Back in June I posted some research into Mountain Marathon cooking kit, in particular the pros and cons of solid fuel versus gas, and foil cartons versus aluminium pots. I was reminded of this because Stewart B is away this weekend doing the RAB, while I moulder at home recovering from the broken patella (another story…).

Anyway, since writing that I did the Saunders MM Scafell class with Ben Crowther, who stepped in at the last minutes to replace Defective Damon.

Here’s the cooking kit we took:

1 x Pocket Rocket stove 86g

1 x full small gas canister 175g (much more than we needed, but better safe than sorry).

2 large and 2 small foil cartons 50g

Total weight: 311g

Aside: solid fuel would have come out at c.120g fuel tablets, 50g foil cartons, Total 170g (without the Highlander stove). Weight saving insignificant (esp when compared to the size of Ben’s man boobs and my love handles).

We had a fantastic day 1, coming into camp in 2nd place after a thoroughly shagging day that covered most of the Lake District. Then the manufacturing of the first hot chocolate revealed that the large cartons now had holes in - great. So all cooking had to be done in the two small ones, which gave us some unusual gastronomic experiences, including Szechuan hot chocolate, and cheesy tea with floaters. And by breakfast time one of the small ones had burned through, but overall they worked OK.

The verdict – I reckon Pocket Rocket + gas + foil cartons is a good combination. But you need to be really careful packing the cartons to avoid punctures.

Unfortunately on day 2 we made a couple of miserable navigation errors, which dropped us around 15 minutes – but still very happy to come 3rd overall.