Do you even need a windscreen?

It depends. If you are a solo backpacker doing fair weather camping on a weekend trip, probably not. For real weather conditions on longer trips, a windscreen is beneficial. Why? There are 3 main reasons for using a windscreen: first, it will prevent the wind from blowing out your flame. This is highly dependent on the stove design and less on the magnitude of the wind. Stove with a large burner to pot distance are more sensitive to blowouts. Secondly, fuel efficiency. Wind at 2-3 mph can increase your fuel consumption by 3 to 5 times. Does a backpack or a tent make a good windbreak? Marginally. These structures create vortexes which swirl around your stove in an inconsistent manner. Fuel consumption is better but remains high. Additionally, in bear country, you try to keep your gear away from your kitchen and sleeping area. The amount of fuel you will need will depend on the length of your trip as well as how many people are using the stove. Windscreens can improve your fuel efficiency, allowing you to carry less overall weight. A 1 oz windscreen can save you from packing an additional 110 g fuel canister (7 oz total weight!). Finally, a windscreen allows you to operate your stove at lower burn rates in the wind which is important when simmering or even dry baking.

Canister Topped Stoves

In the last few years, we tackled and resolved a major weakness of canister topped stoves: robustness in the wind. Our revolutionary Ocelot Windscreens completely encircle the burner while allowing adequate ventilation to prevent overheating the gas canister. These windscreens are designed to nest inside your mug, and we offer a plethora of sizes and support the most popular canister stoves. We also offer models that also allow you to nest a fuel canister in with your windscreen and stove for the ultimate compact kit.  We have cracked the code on how to integrate canister-topped stoves into a Heat Exchange cooking system: the Cheetah Windscreens. We designed these windscreens around the most popular HX mug series: the Fire Maple Petrel (650, 750 & Ramen mugs). This allows you to customize your kit at half the weight of off the shelf systems (JetBoil, MSR and knock offs)

Epic meals at awesome places

We design windscreens that allow you to prepare the meals that you really want to eat, wherever you happen to be. From making tea on top of Mt. Whitney to melting snow during the Iditarod 1000-foot race to dry baking a deep-dish pizza on the John Muir Trail, we’ve been there and done that. We used to dream about cheeseburgers while hiking and now we just bake them on the trail! With our windscreens you can boil, steam, pan fry and dry bake. Our Epicurean Backpacker’s Cookbook has some of our favorite trail tested recipes; you can download a copy for free! You now can cook the meals that you only used to dream about!

We offer four types of windscreens: Ocelot, Cheetah, Bobcat & Snow Leopard,

The Ocelot Windscreen

is designed for canister top stoves and consists of a full circle, yet partial height windscreen. Ocelot is designed to protect the burner head from the wind while allowing ample space to keep the isobutane canister cool while providing an ample supply of fresh air to your stove. The Ocelot Windscreen consists of a Stainless-Steel windscreen along with a stove specific burner plate that matches your stove to our windscreen. We support dozens of the most popular canister topped stoves. Additionally we support various mug sizes: from as little as 300 ml to well over 2 liters.

The Cheetah Windscreens

People select Heat Exchange (HX) mug as they are 20% to 30% more fuel efficient than traditional mugs in calm conditions. With the addition of a properly designed windscreen the improve can jump to more than a 50% improvement in fuel efficiency. The Fire Maple Petrel series of Heat Exchange (HX) mugs are the most popular Heat Exchanger mugs in the world These mugs will work with our Ocelot windscreen, however; the vertical positioning of the mug may not be optimal. We have re-engineered our Cheetah windscreens to take advantage of the integrated pot support arm slots on the bottom of the HX Shroud. As in all of our Cheetah windscreen designs, the windscreen optimizes the distance between the stove’s burner head and the bottom of the pot.

The Bobcat Cooking System

is designed for people who prefer pots. We offer three sizes that correspond to the most popular pot sizes: 1.3-liter, 0.9 liter and 0.6 liter. Pots have a large diameter to height ratio and this characteristic produces Cooking Systems with the highest fuel efficiency. Bobcat Systems will boil 2 cups of water using 15 grams of fuel. The 1.3-liter size is ideal for two people. The 0.9 liter is the minimal size for two or the luxury size for one. The 0.6 liter is perfect for the soloist and can be used to boil 2 cups of water. We also support additional fuels such as Esbit, Isopropyl alcohol and Isobutane.

The Snow Leopard System

was designed for use with mugs. We offer two different windscreen sizes that correspond to the most popular mug sizes: Snow Leopard Original & Sr.  We also offer windscreens in Stainless Steel as well as Titanium. This range allows us to support over 150 different mug diameters (500 ml to 1200 ml). Mugs are generally used a solo adventure as mugs are valued for their small pack volumes.