Joe's Stove
A little story about Stormies
Many years ago, I worked in the climbing store Outside, nestled in the valley below Stanage Edge. Although the shop’s bread and butter was walkers and rock climbers, we’d also succeeded in becoming one of the premier alpine and high-mountain shops in the UK (I sold Bear Grylls his One Sport Everest boots, for example). The reason for this specialty was our boss, Dick Turnbull, who had done such things as climb all six Alpine North Faces in winter. To me—always in search of father figures—Dick was it, even if he was the kind of father who gave you nightmares.
I once asked him why he was always shouting at me and no one else.
“Because they don’t like it,” he replied.
“I don’t like it either,” I shot back.
On another occasion, I was interviewed by the police after being a passenger in Dick’s car on the way to Scotland. We had crashed into another vehicle, and the other party claimed Dick had used threatening behaviour.
“It might look like threatening behaviour if you didn’t know Dick,” I told the police officer, “but he’s always like that.”
Dick was an innovator and a tinkerer, always looking for the next big thing or the perfect bit of kit—be it monopoint crampons (when dual points were the default), leather ice climbing boots (when everyone else was still in plastics), or curved axes (when all others were straight or bent). One of Outside’s strengths was that it didn’t give people what they wanted; it tried to convince them of what they needed. When someone came in looking for a pair of Scarpa Vega plastic boots and Grivel 2Fs for ice climbing in the Alps, they might end up leaving with some La Sportiva Nepals and Charlet Moser Grade 8 dual points—but with the outer points removed to make them asymmetric (since there were no asymmetric crampons on the market at the time).
Of course, persuading people that this was what they actually wanted took a lot of work. But the fact that Outside is still there and doing well thirty years later, while most other shops are gone, is a testament to this uphill strategy. It’s like that old story about America’s best car salesmen: it’s not about selling the car; it’s about selling the next one to the same customer, and the next, and the next.
One of Dick’s niche products was the B.O.M.B., which stood for Bloody Outrageous Mountain Burner. This was a modified Markill Stormy hanging stove with its burner replaced by a more powerful Epigas Micro burner, alongside a copper heat exchanger that ran through the flame and down to the cartridge. This meant the gas kept a full head of steam right down to the last drop, even in sub-zero temperatures.
I believe the Stormy had been co-designed with Jeff Lowe, who spent some wilderness years in Europe working with continental companies. It was far more specialised than the stoves that eventually replaced it, like the Jetboil and MSR Reactor, featuring a two-pot design that nestled together around a hanging windshield. The design allowed you to heat water in one pot while the other nestled on top, melting more snow above it. It was a thousand times better than anything else on the market at the time, which usually involved precariously balancing a gas stove on your knees while perched on a ledge.
Whenever I got an order for a B.O.M.B., I’d go out into the shed around the back of Outside to handcraft the copper heat exchanger by flattening a copper pipe in a vise, then drilling holes in the windshield so it could slot through onto the 250cc cartridge. The cartridge also featured a foam cup wrapped around it. Rather than offering insulation (which, in truth, just makes a gas cartridge colder), the foam held the copper in place and allowed it to spring free when it was no longer needed.
I once showed the B.O.M.B. to an American rep for MSR, and his jaw dropped when I explained how it worked.
“Dude,” he said, “you’re not even supposed to leave gas canisters on a parcel shelf in the sun.”
But the proof was in the pudding. The B.O.M.B. filled a crucial gap on a lot of cold climbs and expeditions for many years, built for and sold to all the big-name climbers of the era.
But—and here’s where this story really begins—it wasn’t all plain sailing. One issue we encountered was a dodgy batch of Epigas Micro stoves. For some reason, they would work perfectly well for a while, then suddenly drop into pilot-light mode, going from a flame-thrower to a Bic lighter with no warning. This had happened to me when Rich Cross and I climbed the North East Spur of the Les Droites in winter. The stove lost power on our first bivouac, meaning it took several hours just to melt a single cup of water. We pushed on and completed the route in three days, but we went very hungry and thirsty.
Because there were no alternative stoves that fitted the Stormy chassis, we just had to keep our fingers crossed.
Then, one day, I got a call from Joe Simpson—the Joe Simpson—looking for a B.O.M.B. for an upcoming Himalayan expedition. I built one up as requested, and a few days later, he picked it up on his way to Manchester Airport. I pointed out that we’d been having some intermittent problems with the Micro burner, but he was deep in that pre-expedition zone where all you want to do is get going, so I don’t think he was really listening to a shop assistant. Before he left, though, we did manage to get him to sign some copies of his latest book, Storms of Silence. There aren’t that many superstar climbers, but Joe was one of them, right up there with Chris Bonington and Fred Dibnah.
Fast forward a month, and Joe reappeared in the shop. He was pissed off. He’d been up on a big, gnarly Himalayan peak, climbing alpine-style, when his stove had died completely. No pilot light, no hiss—just silence, forcing them to retreat. I wasn’t entirely sure what Joe wanted me to do about it; the manufacturing fault wasn’t ours, and I highly doubted Epigas was going to reimburse him for a failed expedition.
But when you have Joe Simpson standing in front of you demanding more than just a “sorry to hear that, Joe,” you have to think on your feet. All I could manage was a little creative suggestion:
“Never mind, Joe. Maybe you can call your next book Stormies of Silence?”
I don’t think Joe found it funny.
i still have a markill stormy.