The Stove That Would Not Light
First properly cold start of the year. The car thermometer said 4 °C at the lay-by at 07:40 and the grass in the valley bottom was grey with dew that had not quite frozen. I had planned a long loop: up the forestry track, along the whole ridge, down the steep nose at the far end and back along the river. The map said 17 km, my watch said 17.6 by the time I was back at the car, which is about the usual disagreement between the two.
The idea had been a hot breakfast at the first cairn. I carry a small screw-on gas stove, the kind that folds to the size of a matchbox, and a half-used canister from the summer. It would not light. Or rather, it lit, burned a weak yellow flame for perhaps twenty seconds, and sputtered out. I tried three times. The canister was cold enough that the pressure had dropped to nothing useful, and a butane-heavy mix simply does not vaporise properly once the air is near freezing. I knew this in theory. I had never had it happen in practice, because I had never tried to cook at 5 °C on an exposed ridge before.
So breakfast was two oatcakes with hard cheese, eaten standing up with my back to the wind, and the instant porridge sachet came home again. The soup in the flask was still hot at midday, which is the real lesson: for day walks in cold weather the flask wins every time. It weighs more, but it has no failure mode other than dropping it.
The ridge itself was perfect. Visibility to the far hills, maybe 40 km, a buzzard working the thermals off the south face, and nobody at all until the descent. The steep nose was greasy with the first fallen leaves and I came down it slower than I went up. Total moving time 4 h 50, with about 40 minutes of stops, most of them spent swearing at a stove.
Things I will change: either warm the canister in a jacket pocket for half an hour before use, buy a propane-rich winter mix, or stop pretending I want to cook on a day walk. I suspect the third.