Caldera Cone Stove

Fissure Ti-Tri with Inferno wood-burning option and Evernew pot

The Caldera Cone is an ultra-lightweight wood-burning stove made of titanium foil. I used this stove for the entire Bitterroots hike without any trouble.

Positives
Very lightweight - 126g for stove, 176g for pot
No need to carry fuel
Morale benefits of wood fire but leaves no trace
Fairly expensive (but you don’t have to buy fuel in the future)

Negatives
Your hands will get sooty from handling the stove
Takes some preparation to light - must find dry-ish fuel
Slower to light than gas stoves… but very fast once it’s started

Description
The Caldera Cone stove consists of a cone made of titanium foil, two titanium stakes that support the pot, a steel mesh grid for ashes, and a titanium foil floor. Setup is easy - the stove rolls up and fits into a tyvek sleeve, which then stores in the pot. It’s a compact, lightweight system that removes the need to worry about how much fuel you have left.

Lighting the stove
It is easier to light this stove than it is to light a campfire, although obviously not as easy as a canister stove. On a wet day you may need to use your camp knife to shave a stick into dry tinder, but on dry days it’s as easy as picking up a handful of twigs and pine needles from around the campsite. Dump a handful of tinder into the stove so that it rests on top of the mesh grill. Insert a match into one of the air holes, and moments later you’ll have a fire. The titanium cone partially protects the fire from wind and also serves to reflect heat back into the fuel. Within a minute of the fire starting, you can insert the pot into the top of the cone and start cooking. The fire requires almost constant stoking to keep running, so when you’re done cooking it will burn out in a few minutes and will be cool to the touch in a few more minutes. There are minimal coals since the stove burns such small fuel - what little ash is produce will basically just blow away as dust.