
| SLEEPING PAD | Bring decent air mattresses for everyone to sleep on. They weigh more than sleeping pads but sleeping on a sleeping pad will drive you crazy. | |
| FIRST AID | Better safe than sorry, bring a first aid kit. | |
| FOLDING TOOL | This could be either a Swiss army type knife or a Leatherman type tool. Combined with your brain you can accomplish pretty much anything with a good multi-purpose tool. | |
| MOSQUITO PROTECTION | If you don't want to get eaten up by mosquitoes you'd better bring some mosquito coils or something of the sort. | |
| DUCT TAPE | Duct tape always saves the day. The unsung hero of the wilderness. | |
| LAMP | Light is a very important thing to have wherever you are since you can't see without it. | |
| STRING | Don't forget to bring some string, you always find a use for it. |
Locate water
The general rule is that water is always down in the bottom of the valley.
Even if you can't see water you can see the signs of water such as greener than usual vegetation, or a string of uniform vegetation, or a flock of birds.
If you need get to where the signs of water are but don't see any water you may decide to dig down, if you do always dig by the largest piece of vegetation, that's where there is most water.
Need more outdoors info? Go to www.goingoutside.com .