AT Mess Kit Review

This is the mess kit I intend to take with me on the Appalachian Trail. With it I can wet & dry bake just about anything I want. Yes it can also boil water to 🙂

Normally I take a wood stove as well as an alcohol stove with me. This trip I want to save weight so only the alcohol stove is going at the beginning. Later when it warms up and I send home my winter gear, switching to my lighter summer stuff, I may take the wood stove then.

Below are some pictures of my mess kit followed by a brief description.

 

My GSI mug and Nalgene bowl with lids. A cup for drinking and scooping water in those hard to get to places. A bowl for re-hydrating foods and making pudding or mixing bread dough’s and such. If my mug had a screw on leak proof lid like the bowl does I would consider leaving the bowl behind.

Sea to Summit utensils. I got kind of tired using a spork and want to have an actual spoon and fork while camping. I will be taking a general purpose folding knife as well.

 

Vargo 1.3ltr Titanium pot and slightly smaller stainless steel inner pot. These two pots work great together. I do hope to one day find a titanium pot to replace the stainless steel one with though.

 

Bic lighter, UST Light-Me tender, Alcohol for stove, SOL flint wheel to light stove. When it is cold out the alcohol can be tough to get lit. I solve that by cutting a small piece of the UST Light-Me tender stuff and placing it under the alcohol stove as a pre-heater. You need to keep an eye on it though to ensure it doesn’t boil over the alcohol.

Vargo titanium alcohol stove. This is my favorite alcohol stove of all time 🙂 it can cook a Cornish hen and all the fixin’s on 1.25 fills…

 

A cookie cutter for use as a pot spacer when wet or dry baking using two pots. The MSR pot lifter. MSR pot scraper and scrubber. It is hard to find this type with the bristles. And of course a heavy duty aluminum wind screen also fro MSR…

 

A P90 can opener because you just never know and they weigh basically nothing. My bamboo cutting board…

This is a Flame Deflector and is used to separate your pot from coming into direct contact with open flames when used in conjunction with the spacer ring. I haven’t decided if I will officially take this or not yet. It would allow me to use y larger pot to dry bake my pizzas or make breads etc… in but it also ads weight. I can accomplish the same cooking goals with the smaller pot inside my larger pot but then my pizza etc… will be smaller. Will shall see what my total pack weight is when I am finished packing and getting things sorted.

Can’t forget my 6 pack egg carton. Will get eggs along the way when I resupply at grocery stores and farmers markets etc…I did cut off the handles though because they annoyed me and it packs better now.

This is a Bear Vault. It is how I intend to store my food as for now. The first sections of the AT are crowded with bears well educated in how to overcome bear bags. These bear vaults are supposedly nearly bear proof. Only issue I have ever heard of is the bear or other animal playing soccer with it and it getting lost 😦 I intend to use it through the Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee sections in the Great Smoky Mountains. I’ve only ever had one incident where a bear came into camp and tried to steal every ones bear bags before. That was 2015 and luckily I had Kyle Dog with me then because he chased off the bear and her two cubs and rescued the 6 other campers food bags along with mine. We are sure Kyle was only trying to protect his food and the other bags just got lucky 🙂 Anyway that is how Kyle earned his trail name Anti-Bear. He won’t be coming on this trip though so I will up the food protection with this bear vault.

This guy really wants to come along too… My buddy Echo… But no pets on this trip.