Chris M and Kirstyn J | Redmond, WA | February 2015
I had purchased a new hammock for my girlfriend for Christmas and recently picked up the Biolite PowerLight Bundle for myself. I’m a huge Bio-Head and happily own and use all of the Biolite products all year long. We were both very excited to try out our new gear so we headed off in to the deep woods of the Pacific North West, in the middle of February, just outside Seattle, to exercise our gear and our cold weather camping skills. We ended up about 25 miles inside Teanaway Valley outside of Cle-Elum Washington.
The plan was just for a single night’s stay and it ended up being an awesome time. By the time the sun had set I had arranged the Nano-Grid lights over our hammock and sleeping area that we had setup right beside our cozy fire.
After we had our main fire lit, hammock hung, beverages poured, and we were confident the fire was going to go all night, we started about getting our grub on. The plan was to make some Seattle Dogs and dehydrated apple crisp as desert. This all sounded like a great plan, but the temperature was dropping fast after the sun went down, which meant keeping us warm as well as keeping our lights lit became paramount.
I setup the CampStove and got a fire burning. Once it was going well, I added the grill and began cooking our Seattle Dogs. The only issue I have with cooking with cooking over wood, is that I find that cooking food over wood that is not yet charred causes bitterness and too much smoke in the food. This makes things tricky as one is constantly adding wood to the CampStove. But, I digress…
The Seattle Dogs were excellent. Once we polished those off, I setup the Kettle Pot on top of the CampStove to give the PowerLight Bundle a little boost before we went to bed to ensure the cold would not kill the lights during the night if we needed them for any reason. And what a cold, cold, night it was…
I do believe it ended up being about 28 degrees when we awoke from the hammock we were sharing in the morning.The result, the PowerLight Bundle is a champ! It went all night in bitter, bitter cold and kept on lighting without an issue (I forgot to turn it off when we crashed). In the morning there a coating of frost on everything, including us and the PowerLight Bundle; No issues.
The real winner for me actually was the CampStove the night before. Having the CampStove setup between us and the main campfire brought a ton of comfort. We kept that little fire stoked until we went to bed and it was really nice having a little extra warmth right bedside us, the ability to recharge anything that needed, cook a tasty treat or heat some hot coco.
Thank you, BioLite!
