My folding camp stove screen saved the day on a recent winter canoe trip.
Overnight temperatures had dipped into the 20s. I woke up around 5 a.m. — maybe a little before — and looked at the forecast on my cellphone. The good news was that temperatures would climb to around 50 degrees that day. The bad news was that, by late morning, the chance of rain shot from near zero to 100 percent.
Long story short, there would be no casual breakfast. I needed to eat, break camp, and paddle to my takeout at Mohawk Dam to beat the rain.
I fired up my Soto backpacking stove to make some coffee. The fuel canister was cold and the flame barely adequate to boil a pint of water. I doubted it would hold out long enough to boil water to reconstitute a freeze-dried breakfast pouch. (Mountain House biscuits and gravy, one of my favorites.)
Not the end of the world, of course. I could have started a stick fire and boiled enough water to do that. Which would have taken more time.
Instead, I grabbed my folding aluminum windscreen and wrapped it tightly around the canister and stove, hoping to warm up the canister enough to coax one more boil out of it.
It worked. And, more importantly, I made it off the river ahead of what turned out to be a downpour.
My windscreen being used to block wind in this photo. One morning, on a winter canoe trip, it served to warm up the fuel cylinder and save the day.
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