Skip to content

Cookies 🍪

This site uses cookies that need consent.

Learn more

Zur Powderguide-Startseite Zur Powderguide-Startseite
gear of the week

Gear of the Week | Tealight

Simple, functional design, versatile range of applications

by Lea Hartl 11/12/2016
Today's GOTW is dedicated to a versatile piece of equipment that may be small, but achieves great things. A timeless classic that impresses with its low weight and pack size and is hardly damaged by years of storage in the backpack: the tea light.

Tealights are small candles in aluminum containers that usually have a diameter of 39 mm and burn for 3 - 4 hours, as you can read in the surprisingly extensive Wikipedia article on this topic. Especially now in the fall, you can use the little lights to create a cozy atmosphere when baking cookies, or spill the wax and make a mess. Incidentally, the tealight wax liquefies so quickly because the aluminum containers have a very high thermal conductivity.

The romantic embellishment of the living situation with candles can also be used for unplanned bivouacs in snow caves. The tealight is ideal here due to its low weight. You can throw it in your backpack and then never think about it again until it's time to raise the mood and temperature in the snow hole.

gear of the week
presented by

Another area of application for the tea light is drying shoes in adverse conditions. This is very demanding and mistakes can have unpleasant consequences. We recommend having an expert show you the procedure before trying it yourself. If no other drying options are available, the inner boot can be removed from the ski boot shell and placed upside down on a flat surface. Now light the tea light and carefully push it under the boot. If you have the relevant experience, adjust the height of the boot above the flame by means of aids pushed under the tongue. After a while, there is indeed a noticeable drying effect, even if this is often doubted by skeptics.

Even when not burning, tea lights can be a lifesaver on a ski tour. If the snow is sticky, I smear them on the skins without hesitation instead of the skin wax intended for this purpose, the advantage of which has not yet become clear to me. Tea lights are relatively soft compared to other candles and are therefore easy to rub into the fur. Depending on the snow conditions, this can prevent (minor stud problems) or at least reduce (serious stud problems) studding.

You get a pleasant feeling of altruistic heroism when you can give fellow mountaineers half a tea light for their studded skins. That's why I sometimes take more than one tea light with me, especially on spring tours. Conveniently, for example, IKEA sells tea lights in a bag of 75 for €1.69. This will easily get you through one to around 75 winters, depending on whether or to what extent you also want to use the tea lights for cooking in the snow hole.

Photo gallery

This article has been automatically translated by DeepL with subsequent editing. If you notice any spelling or grammatical errors or if the translation has lost its meaning, please write an e-mail to the editors.

Show original (German)

Related articles

Comments

gear of the week
presented by