After growing tired of daily poached trout on my recent TYT (Kennedy Meadows to Tuolumne Meadows)-->JMT trip, I tried grilling some using my tent stakes as a grill. I just found some flat rocks in the existing fire ring, and piled them on top of the curved end of the stakes. It worked alright once set up, but IMO wasn’t worth the effort to repeat. At least I have a humorous picture:



I’m considering trying to make a collapsible UL grill with the BPL Ti UltraRods to avoid the hassle in the future…

I know bears go nuts when they smell fish. And this is BPL, right? So, you must also use these same stakes for your shelter, right? Man, if I was you,I just could not sleep at night knowing that sooner or later a bear is gonna be munching on that tasty titaneum au jus.
gKd
NH

If it isn't an environmental no-no, why not just use green branches? If you keep them a little away from the flames they should be no problem, and weigh nothing in your pack. Plus, you wouldn't have to worry about bears. One branch, with the fish threaded on in a series of "waves" would be all you need. A little salt, and Yum!

Edited by butuki on 09/22/2006 00:26:21 MDT.

Could the Ti stakes, once devoid of the hastily consumed tasty filet, be subjected to continued exposure to the flame to rid them of any last vestige of odoriferous chemicals (oils, fats, etc). Fire is pretty good at reducing organic chemicals to carbon and gasses, leaving nothing on the stakes that would attract a bear?

just a thought. perhaps not a good one? can anyone else weigh in here on this concept from "Bad Ideas R Us" - pj, president.

i grill sometimes (in proper places of course). somehow grilled anything tastes better.

have you considered...

http://www.purcelltrench.com/

Nice link! Scroll down to the "Stix" -- just two lengths of stainless tubing. For those concerned with bears and shelter lolipops, the Stix could go in your bear bag.

Ok, I'm currious, what are shelter lolipops? They must be really bad if they're mentioned along with bears. They aren't anything like a snipe are they? :)

Edit: I just figured it out, DUH. They are tent stakes, and they are far sharper than my mind is today.

Edited by ericnoble on 09/22/2006 18:47:29 MDT.

Of course I used these stakes for my shelter as well. This is the Multiple Use Gear forum, right? ;-)

I agree entirely on the bear concerns in the Sierra. This is why I fished, gutted, and cooked at least a mile from where I camped. I think the smell of cooking/cooked fish is a stronger attractor than the shelter lollipops. As for the shelter lollipops, I used a 1/4 Scotch-Bright pad to scrub them as best I could, then I rubbed them with some dirt, then cleaned them with some water. Scotch-Bright went in the Ursack. I was pretty paranoid about the bears, since there was a nearby sighting that very day near where I made the grill.

> After growing tired of daily poached trout on my recent TYT (Kennedy Meadows to Tuolumne Meadows)-->JMT trip, I tried grilling some using my tent stakes as a grill. I just found some flat rocks in the existing fire ring, and piled them on top of the curved end of the stakes.

Too heavy.
Try heating the flat rocks for a while in the fire, then flip them over, dust off the ash and place the fish on the rock. With the rock at the right temperature, you don't have to worry about
* burning the fish,
* the fish falling in the fire,
* getting ash/charcoal on the fish,
* instabilities while flipping the fish.

I never tried the rock-as-frying-pan technique primarily because I was concerned about making a mess of a rock. I wouldn't want to find a fish-fried rock in a fire pit... but maybe it wouldn't make a mess if at the perfect temperature?

Anyway, if I wanted em fried, I used my Snow Peak TI bowl, which was also multipurpose as the lid for my pot:

I have not used stakes for cooking (i'm a hammocker so I don't normaly have them) but I have used the aluminum stays from my pack as pot support over an open fire. It worked nicely and after cleaning the stays in the wet grass and dirt I just put them in my pack and hung the whole thing up with my food inside the pack. I was in a bear area so I didn't take any chances.
I'm sure they would work for fish the same way.

jamie in az

For anyone following this tread... I did end up making a grill and discussing it in another thread in the MYOG forum. Now you can rest assured that my I won't feed the bears any shelter lollipops...