Boil time: The most useless metric in backpacking
The pointless metric
As the title says.. Boil time to me is the most useless metric in all of backpacking. I don’t mean that hypothetical – I truly believe it is a completely useless metric. On top of that most “reviews” give boil times when calculated on a stove top in a kitchen. What’s the point? Yes I get that nobody wants to wait 15 minutes for water to boil, but what is 5 minutes compared to 3.45 minutes if the fuel saved is exponential. On top of that, we are in nature, why rush?
I always think about this when I am out backpacking and I bring my optimus Svea 123, Bushbuddy or Jetboil TI. These are all fantastic stoves in their own right, and in the confines of my kitchen the boil times are amazing. However, as soon as any of these stoves get attacked by wind, they turn almost completely useless. The boil time on my Svea 123 goes from kitchen counter 3.5 minutes to a hellish 10 minutes depending on the force of the breeze (I say breeze because these aren’t strong winds I am talking about). Fuel consumption goes from 20ml to 45ml for a simple cup of coffee. Read More