Gear Review: Woods O’Hara Stove
If you’re looking for a small, portable camp stove that’s ideal for backcountry trips, the Woods O’Hara may be just what you need.
I’ve been looking to add a small stove to our camping gear for a couple of years. Something that could come in the boat while fishing, be used on backcountry trips, and be stored in the truck for cooking while away from the trailer on day trips.
My requirements were that it:
- Boil water quickly,
- Have a control knob to moderate the heat for cooking,
- Be small enough to pack for backcountry trips, and
- Ideally be under $100.
There were obvious choices like the MSR Pocket Rocket 2 or a Jetboil, but I never pulled the trigger. Then we booked our backcountry canoe trip to Algonquin Park and finally had a deadline for when we needed to purchase one.
One day we were browsing the Canadian Tire website and came across the Woods O’Hara All-in-one Stove System. We don’t live in an area with other big box outdoor stores, or even much in the way of fully-stocked independent outdoor stores. Canadian Tire is really our go-to store for camping gear. And Woods is one of our favourite brands (both of our tents and plenty of other gear are from Woods). We do order plenty of gear online, but if we can easily pick it up in person, we prefer to do that. Reading through the description made it clear that we’d found our stove.
The O’Hara has a 2,800 BTU burner, a removable support for cookware, a hard-anodized aluminum pot with integrated heat exchanger, a cozy for the pot, a lid, a latch for the lid, a 300ml cup, and a piezo ignitor. It takes isobutane fuel canisters, which are easy to find at Canadian Tire. It cost $100 when we bought it.
Our first real test of it was on a windy winter day in South River. We’d gone up for a quick day of ice fishing and brought along a couple OTG freeze-dried meals for lunch. It was easy to set up the stove on the tailgate of the truck, and despite the wind gusts, our water was boiling in no time. I didn’t time it because the actual minutes don’t matter to me. It was much quicker than using our larger stoves.
The next test came on our backcountry trip to Algonquin in May. In addition to boiling water for dehydrated meals and our morning tea, we also cooked pancakes and bannock on it. Only one piece of bannock cooked a little darker than ideal, so I’d call that a success!
Pros:
- Good price point.
- Stove and fuel are easy to find at Canadian Tire.
- The stove packs up into the pot nicely.
- Boils water quickly (to the point where I felt like it had barely been on before the water was boiling).
- Easy to manage the heat setting.
- Seems to be good on fuel so far.
- Perfect size for packing on canoe trips, bringing in the boat, or throwing in the truck for a quick trip.
Cons:
- Doesn’t fit a fuel canister inside the pot. If the pot was an inch or so higher, everything would fit inside and reduce the space taken up in your pack.
- Not the best for heat distribution compared to our larger stoves. That was expected for a stove this size, but it did require keeping an eye on the food to make sure the stuff in the center didn’t burn.
Overall, I’m very happy with the Woods O’Hara stove and look forward to using it on many more trips!
argosgirl
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