My Old Trusty Stove

Sometimes you have a piece of gear that you know should be replaced but despite all practical reasoning you just can’t do it.  My MSR XGK II stove is that way.  It’s not that I even need to replace it since I have a Whisper Lite and a MSR Pocket Rocket.  I know I should be carrying the lighter Pocket Rocket but I don’t.

As a product of working in the outdoor industry for 11 years I have a stove for all reasons and seasons.  The XGK II was bought when I was doing a lot of winter camping and mountaineering.  It was also my ultimate safety net; as a long range surveillance team leader I carried the stove during the winter.  There were many times we couldn’t take the driest route to an objective.  If any of my Soldiers started to go down on a training mission do to cold, wet weather I knew I could fire up the stove and get warm fluids into them.  The stove shows the wear from being in my rucksack for at least 25 to 30 parachute jumps and as many if not more training missions.  I also carried the stove in my bail out bag while I was in Afghanistan.  It’s robust build and ability to burn anything remotely flammable was my safety net if I ever found myself on the “run”.  I knew I could count on it to boil water quickly if need so I could survive.  Do to the parachute jumps, training mission and time in Afghanistan the stove is no longer round and the burner doesn’t sit straight but it still burns like hell.

My XGK II has also never failed to work no matter how crappy the fuel.  The only problem I’ve ever encountered was do to operator error (me being the operator) not the stove.  I cracked the pump housing while in Afghanistan.  So when I got home and before heading to Mt. Washington for a winter climbing trip I rebuilt the pump using the housing from my Whisper Lite.  Ready to go on the trip I made a huge mistake and didn’t do any pre trip inspection and test of the stove.  If I did I would have figured out that the fuel tube fit really tight into the pump and might need a little bit of chap stick to lube it up.  So while in sub zero temps I thought the tube and housing didn’t fit.  Everything worked out as the nice folks at the Harvard cabin let us use the stove in the cabin.  I still felt like a tool for not checking everything first, like I know I should have.

So while I know I should carry my lighter stove I can’t give up the old trusty XGK II.  It is like an old friend that you meet every year for a backpacking trip.  You spend more time sitting around camp passing the flask recounting past adventures and planning for new ones than actually hiking.  It is that old friend that I know I can count on.