Just realized my $75 camp stove was the weak link all along

Went out near Flagstaff two weeks back, temps dropped to 28 at night. My buddy's cheap $30 butane stove boiled water in 4 minutes, mine took 12 and sputtered the whole time. I bought this fancy multi-fuel unit because the box said altitude rated, but it clearly wasn't. Checked the jet nozzle after I got home, it was partially clogged with old fuel residue from last season. Spent an hour cleaning it with a pin and some solvent, now it fires up like new. Guess I should've maintained the thing instead of blaming the design. Anyone else have a stove that let them down in cold weather, or was it operator error on my part too?

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max_ross28d ago

Ha, sounds about right! I once spent a whole weekend shivering over a stove that turned out to just have a dirty filter, and I blamed the brand for two years before I bothered to look inside. My buddy still brings up the time I tried to cook pasta at 9,000 feet and it came out crunchy because I gave up and ate it cold out of spite. The real kicker is I had a can of fuel cleaner in my car the whole time, just sitting there next to the spare tire. Now I treat every stove like a lawnmower, clean it once a season and check the jets before any trip, no matter how short. Honestly the only thing worse than a cold stove is admitting you spent an hour picking at a nozzle with a safety pin while your friends ate hot chili.