The WildWood I is a collapsible stove, designed to burn wood or other scavenged material. Charcoal briquettes or lump charcoal are other fuels mentioned as useable by the manufacturer.

The stove consists of a stuff sack, five side panels, a fire door panel, and a fire grate. The panels and fire grate are made from plate steel. All the edges of the metal pieces have been sanded down so there are no sharp edges to cut my hands when assembling the stove. The stuff sack appears to be made from cotton or similar material (I can't tell whether it's organic or synthetic), and is a fairly stiff fabric.

The panels interlock to create the stove, and the instructions call to assemble the five normal panels before inserting the fire grate and the fire door panel. The five normal panels wrap around the fire grate, which has "tabs" on five of it's six sides that rest in the slots of the side panels to form the "floor" of the stove, with the fire panel inserted last to secure the stove. Though the setup is fairly intuitive (my husband just *had* to be the first to try to assemble it, sans instructions, and managed to get it *mostly* figured out) I do have to make sure the stove is "right side up" (the "hooks" on the fire door panel face downward) and that the side of the fire grate without a "tab" is inserted so that the fire grate can slip on. As the instructions state, this stove can be picked up and moved by any panel except the fire door without collapsing.

When collapsed and in the stuffsack, the WildWood I fits nicely my GSI HAE 1 quart (0.95 L) pot. Because it is so compact, I could fit it almost anywhere in my pack.

So far, I have tested the Wildwood stove at home and on two overnight trips at Pinckney Recreation area in Southeastern Michigan. Being dedicated to good food when backpacking, I tested cooking up most of my favorite foods at home to get the hang of how to obtain the desired results for various meals.

One thing I determined fairly quickly is that between the time involved in gathering wood, cooking, and the cleanup needed, using wood this stove isn't conducive to a quick, hot lunch while on the trail. My husband and I usually enjoy a cup of soup and a hot chocolate or cider for lunch when hiking, or a Lipton side dish if we have a bit more time.

Through testing, I've found that I can cook up anything that I can with my canister stove, but that it takes a bit more time (I estimate about 5 more minutes once all the materials are gathered for the fire) due to foraging the materials, and starting and keeping the fire. Since we usually plan more than enough time to arrive and set up camp before nightfall, the extra time isn't an issue for dinners, and not too much of an issue at breakfast.

From my experimentation for my Initial Report , I found that the bottom of the stove was too far from the top of my pot to effectively use an Esbit tab to heat water. To get the tabs closer to the pot for more effective heating, I turned the stove upside-down, and used a small piece of aluminum foil to place the Esbit tab on so it wouldn't fall through the holes in the grate. On a 64 F (18 C) day with only slight winds I decided to see how well the upended stove would fare using Esbit tabs to heat up enough water for a mug of hot drink and a cup-of-soup for two. I managed to get 4 cups (0.95 L) of water to 114 F (46 C) after 1 tab and 15 minutes, and 165 F (74 C) after a second tab and 30 minutes. After 1 Esbit tab, I felt the water and thought it might be warm enough to do for lunch, but not quite hot enough for my preferences. I think that 2 Esbit tabs burning at the same time would get the water nice and hot in about 15 minutes, though I ran out of tabs before I could test this theory.

On that same day, I tried heating 4 cups (0.95 L) of water using three charcoal briquettes at one time. This time I turned the stove right-side-up, since the briquettes are slightly taller than the space available between the floor of the stove and the bottom of the pot when the stove is upside-down. After 20 minutes, the water has only reached 118 F (48 C) and after 40 minutes the temperature actually went down to 114 F (46 C). I plan to continue experimentation and see if I can find some way to make the charcoal work, but from my results so far, I don't see charcoal as being an effective fuel (quantity needed for desired results vs weight/hassle of packing in all the required charcoal) for my cooking needs.

On my first trip to the backcountry campground at Pinckney Recreation Area, the temperatures were in the low to mid 60s F (around 16-18 C) during dinner and breakfast (although a late breakfast as we slept in and didn't eat unit 10 am), with little wind. I decided to use only foraged material and to cook up some of our simpler fare, with hot cider, soup, and a Lipton side dish for dinner and hot chocolate, instant oatmeal, and precooked bacon for breakfast. The WildWood fits nicely inside my MSR Mountain Bowl, with enough room to put my pot gripper and a pack of tissues and still have everything fit snugly inside my GSR HAE 1 quart (0.95 L) pot.

I made sure that we gathered plenty of wood, since testing at home helped me figure out how much I would need (which seems to be quite a lot!) for our meal. Luckily it had been a while since a rain, and the fire started quickly and was easy to keep going. One thing I found out about feeding the fire is that it is easier for me to just take off the pot/pan to add wood than to try to feed the fire through the open panel. I've tried using straight sticks chopstick-style to put in more wood, but it ended up being more work for me than I felt it was worth. When the fire is going, there's no way that I would attempt to put in sticks through the side opening with just my fingers, since a stray wind could easily whip up the flames in any direction.

I managed to get the water boiling in short order, and we enjoyed our drinks and soup while I set on some Lipton Teriyaki Noodles. I had to feed the fire often to keep the flames going and the water boiling, but the dish cooked up as well as always, although with a few ashes added when I blew on the coals to get the fire stoked again. Quite a bit of ash was produced, most of which (what I didn't blow away from stoking the fire) was disposed of in the standard fire pit that was part of our campsite. Breakfast the following morning was a similar procedure, though I made sure to include large sticks to use as coals to heat up the precooked bacon after the water for hot chocolate and oatmeal was done.

The second trip to Pinckney was with my younger brother, with temperatures in the mid 40s F (about 7 C) at dinner and breakfast, with a pretty decent breeze going at dinnertime. Dinner was hot cider and chili mac. The chili mac involved boiling thin spaghetti, then heating up a 6oz can (170 g) of Tony Pacos Hot Dog Sauce and adding it to the top of the drained noodles. I started up using one Esbit tab on the upside-down Wildwood to heat up the water, then decided to add another to get it going quicker. After the water was near-boil (the stage where large bubbles start to accumulate on the bottom and sides of the pot), I poured our drinks and started up a 1 quart/.95 L pot full of water with ½ lb noodles. We tried using our packs as a windscreen, but the breeze was still affecting the stove. It took 5 Esbit tabs (possibly 6, I might have lost count) to heat up drinks, cook the pasta, and heat up the hot dog sauce.

The next morning was thankfully calmer, and I used twigs and kindling to prepare breakfast, in addition to a few coals left over from some larger branches we burnt the night before in the fire pit. I cooked up water for hot chocolate, but the coals weren't going strongly enough by then to cook pancakes so I ended up cooking them over an active fire. The coals were ready when I was finished cooking pancakes, and heated up the precooked bacon nicely.

1. How stable is the stove? How will it fare on slightly uneven ground? On sand?
The stove is very stable on relatively flat/even ground. I have not had the chance to test the stove on a sandy surface yet.

2. My cookset has rings engraved on the bottom to allow for better `gripping' on conventional backpacking stoves. Will this feature still prove advantageous with the WildWood I? I would also test out some regular kitchen (non-grooved) pots to see how well they stay on the stove.
The grooved pots help a little with the grip, but overall pots will stay on the stove since it offers a large area of support.

3. How well does the provided stuff sack hold up to repeated use?
The sack went missing when I was outside the house testing the stove, since I left it on a table that our beagle can reach if she wants to. My guess is that she found the woodsmoke smell appealing and hauled it off to one of the places she hides her toys. It held up through one overnighter, though there were a lot of loose threads on the inside that sometimes would catch the hooks on the stove panels.

Durability:

1. How well will the Wildwood I stand up to repeated use? Will the metal weaken and eventually start to buckle under the weight of a full pot of water?
To date, the stove stands up well to repeated use of various combustibles.

2. How well does the stove take to being stored and hauled around in the backpack in a location other than nestled in one of my pots? Can I safely stuff it in a fairly protected area without worry, or will I have to really protect it from being smushed?
I've stored the stove inside my cookset and in a side posket of my backpack, and with the combined thickness of all the parts, this stove holds up to all the normal knocking around my pack suffers when I take it off at breaks.

Actual Use:

1. How well is the stove ventilated? Will enough air be allowed in to get a fire going fairly quickly, and keep it going?
The stove is well ventilated, and I have not had a problem keeping a wood fire going once started.

2. How easy will it be for me to add more wood while I cook? Can I keep my pot on the stove, or would it just be easier for me to take it off while I add more sticks?
It's somewhat difficult to feed the stove through the side opening, I found it much easier to just lift the pot and add more sticks.

3. Will the holes on the bottom of the stove allow most of my tinder to fall through?
Some sticks did fall partway through, but surprisingly mostly ash accumulated under the stove floor.

4. Since the primary fuel source for this stove is prone to weather conditions, I would bring Esbit tabs as a backup fuel source. In my trial run it didn't do the best job of boiling water, but can I get the WildWood to work with those tabs?
As I found out at home and on one of my trips, turning the stove upside down does the trick to get the Esbit tab in a good position to boil wat

5. Can I learn to use this stove to evenly heat things like pancakes and fry bread?
Even when using an active fire, and not just coals or an Esbit tab, I managed to get nice, evenly cooked pancakes.

The stove has started to rust a bit, part of it from my absent-mindedness in leaving it out overnight and it rained the next morning. This does nto appear to affect the structural integrity at all, and Makaira suggests to use steel wool to remove any rust that does develop. Overall this stove works well, epically with wood. Because of the ash it's messier than I would like in a primary-use stove. For most trips I would probably stick with my canister stove, but for destinations where I would have to fly in to, or for colder trips where a canister wouldn't work efficiently, the WildWood would be the stove to come with me.

Reviews > Cook Gear > Stoves > WildWood 1 Stove > Becki Stacy > Field Report