Late last week I dropped into Epic Sports to see owner Brad Ryder to pick up a few more raffle tickets to sell on the Old Town Cayuga kayak we gave away at Paddle Smart. Scott Finlayson of Bridgton, a manufacturer’s representative for MSR products, was in the store.

It was serendipity. Ryder had just tried to reach me at home to me to tell me Finlayson was there with the new MSR Reactor stove that’s been hyped in many of the outdoor magazines. When I walked in the door a minute or two after he’d called, he looked a little surprised to see I’d made it that quickly!

This stove has been the buzz in several magazines whose writers have been able to get their hands on a prototype. MSR has spent several years developing it, and finally it’s ready to debut at the end of May, Finlayson told me last Saturday. I could have it for a couple of hours to test, if I wanted, he said.

That is if I could pry it from the hands of the staff at Epic. Rob Jenkins had dibs on it for Saturday morning. He later told me he stuck it in his freezer. And to further test its cold-weather performance (the bane of all canister stoves), he put the gas canister in some water in a pot and froze it. When he took them out after three hours, he poured a liter of water into the cook pot and fired up the unit. In 5 minutes, 10 seconds he had a rolling boil!

Fans of canister cooking systems are going to be taking a close look at this unit. You can’t help but compare it to the Jetboil Personal Cooking System, which has garnered a faithful following. Both are self-contained, meaning you can pack the burner and a gas canister into the cooking pot and seal them with the lid.

Jetboil uses a 1-liter neoprene-insulated cooking cup that mates to a burner that fires up with a built-in piezo-electric igniter. The burner threads onto a 110-gram canister. The stove and cook pot weigh in at 15 ounces, but you need to add the weight of a 110-gram gas canister which tipped the scales at Epic at 20.8 ounces. Size-wise you could compare it to a Nalgene bottle.

The Reactor has a larger (uninsulated) pot at 1.7 liters and a minimum weight of 21 ounces. Packaged for the trail, you need to add in the weight of an ounce canister of fuel, the included scrubby/towel, and a lighter. It tipped the scale at 33.6 ounces (12.8 ounces more than Jetboil), in the neighborhood of what a full 1-liter Nalgene bottle weighs.)

Most noticeable is the difference in the burners. The Jetboil’s is about an inch and a quarter, the Reactor’s is more than 4 inches. Rather than a flame you see a red glow from a catalytic heater type mat and the wire-domed mesh over it. MSR has developed an internal regulator that equalizes fuel pressure for consistent heat output in all temperatures from full down to empty canister.

Both stoves whisper.

The cook pot designs are similar in theory, but different in design. Jetboil uses an elevated ring of fins to set the pot up and disperse the heat. Wind can penetrate into the burner area. MSR sets the pot down onto the burner eliminating any wind penetration. Radiating fins welded to the bottom and a ring around the lower outside channel heat up and around the pot.

In my 40-degree backyard (5-10 mph wind), the Reactor brought a liter of water to a rolling boil in four minutes. A while later at 35 degrees and no wind, the Jetboil struggled for more than 10 minutes trying to boil a liter of water. I got tired of waiting and shut it off. (The pot’s maximum safe fill level is half a liter.)

Back in February I tested a SnowPeak Gigabite stove, the MSR Pocket Rocket, the MSR Windpro, and the Jetboil Personal Cooking System and Group Cooking System and did a little mixing and matching of components. I got the fastest boil time for a half-liter of water with the Jetboil Group Cooking System pot mated to the MSR Pocket Rocket stove at 1 minute, 42 seconds. My testing was done indoors, no wind, temperatures in the low 60s, hardly real-world but conditions were consistent at least.

Second place went to the WindPro under Jetboil’s 1.5-liter Group Cooking System pot at 2:17. Third place went to the Jetboil burner and the 1.5-liter Jetboil pot with a time of 2:54. Just behind that in fourth place at just under three minutes (2:58) was the Jetboil PCS. The Pocket Rocket matched this using the 51/4-inch titanium pot, coming in at 3 minutes.

Snow Peak’s Giga Power stove and titanium pot came in at 4:45. Using this stove and the 1.5-liter Jetboil pot turned in boiling times of 2:55. (These were all half-liter boiling times.)

Outside in 40-degree temperatures and a light wind, the Reactor, with a partial canister of gas, turned in a four-minute rolling boil time for a liter of tap-temperature water. I figured I could top that with my MSR Dragonfly (white gas) with a 11/2-quart cook pot and MSR heat exchanger. I was wrong. It took five minutes to bring the water to a rolling boil.

(In a review on Trailspace.com, where the temperature must have been warmer, the Reactor boiled its first liter of water starting with a full canister in less than three minutes and its last liter from the end of a canister at 31/2 minutes. MSR says the Reactor will boil 22 liters of water per 8-ounce canister.)

Given the convenience, compactness, and ease of setup of a canister stove and for simply heating water or soups, the canister stoves shine. For cold weather and all-around performance, the Reactor shines much brighter. For other than heating water, you still have a lot of choices. Because it is so efficient at heat transfer, it is difficult to simmer in the Reactor vs., say, the Dragonfly. Also, you don’t have the versatility of being able to use different pots with a canister stove vs. other stoves.

But if you want a hot drink or hot water really quickly to rehydrate a meal, check out the Reactor. I found the 51/4-inch diameter cook pot was a perfect size to hold a two-serving Mountain House meal pouch. I boiled a liter of water, poured two cups into a Nalgene bottle, and placed the pouch into the remaining hot water in the pot. Then I poured the two cups into the pouch, stirred, zipped it up, and let it sit for seven or eight minutes.

The hot water in the cook pot kept the meal so hot I burned my tongue on the first bite. And the meal stayed hot down to the last spoonful. (If it’s really cold, you could always fire up the stove again for a minute or so and reheat the water in the pot. Be careful, though, it boils quickly and will boil over seconds later.)

Be prepared to shell out around $140. This hot technology doesn’t come cheap. The Jetboil Group Cooking System is retailing for $119.95.

Wave of winners at symposium

Last Friday’s Paddle Smart Safety Symposium at the YMCA in Bangor was a success. About 200 attended to view the static displays in the gym, the pool demonstrations, the lectures, and the slide shows.

Marie Matthews of Bangor is the happy owner of a new Old Town Cayuga 160 sea kayak. She won the grand prize in the raffle. Others raffle winners walked away with an MTI lifejacket, a Thule Hull-a-Port roof rack, a half-day sea kayak tour from Castine Kayak Adventures, and a pack basket made by Jerry LaPointe. And others received door prizes from Epic Sports including life jackets, a Shelly Johnson book, SeaLine paddle floats, a deck bag, and watertight duffel.

For those of us who planned the event, it was gratifying to see new faces (74 percent attending did so for the first time). Of those attending 17 percent said they were moving-water canoeists, 22 percent still-water canoeists, 36 percent were recreational kayakers, 8 percent were white water kayakers, and 17 percent were sea kayakers.

The bulk of them rated themselves as beginners (57 percent), 39 percent said they were intermediate, and 4 percent said they were advanced.

5K benefit trail run

Are you a runner looking to have a little fun and feel good about it? Why not register for the Epic 5K Trail Run that will be at the Bangor City Forest at 9 a.m. on April 28? The $10 advance registration ($15 on race day) will go to the Bangor Humane Society. Forms are available at www.epicsportsofmaine.com or you can drop by the store in downtown Bangor.

There will be gift certificates awarded to male and female winners. Overall winners will each receive a pair of Vasque trail running shoes.

The race will not be held at the Tripp Drive entrance to the City Forest. It will be at the site of the former city dump. Take Hogan Road exit from I-95 and drive to the intersection with Stillwater Avenue. Proceed straight across onto Kittredge Road and go one mile. Parking will be available at roadside. The course follows the East-West trail and ends near the start.

Epic Sports and the Sub5 Track Club are the sponsors.

MOAC meeting

Peter Childers at MOAC dropped me a line to remind you the outing club is meeting at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday at Epic Sports in Bangor. Cheryl Daigle from the Penobscot River Restoration Project will give the presentation.

The Penobscot River Restoration Project is one of the nation’s more innovative restoration ideas – a collaborative effort between industry, federal, state, and tribal governments and conservation groups, the project resolves longstanding disagreements over how best to restore native sea-run fish and their habitat while balancing the need for hydropower production, Childers wrote.

For more information contact Daigle at cheryl@penobscotriver.org.

Jeff Strout’s column on outdoor recreation is published each Saturday. He can be reached at 990-8202 or by e-mail at jstrout@bangordailynews.net.