Washington Business Winter 2019 | Washington Business | Page 31

what’s working
The walls of the repair shop where Andy Coulter works are lined with
bins full of all the metal parts you would need to fix a WhisperLite, or other
products.
“We revitalize them and bring them back to life,” Coulter said. “But really,
with maintenance you can make them go forever.”
These stoves were invented by MSR to address a very real safety need.
Mountain climbers can be susceptible to acute mountain sickness, which can
be fatal within hours. One of the leading factors is dehydration. Way up in
the mountains, the water is frozen and the only way to get it is to haul it in or
melt snow. A lot of the older stoves were unable to perform at high altitudes.
MSR created the Model 9 stove in 1973, which “effectively changed the way
climbers traveled through the alpine,” the company reports.
For as little as $20, Cascade will repair your equipment, so you can save
money and keep more stuff out
of the landfill.
“We repurpose as much as
we can,” company spokesman
Brandon Bills said.
Coulter showed us an orange
Therm-a-Rest pad sent in for
repair. We guessed it was from
the 1980s, maybe the 1970s. The
label was faded, with round
curvy fonts from another era.
C o u l t e r h a s a b i g s q u a re
wa t e r t a n k i n h i s s h o p. He
placed a broken Therm-a-Rest
sleeping pad there to find where
it’s leaking. He found one small
hole and patched it.
Much has been written over the years about the many innovations of
Cascade Designs and MSR. Here’s my take.
Some camping stoves can weigh two pounds for a small one, or about 12
pounds for a bigger one. Fuel can add another pound or two.
The WhisperLite comes in at about 15 ounces. Add a pound for fuel. Also,
the fuel can be anything — white gas, unleaded gas, kerosene or butane in
some cases. This means a lot when you are hiking at 10,000 feet above sea
level, where weight really matters. Or, if you’re traveling in a foreign country,
and take what you can get in the fuel department.
The stove also saves time, since it produces a hotter, cleaner fire, in my
experience. And, you can take it apart on the truck tailgate, clean it with some
fuel, and put it back together.
My WhisperLite stove traveled at least 16 states and through several
backcountry forays one year. Another year, it went from the Midwest to
Alaska and then the Southwest. More than 10,000 miles.
I can still hear the hiss of that small gas burner and see the blue light on
my tailgate after a long day. I remember chilly evenings by the Yukon River.
Oil rigs lit up like a Christmas tree on the Gulf of Mexico.
I just found my WhisperLite in a farmhouse attic. That’s another story. But
I’m going to send that stove in for a tune-up as soon as I can.
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