About this product
A canister-top stove is the simplest cooking setup there is: screw it onto a gas canister, open the valve, click the igniter, and you have a flame. This Naturehike burner does it with 3.5 kW of output, which puts it at the powerful end of the class – the difference between waiting for water to boil at 4,000 m and getting on with breakfast.
The build is what separates it from the cheapest stoves in this shape. It is 67 percent copper and 30 percent stainless steel, with a small amount of aluminium alloy. Copper moves heat away from the valve, and stainless holds its shape through repeated heating and cooling, so the burner head does not warp after a season of hard use the way thin pressed aluminium does. The three pot supports fold out wide enough to hold a full pot securely and fold back in against the body for packing.
Ignition is built in, so there are no matches to keep dry – a real advantage in Dar es Salaam humidity and on a wet morning on the mountain. The valve gives fine control, so the same stove that boils hard will also hold a low simmer for rice. Open, it stands 7 cm tall across a 16 cm span; folded, it goes into the supplied hard box at 9 x 7 x 11 cm, about the size of a coffee mug, and the whole thing weighs about 230 g.
It suits trekking on Kilimanjaro, Meru and the Usambaras, and it is equally at home as the small stove that lives in a vehicle for tea on the road. The gas canister is separate – it takes a standard screw-thread camping canister, which we stock.
Naturehike Mini Folding Camping Gas Stove - Tripod Base