Diligent readers may remember how a few weeks ago, I tried and failed to bring water to a full boil with my combination of an Esbit stove and steel mug.

Well, that truly sucked, and after reading all sorts of backpacker forums, it looks like my stainless mug is really not a very efficient way to boil water. It’s a tall cylinder of water, so very little of the water is in direct contact with the heat from the stove.

So, I broke my piggy bank on gear again. The nice lady at Wildware hooked me up with a very sexy MSR Titan Kettle.

The kettle with 16 oz. in it has much better ratio of volume to surface area than the mug.
Also, it has a lid, the benefits of which never even occured to me. Hopefully, I will be able to get water to a roaring boil now.

As part of this weekend’s bourgeois gear-buying orgy, I have also obtained a new pack.

I got the CamelBak Alpine Explorer, which, at 3 pounds, is a touch heavy for ultralight backpacking, but I think I can go overnight out of it, so long as I am careful about what I bring and it’s not too cold out.

Brandi and I are ditching work on Friday and heading out for a hike on the great and terrible Mid State Trail, so I hope to me able to field test all my new toys and report back with Jihadi ratings for them 🙂