by Derrick |
Last Updated: August 10, 2023 The Kni-co Trekker Stove is an affordable, high-quality folding wall tent stove for people who love winter camping, overnight hunts, or other outdoor pursuits where you need to keep warm while sleeping in a canvas or nylon tent. If your tent is equipped with a stove jack (a piece of fire-resistant material that allows a stove pipe to pass through, then you can likely use the Kni-co Trekker.
Wendell, a contributing author at WanderingOutdoors.com who runs a Youtube Channel covering outdoor and survival gear, has a great video going over the stove and doing the initial burn-in (removes oils and other chemicals used in the production process).
Wendell is going to be using it in a Sil-nylon One Tygris Smokey Hot Tent; this tent already comes with a stove jack so you can safely use a stove such as the Kni-co.
According to Kni-co, the stove was designed as a compact, lightweight stove for trappers running trap lines in Alaska. Being compact and ability to break down to a rather lightweight footprint that is was to tow behind a snow mobile or ATV, while being easy to deploy quickly when you hit camp for the night.
Trekker Stove Specifications
Dimensions: The trekker stove is approximately 15″ high, 10″ wide and 19″ long, whith a storage size of 10″ x 10″ x 19″ and a fire box that has internal dimensions of 9 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ x 17″
What do I like about this: The stove is fairly compact, but has enough width (10″) and depth (19″) to hold fairly substantial pieces of fire wood. Some small tent stoves are either abnormally narrow or shallow depth which makes you do extra work cutting firewood to make the wood really small to fit the stove.
Weight: The Kni-co Trekker weights approximately 10 lbs.
Durability: This stove is 22 gauge steel, a good compromise between strength and portability. Overall you can get lighter stoves but will be sacrificing durability and how long the stove will last.
Kni-Co Stove Package Options and Optional Accessories
Kni-co has a variety of packages you can get with the stove when you purchase it, or you can purchase the accessories separately. The first package is the stove only, the second package is the stove, stove pipe, damper, and spark arrestor, while the third package has everything that is in the second package plus a side table that expands the top of the stock (to use for cooking or warming coffee), and a water tank that you can fill with water to ensure you have hot water within your tent.
One other accessory I would recommend getting is a “false bottom”, this is a metal piece that goes on the bottom of the firebox of the stove, it adds some durability to the bottom of the stove where the hot coals come into contact with the stove. Using one of these is a small investment that can vastly prolong the life of your stove.
If you currently do not want to purchase a false bottom, you can accomplish a similar level of protection by using a layer of sand in the bottom of the stove (that you can remove during transport) or purchasing some “fire bricks” that go into the bottom of the stove to help protect the bottom of the stove.
Kni-co stoves can be purchased directly from Kni-co, and also major retailers like Amazon.com and Cabelas.com
Kni-co Hot Water Tank
The hot water take is a great addition for your Kni-Co stove. The hot water tank attaches to the side of your stove so when you are using the stove for heating or cooking the water in the tank will heat up so you can do dishes or have a hot cup of tea. This isn’t a must have accessory like the false bottom, but it is more of a luxury item that is really a nice to have.
What Can be improved with the Kni-Co Trekker?
While I really like this stove, I think a few compromises have to be made to have a fairly compact, light weight stove. The main compromise is the smaller fire box you can only load it up enough to get about an 4 hour burn time. This would be a major downfall if you needed the stove to heat all night, but most people utilize the a sleeping back and only use the stove for added heat and to cook and warm water.
The second, issue with the smaller fire box is if you are using the stove for a few days you may need to empty ashes a few times as the ash builds up from burning wood. Most people bring a small portable shovel to pull ash out of the stove to dispose of.