“I THINK,” SAID CHRISTOPHER ROBIN, “THAT WE OUGHT TO EAT ALL OUR PROVISIONS NOW, SO THAT WE SHAN’T HAVE SO MUCH TO CARRY.”
—Winnie-the-Pooh, A. A. Milne
One of the joys of backpacking is taking the first sip of a hot drink at the end of a long day. Often it’s the anticipation of that moment that keeps me going for the last hour or so. The tent is up, my boots are off, and I can lie back and start to unwind. I may eat and drink while lying in the tent, a gale raging outside, or while sitting outside, back against a tree or boulder, admiring the view. Either way, this period of relaxation and renewal is a crucial part of living in the wilderness, one of the aspects of backpacking that differentiates it from day hiking.
Food plays a large part in how much you enjoy the outdoors. The possibilities and permutations are endless, so you can constantly vary your diet. Wilderness dining has two extremes: gourmet eaters and survival eaters. The first like to make camp at lunchtime so they have several hours to set up field ovens; they bake cakes and bread and cook multi-course dinners. They walk only a few miles each day and may use the same campsite for several nights. Survival eaters breakfast on a handful of dry cereal and a swig of water and are up and walking within minutes of waking. They pound out dozens of miles every day; lunch is a series of cold snacks eaten on the move. Dinner consists of a freeze-dried meal, “cooked” by pouring hot water into the package, or more cold snacks.
Most people, of course, fall somewhere between these two extremes. I lean heavily toward being a survival eater, so you won’t learn here how to bake bread or pizza. For that you’ll need to turn to an outdoor cookery book, such as Dorcas Miller’s Backcountry Cooking and Good Food for Camp and Trail, Claudia Axcell, Vikki Kinmont Kath, and Diana Cooke’s Simple Foods for the Pack, June Fleming’s The Well-Fed Backpacker, and the wonderfully named Gorp, Glop and Glue Stew, by Yvonne Prater and Ruth Dyar Mendenhall, in which 165 well-known outdoorspeople give their favorite recipes and tell some kitchen tales. These books are full of mouthwatering recipes and suggestions. I’ve been meaning to try some of them since I bought Simple Foods for the Pack some twenty-five years ago.
Which foods are best for backpacking is debatable. At one hikers’ gathering I attended, a speaker denounced a certain popular candy bar as “not food” and said that when they reach town hikers should head for the salad bar, not the all-you-can-eat pizza place. Others demurred, strongly. Pasta keeps me going better than rice, potatoes, or other carbohydrates, perhaps simply because I prefer it. I know other hikers who hate pasta and never eat it. What it comes down to, of course, is personal choice. If a certain food helps you enjoy backpacking, then take it with you, whatever anyone else says.
Here I describe what I eat and why. I prefer less-processed, additive-free whole foods, preferably organic, and I am mostly vegetarian. I’ve been known to eat candy bars at times, however, and I can’t resist pizza.
Much of the information below was derived from Food Facts, by David Briggs and Mark Wahlqvist, a fascinating volume published in the UK and Australia in 1988 (it is long out of print, but available online at healthyeatingclub.com), and from the Dietary Guidelines published jointly by the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture (www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/dga).
Hot food provides no more energy than cold food. Cooking food can destroy some vitamins, though some starchy food such as potatoes, beans, and lentils need to be cooked to make them more digestible and, in the case of the last two, to destroy substances that make utilizing their protein difficult. One way to cut the weight of your pack would be to eat only cold food and thus dispense with stove, fuel, and cookware. I’ve considered this, but I always end up taking food that needs cooking because on short trips the extra weight is so slight that it doesn’t matter and on long trips the psychological boost of hot food is wonderful, especially when it’s chilly or the weather turns cold and wet.
I certainly wouldn’t recommend trying to survive without a stove and hot sustenance in winter, when you may have to melt snow for water and when a hot meal can send waves of welcome warmth through your cold, stiff body. If anyone becomes really cold, perhaps on the verge of hypothermia, hot food and drink are a great help.
Food consists of several components, and the body needs them all. The main ones are fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. All three provide energy but also serve other functions.
Fats release their energy slowly and can be stored in the body to be used when required. Because fats are digested gradually, they aren’t a quick source of energy. Your body can’t easily digest fats while exercising, either, so it’s best to avoid eating a lot of fat during the day. Eating fats as part of your evening meal, however, enables them to release their energy during the night, which helps keep you warm. Sources of fat include dairy products, margarine, eggs, nuts, and meat. The current standard advice is that you should cut down on foods high in saturated fats (butter, animal-fat margarine, cheese, whole milk, lard, chocolate) and replace them with those high in polyunsaturated fats (vegetable-fat margarine, low-fat spreads, vegetable oil) and monounsatu-rated fats (olive oil). Nutritionists recommend cutting down the total amount of fat in the diet anyway, since fat can have other unwanted health effects. The body needs some fat, but nothing like the amount most people in developed countries eat. However, fats are an important part of the backpacker’s diet, especially in cold weather.
Protein renews muscles and body tissue. During digestion, proteins break down into the amino acids they’re made from. The body then rebuilds these into muscle and tissue protein. Complete proteins contain a full complement of amino acids; they’re most commonly found in meat, eggs, and dairy products. Incomplete proteins lack one or more amino acids but can be combined to create complete proteins; they’re found in grains and legumes. Thus a stew with beans and barley provides all the amino acids. The body either burns protein as fuel or stores it as fat if it isn’t immediately used for muscle regeneration, so it’s best to eat small amounts of protein at every meal.
The body quickly and directly turns carbohydrates into energy, so these are the foods most needed by the backpacker. Carbohydrates may be simple or complex. Simple ones are sugars (sucrose, dextrose, fructose, glucose, and honey); complex ones are starches (grains, vegetables, legumes). Generally you should try to rely more on complex carbohydrates, because they provide more energy over a longer period. They also provide fiber, vitamins, and minerals. Fiber is essential in your diet to prevent constipation—a potential problem for backpackers living on dehydrated food. Sugars give you a quick boost when you’re tired, but it won’t last and you’ll feel tired again when the energy they supply is used up.
Determining what constitutes a proper proportion of these components in your diet is a nutritionist’s basic reason for being. The current advice from most experts is to eat less fat and protein and more carbohydrates. Most backpackers, especially those who undertake long hikes, will have come to this conclusion, I suspect, because it’s carbohydrates that speed you along the trail and that you crave when food runs low. My backpacking menu is probably 60 to 70 percent carbohydrates, the rest split equally between fats and proteins.
Vitamins and minerals are also food components, but not ones you need worry about on trips of less than one month. Even if your diet is deficient in them for short periods, it’s not likely to hurt you. But on long trips where you lack fresh food, adding a vitamin and mineral supplement to your diet could mean avoiding a deficiency. I’ve taken multivitamins on most of my long walks, though I didn’t do it on the five-and-a-half-month Continental Divide Trail hike and suffered no ill effects. Now I take vitamin C (1 gram) and vitamin E tablets each day (when I remember). Whether they make any difference I can’t tell, but they weigh very little, and they just might prevent a deficiency.
A calorie is the measure of food’s energy value. The calorie measurement used in reference to food is the kilocalorie (kcal)—it represents the amount of heat needed to raise 1 kilogram of water one degree Celsius. (Kilocalorie, or Calorie with a capital C, is the proper term, but it’s often referred to as “calorie” on food packages.) Sometimes kilojoules are used instead of kilocalories. There are 4.2 kilojoules to the kilocalorie.
How many kilocalories a person needs each day depends on metabolism, weight, age, sex, and level of activity. Metabolism is an extremely complex system that is not fully understood, but it defines the body processes that transform foods into usable elements and energy; any surplus is stored as fat. If you eat more kilocalories than you use, you’ll put on weight; if you eat fewer, you’ll lose it. Putting on weight is not usually a problem for backpackers, but losing it may be. The weight that most concerns us is the weight of the food we must carry in order to have enough energy.
People’s metabolic rates differ, though generally the fitter and more active you are, the faster you’ll burn up food, whether you’re working or at rest. Figures are available for the kilocalories needed for “everyday life” for people of different sizes. For someone of my height (5 feet, 8 inches) and weight (154 to 161 pounds), it’s about 2,500 kilocalories a day. Of that, 1,785 kilocalories make up the basal metabolism (the energy required simply to keep the body functioning), based on 1,100 kilocalories per 45 kilograms of body weight. To be able to expend more energy without burning body stores, I need to consume more kilocalories, so it’s clear that my backpacking menu must provide more than 2,500 kilocalories a day.
You can roughly calculate your kilocalorie needs based on figures that give kilocalorie demands of various activities (see sidebar). I did this when I wrote the first edition of this book. Before that I had just carried roughly the same weight of food on each walk, assuming it would provide the same number of kilocalories. I made the calculations because I was curious to see how closely my field-based figures compared with scientific ones and because the exercise might be useful for others in planning their food supplies.
KILOCALORIE DEMANDS OF VARIOUS ACTIVITIES
ACTIVITY
sleeping, resting, fasting
sitting—reading, desk work
sitting—typing, playing piano, operating controls
light bench work, serving in store, gardening, slow walking
social sports, cycling, tennis, light factory work, light farm work
heavy physical labor, carrying, stacking, cutting wood, jogging, competitive sports
very hard physical labor, intense physical activity, heavy lifting, very vigorous sporting activity
If we include walking with a pack at the upper end of category 5 and the lower end of category 6, then men need 360 kilocalories per hour and women 240. If you walk for about seven hours a day, not including stops, as I do, that works out to 2,100 kilocalories for a woman, and 2,520 for a man (five and six per minute, respectively). Splitting up the rest of the day into nine hours of sleeping and resting (category 1), which requires 270 to 540 kilocalories an hour (women) and 540 to 810 (men), and eight hours of category 4 (setting up camp, cooking, packing, “slow walking” around the site), which requires 960 to 1,680 kilocalories (women) and 1,440 to 1,920 (men), we end up with totals of 3,330 to 4,320 kilocalories (women) and 4,500 to 5,250 (men). These figures are very rough, of course, but they seem on the high side. You could argue, however, that a lot of backpacking activity falls into categories 6 and 7 and requires more energy than given here, not less.
Those figures seem high to me, because I need only about 4,000 kilocalories a day on trips that will last no more than a few weeks. But these figures are for “average” people, and no one fits them exactly. Even so, such exercises are useful to those who would like to know how much energy they use and where it comes from.
On longer hikes, my appetite goes up dramatically after the first couple of weeks, and I now plan for more food from that time onward. I estimate that on long hikes I average at least 5,000 kilocalories a day. In bitter weather, I may need more because of the cold, and more again on ski tours, because skiing uses up energy at a far greater rate than walking.
Most foods these days have the calorie content listed on the package, which is useful for making comparisons and compiling menus. I always check labels to see if the kilocalories are listed. Unlike many who count calories, I’m searching for high-calorie, not low-calorie, foods. The figures in the table on page 248 are taken from a variety of sources, including the USDA National Nutrient Database (www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp); Food Facts, by David Briggs and Mark Wahlqvist; and manufacturers’ specifications.
Based on calories only, these figures suggest that you should live solely on margarine, vegetable oil, dried eggs, nuts, and chocolate in order to carry the least weight. But you wouldn’t feel very well or find hiking easy, since these are all very high in fats (fats contain 9 kilocalories per gram, while proteins and carbohydrates have just 4).
The diet I eat of complex carbohydrates (dried skimmed milk, dried fruit, dried vegetables, pasta, rice, oat crackers, muesli, and granola bars), plus a little fat (cheese, margarine) gives about 400 kilo-calories per 3.5 ounces. This works out to 2.2 pounds of food for 4,000 kilocalories per day, which is about what I carry. This diet should also provide enough protein. Only a sugar-based diet runs the risk of being insufficient in protein.
It’s worth checking the caloric content of any food you intend to carry—there are significant variations between brands, and high-calorie, carbohydrate-based foods mean less weight than low-calorie ones. For example, I’m glad I don’t carry canned fish—as so many backpackers do—since according to the chart the weight per calorie (including the can) is very high. However, I really should give up my coffee in favor of cocoa!
On two- or three-day warm-weather trips, the weight of food in the pack isn’t a major concern, and I sometimes take bread, fresh fruit, canned goods, and anything else I find in the cupboard. But in cold weather and on any trip when I have to carry at least a week’s worth of food, weight matters a great deal. Unfortunately, you need less food for short trips and more for long ones. I’ve read of people who get by on a pound or so of food a day without subsisting on margarine and nuts, but I can’t—at least not for more than a few days. Skimp on food and you might find yourself feeling lethargic and irritable. You might even pack in the trip without realizing that your low morale was due to a lack of food.
NUTRITIONAL CONTENT OF SOME COMMON FOODS
I need about 35 ounces of food for each day on the trail. Powdered drinks, condiments, and other odds and ends are included in this total, which roughly divides into 7 ounces for breakfast, 14 ounces for dinner, and 14 ounces eaten during the day. The main evening meal usually weighs about 7 ounces, the other 7 ounces being made up of soup, dessert, margarine, herbs and spices, milk powder, coffee, and sugar. These figures yield approximately 800,1,600, and 1,600 kilocalories for the three meals. If the total weight of my food comes to much more than 35 ounces a day, I know I’ve packed too much, so I jettison some.
This 35 ounces a day equals 15 pounds a week, a considerable weight. Two weeks’ food—30 pounds—is the most I ever consider carrying, and I do that only if there’s no other choice. Back in 1982 on the Pacific Crest Trail I foolishly carried 44 pounds of food on the twenty-three-day crossing of the snowbound High Sierra, which made for a 100-pound load, because I also carried snowshoes, an ice ax, crampons, and cold-weather clothing. My pack was too heavy for me to lift; I had to put it on while sitting down. The weight was ridiculous, and I attempted to carry it only because I had no idea what such a load would feel like. And I still ran short of food—probably because of the extra energy I needed to carry all that weight. Never again!
On long hikes and in cold conditions, I keep the weight down to 35 ounces a day by increasing the amount of fat, usually by adding more margarine and cheese to evening meals. Polar explorers often eat appalling amounts of fat daily, since it’s the only way they can consume the 7,000 to 8,000 kilocalories they need. Eating that amount in carbohydrates would mean huge loads and never-ending meals.
How bulky food is doesn’t matter much on one- or two-night jaunts, but it can be a problem on longer trips. Fresh, canned, and retort (cooked food packed in pouches) goods are bulky and heavy, so dried foods are the backpacker’s staple for long-haul hikes. Removing the moisture from food maintains its caloric value while drastically reducing its weight and bulk.
The simplest way of drying food is in the hot sun. Because this doesn’t remove as much moisture as other methods, it’s not used for many foods, though some fruits, such as bananas, may be sun-dried. Air-drying, where the food is spun in a drum or arranged on trays in a container through which hot air is blown, produces dehydrated foods. Reconstituted commercial dehydrated foods have a reputation for being unappetizing, because the cell structure is damaged during the process. In spray-drying, food is sprayed at high speed into a hot-air-filled cylinder. (This method is used to dry milk, cheese, and coffee.) The most complex and expensive method of extracting the water from foods is freeze-drying, where food is flash-frozen so its moisture turns to ice crystals too small to damage cell structure. The food is then placed in a low-temperature vacuum, which turns the ice directly into vapor without its passing through a liquid state (sublimation), again leaving the cells undamaged. Freeze-dried food is costly compared with dehydrated food, but it tastes better. Because the food can be cooked before being freeze-dried, you often just need boiling water to reconstitute it.
HOME DEHYDRATING Many backpackers dehydrate their own food, everything from dinners to fruit snacks. I haven’t done this myself, though I’ve eaten home-dehydrated food and been impressed enough to plan on doing it myself “one day.” Home dehydrators consist of racks of trays through which a fan blows heat from an electric motor. There are several models, or you could build your own or even use the oven on low heat (about 140°F [60°C]) with the door slightly open. I’ve tried dried fruits—passion fruit is particularly tasty—dried tomato sauce, and dried pasta and lentil meals. All were very palatable and quick to cook as long as they were soaked a little while first. Many outdoor cookbooks have sections on dehydrating. Alan Kesselheim’s Trail Food has comprehensive details, as does Dorcas Miller’s Good Food for Camp and Trail.
The time food takes to cook affects the amount of stove fuel you have to carry and how long you have to wait for a meal at the end of the day. When you’re crouched over a tiny stove, exhausted and hungry at the end of a long day with a storm raging all around, knowing your energy-restoring dinner will be ready in five rather than thirty minutes can be very important. Also, as you gain altitude and air pressure drops, water boils at a lower temperature, so recommended cooking times increase—times listed on food packages are for sea level. The boiling point of water drops 9°F (13°C) for every 5,000 feet in altitude; cooking time doubles for every 9°F (13°C) drop in the boiling point of water. At 5,000 feet, the cooking time is twice what it would be at sea level; at 10,000 feet, nearly four times as long; at 15,000 feet, seven times; and at 20,000 feet an agonizing thirteen times longer. These cooking times are for fresh foods, of course; precooked dried food takes only a little longer to cook at high altitude. For meals above 7,000 to 8,000 feet, you need quick-cooking and precooked foods.
These figures are important because most backpacking foods are cooked in boiling water. Since frying requires carrying oil or cooking fat and cleaning the greasy pan can be difficult, I rarely fry food. You can bake and roast if you have a fire for cooking, but I’ve never done so. Anglers often carry foil to wrap trout in before placing them in the embers of a campfire—the one type of roasting that makes sense to me. Baking can also be done with lightweight portable devices like the Outback Oven and the Bake-Packer. These are so easy to use that I’ve baked in camp very occasionally, though only with prepared mixes (see pages 319–20 for more on baking).
Many packaged foods—from soups to noodles—don’t require any cooking. Just add boiling water and give a quick stir. They usually don’t taste as good as meals that require a little simmering, but I generally carry a few for those times when I want hot food quickly and I’m not too fussy. Most of my meals need five to ten minutes’ simmering, a good balance between tasty and fast food.
Cooking times can be reduced by presoaking some foods in cold water. This works with dried vegetables, dried meat, soya products, and legumes, but not with pasta or rice. Some people soak food in a tightly capped bottle during the day so that it’s ready for cooking when they reach camp. You can save fuel—though not time—with most foods that need simmering by bringing the water to a boil, adding the food, and then turning off the heat. As long as a tight lid is used, the food will at least partially, if not completely, cook in the hot water. If necessary you can warm it up again on the stove before eating. I often do this when I make camp with plenty of time to spare, then reheat the food when I’m ready to eat.
Five days’ supplies. Items in cardboard containers will be repacked in plastic bags.
A list of foods suitable for backpacking would fill a separate book, so here are just a few suggestions heavily biased toward my own diet.
Suitable foods can be found in grocery stores, health-food stores, and outdoor stores. Prices are lowest in supermarkets, which actually have all the foods you need. Quite a few will be processed foods with additives, however, which may affect your decision. Check cooking times carefully; one package of soup may take five minutes to cook while one next to it on the shelf takes twenty-five. Health-food stores supply unadulterated foods and a wide variety of cereals, dried fruits, and grain bars, though the number of supermarkets selling these items is increasing. Outdoor stores are where you’ll find foods specially intended for backpackers and mountaineers. Lightweight, low in bulk, often freeze-dried, and expensive, these are fine if you don’t mind the cost.
A selection of specialty backpacking meals.
The best specialty backpacking meals I’ve found come from AlpineAire (formerly of California but in Montana), whose foods I ate on the Continental Divide walk. Even after five and a half months on the trail, I hadn’t grown tired of the food. AlpineAire foods are additive-free, made from wholemeal pasta and brown rice, and include both freeze-dried and dehydrated items. The range includes dishes for breakfast and evening meals, plus soups and light meals for lunch. Recently I’ve been impressed with MSR’s organic Mountain Gourmet food, which comes in brown paper packages that can be burned or recycled, and Backpacker’s Pantry. Other brands include Enertia Trail Food, Adventure Foods, Mountain House, Richmoor, Campfood, and Harvest Foodworks.
Some specialty foods are designed for baking devices like the BakePacker and Outback Oven (for more on these, see pages 319–20). Adventure Foods makes a range of meals for the BakePacker. I tried the gingerbread and the honey cornbread and found both delicious. The dry weights are 7 and 9.6 ounces, and there is enough for two. Jean Spangenberg’s The Bake-Packer’s Companion lists many more recipes. For the Outback Oven, Backpacker’s Pantry offers a selection of meals. When traveling solo, you can carry surplus baked goods and eat them the next day, something you’d never do with leftover dehydrated food.
The smell of fresh-baked foods emanating from these miniovens is truly wonderful, but cooking times are long, and some preparation is required. These are luxury foods for days when there’s time to spare and trips where weight isn’t important. (For the addresses of the manufacturers and suppliers listed here, see Appendix 3.)
The only hot sustenance I normally have when I’m still bleary-eyed and trying to come to terms with being awake is a mug or two of decaffeinated coffee with sugar and dried milk (combined weight 0.3 ounce). I eat 4 ounces of muesli or granola with water, dried milk (0.3 to 0.6 ounce) and a few spoonfuls of sugar (about 0.5 to 0.6 ounce) unless the brand is presweetened. I have no preference for any particular brand—there are many good ones. If it’s cold enough for the water in the pan to have frozen overnight, I dump the cereal on top of the ice, then heat the lot on the stove to make a sort of muesli porridge.
For those who prefer a hot breakfast, instant oatmeal is popular (and very lightweight), and there are various dried omelet and pancake mixes. Of course, you can eat anything at any time of the day. One of my trail companions ate instant noodles for breakfast—not a food I could face at the start of the day. I traveled part of the Pacific Crest Trail with an experienced hiker who ate trail mix for breakfast, which I’ve tried but find too dry. Another hiker I met on the same walk ate instant freeze-dried meals three times a day for the whole six-month walk, another diet I couldn’t contemplate.
Walking with a pack requires a steady supply of energy, so I eat several times during the day. I often eat the first mouthfuls of “lunch” soon after breakfast, before I start walking. Some people like to stop and make hot drinks during the day, or even cook soup or light meals. I don’t, since I rarely stop for more than ten or twenty minutes at a time, and I’m happy to snack on cold foods and drink cold water. Also, the days when I’d most like something hot are those when the weather’s so cold or wet that stopping for more than a couple of minutes is a bad idea. In such conditions I’d rather keep moving and make camp earlier. On days when long stops are pleasant, I don’t feel the need for hot food.
Trail mix, or gorp, is a staple snack food. At its most basic, it consists of peanuts and raisins (hence gorp—“good old raisins and peanuts”), but more sophisticated and tasty mixes can include bits of dried fruit (my favorites are papaya, pineapple, and dates), a range of nuts, dried coconut, chocolate or carob chips, butterscotch chips, M&Ms, sunflower and sesame seeds, granola, and anything else you fancy. I prefer trail mix to be on the sweet side; others prefer a more savory taste. I plan on 2.5 to 3.5 ounces a day. It soon goes. On stormy days I sometimes carry a bag of trail mix in my jacket pocket so I can snack as I hike.
I used to eat several chocolate bars and other candy bars every day, but following the recommendation to cut down on fat and sugar and increase complex carbohydrates, I no longer do so. Instead, I munch on cereal or granola bars, usually three or four a day.
I also often carry energy bars, or at least a product that has adopted that name since it became popular. Back in 1982 I discovered the California-made Bear Valley MealPack and Pemmican bars, and they’ve been a favorite ever since. They’re filling, packed with energy, tasty, and surprisingly light, at just over 3.75 ounces a bar. They’re basically a compressed mix of whole grains, dried fruit, nuts, and soy products with various natural flavorings. They contain all eight essential amino acids, which makes them a good source of protein. I ate at least one every day of the five-and-a-half-month Continental Divide Trail walk, and two or more a day on the three-month Yukon walk, and I never grew tired of them. If I ever do a trip where I eat only cold food, these bars will make up the main part of my diet. There are four varieties: Fruit ’n Nut Pemmican (420 calories), Sesame Lemon MealPack (410 calories), Coconut Almond MealPack (400 calories) and Carob-Cocoa Pemmican (440 calories). Of the other energy bars, I like Clif bars and Balance bars, while Mojo bars are good for a savory rather than sweet bar.
For a contrast to bars and trail mix I usually carry some bread or crackers and cheese or vegetable spread. I like tortillas or pita bread, both of which come in resealable plastic bags. Wholemeal tortillas are best for eating unheated; white-flour tortillas taste uncooked to me. If you carry breads, beware of their going moldy. I took enough pita bread for one a day on a two-week walk in the Grand Canyon. A few days before the end of the trip I was eating one in the dark when a nasty taste filled my mouth—the next day I noticed the green patches of mold on the remaining bread.
Cheese or vegetable pâté spreads that come in squeeze tubes are, for me, a necessity on breads. Meat eaters often carry pâté or salami to go with crackers, while those with a really sweet tooth can take jam or honey, both of which come in plastic squeeze bottles or tubs. I avoid spreads that come in tubs and foil—they ooze around the edges and smear themselves on your clothes and the sides of the plastic bags they have to be kept in.
A one-pot dehydrated or freeze-dried meal is the basis of my evening repast. It’s possible to concoct such meals at home from basic ingredients, but I prefer to use complete meals, which I doctor to suit my taste. As I mentioned earlier, my favorites come from AlpineAire; all its meals require only boiling water and a seven-to-ten-minute wait. A typical meatless example (the company makes beef, turkey, seafood, and chicken dishes, too) is Mountain Chili (ingredients: cooked freeze-dried pinto beans, soy protein, tomato powder, cornmeal, freeze-dried corn, spices, bell peppers, onions, and salt), which has a net weight of 6 ounces. It makes two servings—maybe: if you’re not hungry, haven’t been walking all day, and have lots of other food to eat. I have no problem eating all 30 ounces and 680 kilocalories in one sitting. (When searching store shelves for evening meals, I look for dry weights of about 6 to 7 ounces and ignore the number of servings. If the amount is well below 7 ounces, I carry it only if I’m planning on adding extra food.)
When I don’t eat freeze-dried meals, I live on pasta-based dinners. Lipton offers a host of pasta-and-sauce meals that are quick cooking and tasty; I know people who’ve hiked the Pacific Crest Trail using Lipton’s meals as their main dinners. The staple outdoor dinner, though, is that perennial hikers’ favorite—macaroni and cheese. Kraft Cheesy Pasta is the most common brand (ingredients: pasta, cheese, dried skimmed milk, dried whey, salt, emulsifying salts, lactic acid, color). It cooks in six minutes and comes in 6.75-ounce packs, just right for a single meal (the pack says “serves 2–3”). The makers advise adding milk and margarine to the dish. I add extra cheese, too.
Asian noodles with flavor packets—usually sold under the name ramen—cook in about four minutes and are a good alternative to macaroni and cheese. Westbrae Ramens, made from wholemeal flour and found in health-food stores and some supermarkets, are my favorites. Each of the half-dozen varieties weighs about 3 ounces and makes 9 ounces of cooked food. I use two packages of noodles per meal and add a packet of dehydrated soup mix, cheese, and margarine to make a full meal. Supermarkets sell white-flour versions of these noodles, which I sometimes use.
If I do make up my own meals, they’re usually based on macaroni or other pasta as a base, to which I add dehydrated soup mix, such as onion or tomato, plus cheese sliced up with my pocketknife. These are so easy to prepare that I do it in camp rather than at home. Almost every night of the eighty-six-day Scandinavian mountain hike, I dined on quick-cooking macaroni mixed with dried soup, dried milk, and cheese, plus flavorings.
There are various ways to enhance the taste of any meal. Herbs and spices, soup mix, or cheese are popular additions. I carry garlic powder (fresh cloves on short trips), curry or chili powder, black pepper, and mixed herbs (but not salt—there’s usually plenty in dried food anyway). Margarine, cheese, and milk powder add kilocalories as well as taste and bulk to meals. Soup mixes can be the sauce for a meal with pasta or rice, with cheese, dried milk, and other ingredients added to increase the food value. I often mix foods on the last few evenings of a long trip, using up whatever I have left. If I’m buying pasta or rice to add to soup, I look for quick-cooking varieties.
I usually eat a bowl of soup before having my main meal, unless I’m very hungry. The mixes that require simmering for five or ten minutes taste best (I like Knorr), but instant soups require less time and fuel to prepare. The biggest problem with them is the serving size—often a meager 7 ounces when rehydrated, and only 118 kilocalories. I solve this problem by eating two packages at a time (2 ounces total dry weight). Again, adding margarine and cheese increases the energy content.
I always carry dried milk and usually cheese. I used to always carry margarine, usually Parkay or other liquid margarine in a squeeze bottles (weight about 16 ounces), since these are less messy and easier to use than tub varieties, but I stopped taking it several years ago and haven’t missed it. With cheese I plan on 2 ounces a day and twice that if it’s a main part of a meal. On long trips I use up any cheese in the first few days, so I eat the lowest-calorie meals I’m carrying then. Instant nonfat dry milk adds taste and calories to any dish, and is also good with breakfast cereal and tea or coffee. I think the best is Milkman Instant Milk, which tastes more like fresh milk than any of the others; I prefer brands that contain nothing but milk powder rather than those with additives. A standard 7-ounce pack of instant milk will make 3.52 pints and lasts me at least four or five days.
Coffee and sugar make up the final course of my evening sustenance. Having given up caffeine a few years ago, I now carry only decaffeinated coffee, and I drink much less of it, since I don’t need the boost anymore. A couple of mugs an evening means carrying 0.75 ounce of sugar and 0.2 ounce of instant coffee per day. I don’t drink tea, but those who do seem to find a large supply of tea bags essential—though an amazing number of mugs can be wrung from just one bag when supplies run low. Hot chocolate supplies plenty of energy—unlike coffee or tea—and comes in convenient envelopes. It’s particularly nice on cold evenings as a warming bedtime drink. I’ve recently taken a liking to hot spiced cider drinks in mug-sized envelopes, and I now often drink one or two of these in the evening instead of coffee.
There are variations, of course, on what food can be taken on any backpacking outing. On two- or three-day trips, I sometimes pack sandwiches for each day’s lunch. Retort foods are feasible then, too—they’re lighter and tastier than canned goods, though heavier and bulkier than dried ones.
Cold-weather and winter hikes in northern latitudes call for a big change in my diet. Fewer daylight hours mean more time spent in camp and less on the move, while colder temperatures mean a need for more kilocalories—so I take slightly less food for daytime but more for the evening. In particular, I usually add some sort of dessert as a third course; hot instant custard with dried fruit is a favorite. A 3-ounce package provides 350 to 400 kilocalories even before you add dried fruit. Cold instant puddings are also a good way to pile on calories; preparation time can be speeded up by burying them in the snow to set.
Many years ago I carried a foil-wrapped block of compressed emergency rations, called Turblokken, at the bottom of my pack, assuming that it would keep me going if I ran out of food. I finally ate it once when my supplies ran low and I didn’t want to detour to resupply. My journal records that it was “fairly tasteless but kept me going.” In case I ran low again, I then started carrying an extra day’s worth of food. However, it’s many years since I did that. Now I just carry a little extra food, such as an extra Bear Valley bar or two. If you can catch fish or know which insects and plants are edible, you can, of course, try to “live off the land.”
I’ve only once run out of food in an area so remote that I couldn’t walk out to a supply point in a day or two. My situation was complicated because I was a bit unclear about where I was (notice I didn’t say “lost”). I had to ration my food severely for several days and emerged from the forest extremely hungry, but without having run out of energy. I learned that, if you have to, you can get by on remarkably little food—at least for a short time. I would go to great lengths to avoid another such situation, though. Once is more than enough.
Plastic bags are ideal for carrying food. I use them for everything that comes in a heavy container I don’t want to carry or that needs extra protection, including coffee, sugar, dried milk, trail mix, muesli, cheese, herbs, spices, and meals such as macaroni and cheese that come in cardboard boxes. If I need the instructions, I tear them off and put them in the bag with the food. The only items I keep in their cardboard containers are crackers, since these break easily. Cardboard gives a surprising amount of protection, but you need to be careful not to crush them. Packages of soup, granola bars, and complete meals in sealed envelopes don’t need repacking, but they can be bagged together so that it’s easy to see what you have. Bagging also serves as extra protection against tears in the envelopes, which can happen. The best bags I’ve found are zippered ones like Ziplocs. I always carry a few spare bags in case one splits.
Hiking stores carry many plastic food containers, but I don’t use them—they take up as much space empty as they do full and add weight; plastic bags compress to almost nothing and weigh hardly anything. I used to carry herbs and spices in empty plastic film canisters, but now these go in plastic bags too.
Unless I’m using a bear-resistant container (see pages 258–63), I keep my food together in the pack in nylon stuff sacks. When I’m carrying more than a week’s food, I use two of them. I put day food, which tends to be the bulkiest of my rations, in one bag, and camp food in the other. Two smaller bags are easier to pack than one large one, and it’s easier to find items.
By not carrying cans and by repackaging food packed in cardboard in plastic bags, I could fit all my trash from a ten-day trip into these two used food packets.
On trips of up to a week, resupplying isn’t necessary; you can carry all you need unless your route passes through a place where you can buy food. On hikes that last more than a couple of weeks, you have to plan how to resupply. If you’re prepared to live on whatever is available locally, you can shop at stores on or near your route. I did this on the Arizona Trail and it worked quite well, though a few times there wasn’t much choice. Most small stores stock dried soups, crackers, bread, cheese, candy, chocolate bars, coffee, and tea, but dried meals and even breakfast cereals can be hard to find. This can mean carrying more weight and bulk than you’d like and being prepared to adapt to what you can get.
An alternative is to send supplies to yourself to be collected along the way. This way, you know what’s in each supply box and can plan accurately; items such as maps and camera film can also be included in the same boxes. As well as boxes sent out ahead from home a running supply or bounce box is useful. This is a box you send on to the next post office with stuff you don’t need for the next section of trail. If you can only buy larger amounts of foods than you need, the surplus can go in the running supply box, as can extras of any food you really like that you might not be able to purchase again. The obvious places to send supplies are post offices. Boxes should be addressed to yourself c/o General Delivery (Poste Restante in Europe) in the town scheduled for pickup. They should be marked Hold for Hiker and include the intended collection date and a return address. I also write to the post offices to tell them what I’m doing. It’s a good idea to phone ahead (if you can) to check that the supplies have arrived; during the Canadian Rockies walk, one box went astray, causing me a week’s delay.
Some mail-order food suppliers may drop-ship food to post offices along your route, a service I used on the Pacific Crest and Continental Divide Trails. In remote areas where there are no post offices, you could contact a park or forest ranger’s office, or the nearest youth hostel, lodge, or motel, to ask if they’ll hold supplies. I’ve done this several times and never yet been refused, though some of the latter places request a small fee (I always offer payment when I contact them). Rangers or outfitters may also be prepared to take food into wilderness cabins or camps if you’re on a long trip. When I walked through the Yukon Territory, I found a commercial tour boat operator who was willing to take supplies down the Yukon River for me, which meant I was able to walk for twenty-three days without having to leave the wilderness to resupply.
You can cache food in advance if you have the time or have someone who can do it for you, though I’ve never done this. Obviously, cached food has to be stored in an animal-proof container, and you need to be sure you can locate it.
Another resupply alternative is to have food dropped by helicopter or brought in by bush plane. I considered this for the remote northern section of the Canadian Rockies walk but rejected it, mainly because of the high cost, but also because I wasn’t happy about bringing noisy machines into the wilderness unless it was absolutely necessary. Instead, I tried to carry all my food for this three-hundred-mile section. I took seventeen days’ food but spent twenty-three in the wilderness. Luckily it was hunting season, and the seasonal occupants of several remote outfitters’ camps fed me as I passed through. Without them I couldn’t have completed the walk. Of course, I could and should have contacted them in advance and asked if they’d take supplies in for me, which is what I would do on a similar venture now.
On trips where bears aren’t likely to raid my camp, I prefer to keep my food beside me so I can cook and eat at leisure and can easily protect it against small animals and birds. Leaving food on the ground away from you, even in the pack, is a sure way to feed wildlife. Sharp teeth will quickly make holes in most materials. The Ursack stuff sack (see page 262) is an exception to this. Although bears are the animals people worry about most, smaller animals—mice, marmots, raccoons—probably make off with more food.
Animals and birds of all sizes like human food.
The worst problems I’ve had with wildlife occurred on a hike in the Grand Canyon, where deer mice abounded on most sites. One night they kept me awake for hours by running over me and my gear and rustling through the pack, whose pockets and compartments I’d left open so creatures wouldn’t rip their way in. My food—inside plastic bags in a heavy-duty stuff sack and hung from a branch—was untouched, however.
Although it’s inconvenient for you if animals get your food, for the animals it can be much worse. In the summer of 1995, rangers had to shoot twenty-three mule deer that were starving in the Grand Canyon; autopsies showed their stomachs were clogged with plastic bags, nylon cord, and other indigestible items. On popular back-country sites in the Grand Canyon, posts are provided for hanging food bags and packs, and park regulations stress that all plastic bags and food must be kept packed away. In other parks there may be similar regulations in some places. When you feel like rebelling against the rules, remember those mule deer.
Hanging your food bags from a low limb may be adequate to keep small animals from getting at them. In areas where animals are likely to raid campsites, I now use an Ursack.
In bear country you need to take special precautions to keep your food safe, either by hanging it or by using a container bears can’t break into. The traditional approach is to hang your food high in a tree, which isn’t easy to do effectively. It needs to be at least 12 feet above the ground, 10 feet away from the trunk of a tree, and 6 feet below any branch—bears can climb and reach high. There are various ways of doing this, and all require at least 40 feet of nylon line and a tough stuff sack or two. Gregory makes a 1,300-cubic-inch Bear Bag that looks good; it weighs 8 ounces and comes with a sewn-in haul loop and a 40-foot length of parachute cord with an attached sack for a rock.
Start with two stuff sacks of roughly equal weight. If you don’t have enough food, put stones or gravel in one of the sacks. Tie one end of your line to one of the sacks (1). Put a small rock in another stuff sack and tie the other end of your line to the sack. Throw it over a suitable branch and haul the first stuff sack up until it’s just below the branch (2). Tie the second stuff sack to the other end of the line while holding it as high as you can. Stuff any spare line into the stuff sack and then throw it up so that the two bags are at an equal height (3). When you need the food, use a trekking pole or stick to pull down one of the bags (4).
At times hanging food can take a long time. I’ve spent hours trying and wasted a lot of energy on curses as rocks whirled off into space or spun around branches, leaving a tangle of line to unwind. But whenever I’ve felt like giving up, I’ve thought about losing my food to a bear and have gone on until my food was secure. Bearbagging isn’t just about protecting food, anyway, it’s about protecting bears too, which is more important. A bear that finds food at a campsite may lose its fear of humans and start to raid sites regularly, becoming such a danger that it has to be killed. These are called “problem” bears. Really, though, we create the problem by taking food into the bear’s territory and not protecting it adequately.
Having to hang food complicates camping, and there is a tendency to forgo it at the end of a long, hard day or in bad weather. Certainly, when making camp after dark I’ve sometimes suspended my food in a way I wouldn’t be happy with in daylight. I’ve always hung it though (nowadays I use a canister or an Ursack, which makes life much easier).
In many areas food must be secured from bears.
The simplest bearbagging method is to tie a rock to the end of the line, throw it over a branch at least 20 feet above the ground, haul up the food until the bottom of the bag is at least 12 feet up, then tie off the line around the trunk of the tree. Even this is not that easy, since the line can become tangled around the branch. On popular sites in many areas you can see rotting strands of cord dangling from branches. Putting the rock in a small bag and tying that to the end of the line stops the rock from coming untied and shooting off into the distance, as can happen.
Put a small rock in a stuff sack. Tie the end of your line to the sack and throw it over a branch about 20 feet high. Don’t let go of the other end of the rope! If you can’t reach the rock, shake the line in a whipping motion to jerk the line over the branch and slowly lower the rock (1). Grab the end of the line and remove the rock (2). Attach your food stuff sack and haul it up (3). Wrap the end of the rope around the tree trunk and tie it off (4).
Up near timberline trees are usually smaller, with shorter branches. Here it’s probably best to suspend food bags between two trees about 25 feet apart, which involves throwing one end of the weighted line over a branch, tying it off, and then repeating the process with the second tree. Keep the line between the two trees within reach so you can tie the food bag to it. Then haul the bag up until it’s halfway between the trees and 12 feet off the ground.
In the High Sierra, bears have learned that breaking a line rewards them with a bag of food, so standard hanging techniques don’t work. Instead, you should use the counterbalance system, which involves throwing the line over a branch, tying a food bag to the end of the line, and hauling it right up to the branch; you then tie a second food bag (or bag of rocks) to the other end of the line, push any extra line into the bag, and throw the second bag up so that both bags end up at least 12 feet above the ground and away from the tree trunk. If you leave a loop of line at the top of one of the bags, you can hook it with a stick or your staff to pull the bags down the next morning. Counterbalancing is difficult to do correctly, and bears too often get improperly hung food.
A decreasing number of national parks provide high wires between trees or poles with pulleys for hanging food at some campsites. These make the procedure easier, though it can still be difficult if you’re alone and have a heavy food bag. Bearproof boxes are provided in some areas too, such as many popular sites in the High Sierra. Always use these if you camp nearby.
When camping above timberline or where there are no large trees, as in the Far North, I used to store food well away from camp in airtight plastic bags. Now I use bear-resistant canisters or Ursack stuff sacks.
In an increasing number of areas, such as Denali and Glacier Bay National Parks in Alaska and many parts of the High Sierra where bears regularly get hung food, bear canisters are mandatory. They can usually be rented from park offices. It’s wise to check the regulations as to which canisters are approved and where you need one before visiting a park, since they do change.
Packing a bear-resistant container. The plastic liner helps reduce food smells.
Closing a bear-resistant container using a quarter as a screwdriver.
Bear-resistant canisters are wide and have a smooth surface so bears can’t clamp their jaws around one or get their teeth or claws into it. Most have a round lid with recessed catches that can be opened with a quarter or a screwdriver. Canisters are great in camp but a pain on the trail; they’re awkward to fit into a pack because of their hard cylindrical shape. I find the best way to pack one is to stand it up in the center of the pack with the sleeping bag below it and stuff soft gear around it. The smallest canisters will hold six days’ food for one person, as long as you select low-bulk food and cram it in. Canisters are heavy, too. The original model and the one rented out by national parks is the Garcia Machine Backpackers’ Cache. This weighs 2 pounds, 12 ounces (3 pounds in the first version) and has a capacity of 730 cubic inches. It’s made of ABS polymer (plastic). Lighter but vastly more expensive is the Wild Ideas Bearikade, made from composite carbon fiber and aluminum alloy. The Bearikade Weekender weighs 1 pound, 15 ounces and holds 650 cubic inches; the Expedition weighs 2 pounds, 5 ounces and holds 900 cubic inches. Purple Mountain Engineering’s aluminum Tahoe Bear Canister is between the Bearikade and Backpackers’ Cache in weight and size at 2 pounds, 6 ounces and 8 by 12 inches, which is slightly smaller than the Backpackers’ Cache at 8.8 by 12 inches. Perhaps the most interesting canister is the Bear Vault, which is made from transparent polycarbonate and looks like a giant Nalgene bottle. It has a screw-top lid so no tools are needed to open it. The opening is much bigger than on canisters with recessed lids, which should make packing easier, and you can see what food you have left too. It’s 8.7 by 12.4 inches and weighs 2 pounds, 6 ounces. Despite the extra weight and the difficulty with packing, I like canisters. It’s wonderful not to have to hang food and great to have easy access to it all the time. You don’t have to check that there are suitable trees around before you camp, either, or sleep with half an eye open in case a bear tries to get your food and you have to leap up and try to scare it away (without getting too close, and only try this with black bears, not grizzlies!). Canisters make good camp stools and tables, but don’t use them for stoves or hot pots unless you put something heat resistant, such as foil, on them first. At night it’s best to put the canister a short distance away from camp, in the middle of a flat area so a bear can’t roll it down a slope.
An Ursack bear-resistant stuff sack.
I used a Backpackers’ Cache, rented from Yosemite National Park, on a five-week hike in the High Sierra during which I met a few hikers who’d lost hung food to bears. At one of the rare popular sites I used I woke in the morning to see a bear walk past about forty feet from my camp without even pausing. A few minutes later I heard some pans clattering loudly and then some outraged and urgent yelling. Climbing onto a rock, I looked across a meadow with a small tent in the center to see a bear racing up the mountainside with something in its jaws, pursued by two half-naked campers. I presume they had hung their food with pans attached to act as a warning, but the bear had still gotten it. I’d heard people yelling and banging pots the night before too. My canister sat undisturbed twenty feet from camp.
An alternative that is lighter and easier to pack than canisters would be welcome, though, which is where the Ursack comes in. This is a supertough stuff sack designed to keep animals out, especially bears. The latest model, the TKO, is made from Spectra cloth, measures 8 by 13 inches, holds 650 cubic inches, and weighs just 8.2 ounces. That’s almost the same capacity as the Backpackers’ Cache canister, which weighs over five times as much. The Ursack can be squashed down when partly full like any other stuff sack, too. Does it work? Evidence from the makers and users suggests it does, though your food may get pulverized if a bear batters it around. Plastic bags inside can burst, so it’s best not to pack anything liquid or sticky. It must be used properly to be effective. The mouth must be closed fully so no food is visible, and the bag then tied to a tree trunk or strong branch with a figure eight knot (so it’s easy to untie). On a nine-day hike in the High Sierra I used an Ursack and a canister (I was going into an area where canisters were a requirement). I used the Ursack for over three days, after which all my food fit in the canister. As far as I know, nothing even touched it. I now use the Ursack anywhere that animals might try and eat my food, carrying a canister only in areas where they’re required. I’ve had rodents chew through an ordinary stuff sack and into bags of food but fail to make any impression on the Ursack sitting next to it, so it certainly works for small animals.
Bears are attracted to food by smell as well as sight. Double-bagging smelly foods and not carrying really stinky ones in bear country is a good idea. Ursack makes odor-resistant plastic bags that they say are thousands of times more odorproof than standard bags. They weigh 1 ounce, measure 12.5 by 16 inches, and will fit inside an Ursack. Watchful Eye Designs makes a similar product called the O.P. Sak, which they say is odorproof. It comes in two sizes—6 by 9 and 12.5 by 15.5 inches. Bags like this sound sensible for all food storage.
Bears view smelly items such as toothpaste, soap, insect repellent, and sunscreen as food, so store them with your food. Food-stained clothing and dirty pots are best stored away from where you sleep, too.
A good way to keep bears out of your camp is by avoiding popular backcountry sites. Bears frequent those places where there is a regular supply of food. By camping away from such sites on one eleven-day trip in Yosemite National Park, I didn’t even see a bear.
If a bear does get your food don’t try to get it back. The bear will almost certainly defend it. (For more on bears, see pages 394–96.)
I’m often asked why I don’t “live off the land” during long wilderness hikes. The phrase conjures up the carefree image of a hiker ambling along, munching on nuts and fruits plucked from trailside bushes and scooping tasty trout from every stream.
In fact, unless you hunt or fish, finding enough to eat in the wilderness is very difficult for most people and does not allow time for walking all day. Then too, wild lands are limited and fragile; we should take no more from them than we absolutely must, which means going in with all the food we need. If every wilderness traveler relied on foraging for food, popular areas would soon be stripped bare.
Fishing, perhaps, is an exception. Mountain lakes and streams often seem full of fish (some are restocked regularly, a highly dubious practice environmentally). Anglers often carry light fishing gear (and licenses) in suitable country and thereby supplement their diets with some fresh food. For some, hiking is a means to fish remote waters.
While you can manage without food for a surprisingly long time, this isn’t so for water. Dehydration can kill you in a matter of days—and long before you’re in real danger, you’ll cease to enjoy what you’re doing as your mind dulls and your perceptions numb.
On any walk, you need to know where water sources are and what the condition of the water is likely to be. In many places water is not a problem—unless there’s too much of it—but in others, especially desert or semidesert areas, the location of water sources can determine your route. Water supply is one of the first things I want to know about a region new to me.
Taking water from a hole cut through the ice of a snow-covered lake.
Fishing water out of a creek with a bottle attached to the end of a pole. Make sure you’re standing on secure snow.
How much water you need per day varies from person to person and depends on the weather conditions, the amount of energy you expend, and the type of food you carry. I can walk all day without a drink in cool, damp conditions, though I don’t recommend this. But I may drink a quart an hour on a very hot day in an area where there’s no shade. Estimating needs for camp is easier. With the dried foods I eat, I can get by on 2 quarts a night, but I prefer to have 4 or more—and that’s just for cooking and drinking, not for washing utensils or myself. It also assumes I’ve had enough to drink during the day and either am camping near water or expect to find a source fairly early the next day.
When you have to carry water, these calculations become important, because water weighs more than 2 pounds per quart. In desert areas of the Southwest, I’ve carried 3 gallons of water—a horrendous 25 pounds. Luckily, it’s rare to have to carry that much, at least for a whole day. “Dry” camps (ones away from water sources) may require you to carry 3 or 4 quarts of water, but often this can be picked up late in the day so you only have to carry it for a few hours. Remember that you need enough water to get you to the next reliable source as well as for use in camp.
Snow-covered country is odd—everything is shrouded in solid water, but it’s effectively a desert. Walking in snow can dehydrate you as quickly as desert walking, because the dry air sucks moisture out of your body. The thirstiest I’ve ever felt was when I skied all day in hot sunshine with no shade and not enough liquid. Eating snow cools your mouth but provides little real relief. The answer, easily given but not so easily carried out, is to melt enough snow in camp to keep you well supplied during the day.
Ideally, you should never allow yourself to become even slightly dehydrated. The best way to avoid this is to drink regularly, whether you feel thirsty or not. If you’re not careful, though, dehydration may creep up on you, and only when your mouth starts to feel sticky and your tongue swollen do you realize how thirsty you are. Warning signs of dehydration are a reduction in urine output and a change in the color of your urine—the paler, the better. If it’s dark, you need to drink a fair amount of water quickly. In order to avoid heat exhaustion, you should eat something as well or add fruit crystals or sports drink powder to the water to ensure that you replace essential electrolytes (sodium and potassium) that are also lost when you become dehydrated.
Streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds are obvious sources of water, easily identified on a map. In areas with plenty of these features, you won’t need to carry much or to worry about running out. Check contour lines carefully, however, to see exactly where the water is. Often the high ridges that make for superb walking are far above any water. In such places it’s better to carry full bottles than to make long descents and reascents when you need a drink. Remember, too, that dotted blue lines on the map usually indicate seasonal water sources; the rushing stream of June, heavy with snowmelt, may have vanished completely by late September.
Getting water can be as simple as dipping your water bottle into a fast-running river.
Piped springs can provide clean, fresh water if you take it from the inlet.
If water sources are scarce, you may have to hunt out tiny trickles and seeps. To find these, look for areas of richer, denser vegetation and for depressions and gullies where water may gather or run. Pause and listen, too. You can often hear water trickling even when you can’t see it.
In deserts, locating water is critical to survival. “Think water” is a valuable mantra. Check guidebooks for information on water sources and, more important, ask rangers and other local people for current information. Sources can dry up quickly, so it’s wise to always carry enough water to get to the next reliable source or out to a trailhead if a source isn’t guaranteed. In places it may be necessary to place water caches. I did this on the Arizona Trail where there was a 60-mile waterless section across hot Sonoran Desert. My companion and I put out two caches of 9 gallons in gallon jugs and set off with 2 gallons each for the hike of three and a bit days. We simply hid the caches under bushes near the jeep trail we drove in on to place them, then marked them on the map. All were still there when we collected them over the next few days, but plastic jugs aren’t the most reliable containers, since animals can bite into them. If you place caches, it’s important to carry out all the water containers. We ended that hike with our packs festooned with squashed empty water jugs.
For those who are intending more serious desert ventures and want to know about natural water sources, solar stills, and other possibilities, I recommend a look at The Ultimate Desert Handbook by Mark Johnson.
A real problem with water is deciding whether what you find is safe to drink. Water clarity is not necessarily an indication of either purity or contamination. Even the most sparkling, crystal-clear mountain stream may not be safe to drink from.
The invisible potential contaminants include a wide variety of microorganisms—protozoans, bacteria, and viruses—that cause intestinal disorders, some mild, some severe. The potential nasties include Cryptosporidium, a protozoan, that has gotten much attention recently. This causes unpleasant watery diarrhea, but once you’ve had the disorder you should be immune.
Water collection methods.
Viruses are the most dangerous waterborne organisms—they can cause fatal diseases like polio and hepatitis. But viruses aren’t a problem in most of North America. If you visit some other countries, however, they’re a real threat. When I went hiking in Nepal, all vegetables and fruit had to be washed in iodine-treated water, and I used iodine to purify all water. Filters, the trekking company told me, were ineffective. If you’re going abroad, check with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about water there.
The protozoan Giardia lamblia, which causes a virulent gut disorder, giardiasis, is the bug that has received most attention. While Giardia is indeed found in some wilderness streams and lakes—though not, it seems, in the quantities people think—too many people are far too concerned about it. Giardiasis isn’t fatal, and you’re unlikely to be incapacitated. Although it makes some people feel quite ill, most don’t even have any symptoms and become immune after being exposed to it.
Giardia lamblia lives in the intestines of humans and animals. It gets into water as cysts excreted in feces, which is one reason for always siting toilets well away from water. The symptoms of giardiasis appear a few weeks after ingestion and include diarrhea, stomachache, a bloated feeling, nausea, and foul-smelling feces. However, these symptoms occur in other stomach disorders as well, and only a stool analysis can confirm infection. The chances of catching giardiasis or other illness from water aren’t high, despite media coverage to the contrary. To cover themselves, land managers generally advise people that all water needs treating, which adds to concern. People who get a gut disorder then tend to blame Giardia in the water because they’ve been warned about it, even though the cause is probably not either Giardia or the water.
Research published in 1995 in the journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine suggests that giardiasis and other gut disorders are spread “by oral-fecal or food-borne transmission not by contaminated drinking water.” Out of 34,348 cases of giardiasis reported to the study’s authors, Thomas R. Welch and Timothy P. Welch, by forty-eight state health departments, a mere nineteen were associated with drinking contaminated water, and just two of them were known to be campers and backpackers. The authors compare the likelihood of catching giardiasis from drinking water to the risk of a shark attack and say that it’s “an extraordinarily rare event to which the public and press have seemingly devoted inappropriate attention.” In a separate study published in the online journal of the Yosemite Association, Robert L. Rockwell comes to a similar conclusion with regard to the Sierra Nevada: “You can indeed contract giardiasis on visits to the Sierra Nevada, but it won’t be from the water. So drink freely and confidently.” (In the summer of 2002 I did just this on a five-week hike in the High Sierra, never treating any water.)
According to both the Rockwell and Welch studies, it’s far more important to wash your hands thoroughly and keep your cooking pots clean than to treat your water. Sharing mugs and bowls and bags of gorp is unwise too. Share food by pouring it into people’s hands or their own utensils to minimize the chance of contamination.
The most recent study was done by Backpacker magazine in the spring and summer of 2003 (reported in the December 2003 issue). Seven backcountry water sources were tested three separate times for Giardia and Cryptosporidium by a California laboratory specializing in these protozoans. The sources ranged from the Neversink River East Branch in the Catskills in New York State to the Merced River in Yosemite National Park in California. Only one source had a high enough concentration of cysts (1.5 per liter) for Backpacker to advise treating it, though it was still too low to make most people ill. Two had none at all. The other four had no viable cysts. Out of the twenty-one total samples, only six tested positive for Giardia and only one for Cryptosporidium. Other research also shows such low concentrations of protozoans, when any are found at all, that infection is very unlikely. The Backpacker article quotes Robert W. Derlet, a hiker and a professor of medicine who is researching the water sources in the Sierra, as saying that “the warnings about backcountry water quality are vastly exaggerated. Most of them are based on rumor and hearsay, nothing more. The chances of picking up a bug are very slim, and the chances of getting sick are much, much slimmer. If you averaged every drop of water from every lake in the Sierra and put it in a reservoir, you’d have to drink 250 gallons to get enough giardia to make you sick.” The evidence suggests most backcountry water is safe, and you are very unlikely to catch anything from drinking it untreated. There are far greater risks in the wilderness. If you’re really worried about intestinal illness, you could ease your concerns by treating all water, but the most important thing is to take great care with hand washing and keeping your cooking utensils clean. Even if you treat all your water, it’s wise to be careful about sources. No treatment method is foolproof. I treat water only if it’s below habitations, including backcountry shelters and popular campsites, and popular trails; if there are cattle or signs of cattle in the area; or if it looks or smells unpleasant. When seeking drinking water I look for springs and fast-flowing streams and take the water from above trails, campsites, and bridges. With lakes I take water from the inlet or the outlet if I can. I love being able to drink deeply from a mountain stream, and I’m very reluctant to give up this wilderness pleasure.
If you do get a bad digestive upset that doesn’t clear up in a few days, it’s wise to see a doctor just in case it’s something serious. In the meantime drink plenty, since diarrhea is dehydrating, and eat plain low-fat foods such as rice and pasta. An upset gut can be debilitating and extremely unpleasant. I once had a very severe bout of diarrhea and vomiting in Nepal (probably contracted in Katmandu) that lasted several days. The cause was undiagnosed.
Treating all water can pose its own dangers. In the Montana Rockies during my Continental Divide walk, I regularly met members of a large party doing the same hike. Most of them were very worried about giardiasis, and they filtered or boiled all water before drinking it. While restocking and resting in the town of Butte after several weeks of very hot weather, I met one of this party walking down the street looking pale and thin. He told me he’d staggered out of the mountains feeling weak and sick. He didn’t have giardiasis though—he was suffering from severe dehydration. He wouldn’t drink unfiltered water and hadn’t filtered the amount he should have been drinking. Dehydration is a serious enough threat, far greater than giardiasis, that drinking enough water is essential whether it’s been treated or not.
Water can be treated by boiling it, adding chemicals, and filtering. Boiling and chemicals disinfect the water—that is, they kill bugs in it. Filters remove anything too large to pass through the pores, but they don’t disinfect water or remove viruses unless they have a chemical component as well, in which case they’re described as purifiers. Visibly dirty water can be filtered through a bandanna or a coffee filter, as can glacier meltwater, but this doesn’t remove microorganisms.
BOILING Boiling is the surest way to kill dangerous organisms, but it’s impractical for all water needs because it uses fuel and takes time. However, it isn’t necessary to boil water for the five to fifteen minutes often advised. Just bringing it to a boil will do—harmful organisms, including Giardia cysts, are killed at temperatures below the boiling point even at high altitude, where it’s lower than at sea level. Boiled water tastes flat. To restore the sparkle, shake it up or pour it from one container into another and back again a few times to aerate it.
CHEMICAL TREATMENT The traditional forms of chemical treatment, iodine and chlorine tablets, are lightweight and simple to use; iodine treatment is regarded as the most effective against Giardia, but neither is proven against Cryptosporidium. Both chemicals make the water taste foul. Despite what is often stated, iodine isn’t highly toxic. Apparently, if you do ingest too much you’ll probably vomit, getting rid of most of the iodine. Normal doses of iodine won’t harm you. Wilkerson’s Medicine for Mountaineering and Other Wilderness Activities reports that inmates of three Florida prisons have drunk water disinfected with iodine over a fifteen-year period with no ill effects. Only those with known thyroid problems or goiters need to be careful.
Water-cleaning methods.
Using a coffee filter to strain sediment from pond water.
The most common brand of iodine tablets, Potable Aqua, comes in 3.5-ounce bottles containing fifty tablets that will treat twenty-five quarts. You can get neutralizing tablets that remove the aftertaste. These are made of vitamin C (ascorbic acid), so any soluble vitamin C tablets will have the same effect. But don’t add them or anything else like fruit crystals until the iodine has had time to work (thirty minutes). I used chlorine tablets on the Pacific Crest Trail and Potable Aqua on the Continental Divide. I drank from filthy stockponds on both walks and never became ill, so presumably both treatments worked. Tablets have a limited life; you should buy a fresh supply at least annually. Once a bottle is opened, it should be used within a few weeks or else discarded.
Polar Pure iodine water disinfectant.
Iodine crystals, sold in drugstores, are a long-lasting alternative to tablets. These can be held in solution and small amounts poured into water bottles when required, though you need to be sure no undissolved crystals enter the drinking water. Polar Pure (3 ounces dry weight; more, of course, when the crystals are in solution) contains iodine crystals, thermometer (to check water temperature—cold water needs more of the solution), and instructions, and will purify 2,000 quarts of water. It’s safer to use than crystals alone, since there’s a filter cone inside the bottle that prevents the crystals from accidentally falling into your drinking water. However, it’s heavier than crystals or tablets, and you have to carry a glass container with liquid in it. I used it for a while, before I discovered chlorine dioxide.
Aquamira chlorine dioxide water purification.
Chlorine dioxide is meant to kill everything, including Cryptosporidium. It’s lightweight, easy to use, and in my opinion the best way of treating water. Despite the name, it doesn’t kill bugs with chlorine or leave chlorine in the water. When activated, chlorine dioxide releases highly active concentrated oxygen into the water, and it’s this that kills bugs. Treated water tastes fresh, with no aftertaste. The treatment comes in two tiny plastic bottles, one containing stabilized chlorine dioxide, the other an activator (5 percent food-grade phosphoric acid), plus a small mixing cap. The weight is 2.8 ounces, and it will purify 120 quarts. To use the treatment you put seven drops from each bottle in the mixing cap for each quart of water, wait five minutes before adding it to the water to be treated, and then wait another fifteen minutes before using the water. (Double the time and dose for cold or cloudy water and if Cryptosporidium is suspected—though how you suspect it I’ve no idea.) Rather than waiting fifteen or thirty minutes each time you fill up with water, you can simply wait five, add the drops to the water, and then hike on with it in your pack. There are two brands of chlorine dioxide, Aquamira and Pristine, though they seem to be effectively the same. I used Aquamira on the Arizona Trail, when I drank from some really murky cattle ponds at times, and stayed healthy.
Katadyn also offers a chlorine dioxide treatment called MP1 Emergency Drinking Water Tablets. These don’t require the use of an activator, which would make them easier to use than Aquamira. You just add one tablet to a quart of water and wait fifteen minutes to kill bacteria and viruses and thirty to kill protozoans. That’s if the water is clear and at 68°F (20°C). If the water is dirty and the temperature 40°F (5°C), it takes four hours to kill Cryptosporidium. The times remain the same for other bugs. I haven’t used MP1 Tablets, but they’re lightweight and easy to use and so worth considering. There are thirty tablets in a pack.
The latest method of chemical treatment is the MSR MIOX Purifier, which is unlike anything else. This battery-operated Purifier is a flashlight-like tube measuring 1 inch by 7 inches. To use it you add salt to the unit followed by a tiny amount (¼ teaspoon) of water. You shake the salt and water to create a brine solution and press a button. This sends a small electrical charge through the solution creating a chemical reaction (electrolysis) that produces a “cocktail” of mixed oxidants (MIOX) that when added to untreated water kills any bugs. One dose will purify up to a gallon of water. The whole procedure only takes a few minutes but, as with other purification treatments, you then have to wait to be sure it has worked; thirty minutes for most bugs and a long four hours for Cryptosporidium. Purity-indicator strips show the water has been purified. Although there is a strong smell of brine when the solution is added to the water, there is no aftertaste. The MIOX runs off two CR-123 lithium camera batteries and will purify more than two hundred liters on one set. The tube weighs 2.2 ounces without batteries and the whole kit, which includes batteries, salt, purity-indicator strips, instructions, and stuff sack, 8 ounces. It’s fairly easy to use, though you have to be careful to follow the sequence of actions correctly. I’d certainly rather use it than most filters, as it seems much more foolproof.
The unique MIOX Purifier works by creating a cocktail of mixed oxidants that kills all bugs.
Lightweight, compact water filters (from left): First Need DeLuxe, MSR MiniWorks, Katadyn Hiker, Sweetwater Guardian.
FILTERS Filtration is the high-tech way to treat water and the most common method, though it’s not my favorite. Indeed, though I’ve tested several pump filters over the years, including models from MSR, Sweetwater Guardian, First Need, and Katadyn, I’ve never taken one backpacking. In my opinion they’re all too heavy, too complicated, too inefficient, and too unreliable. I’m unhappy about the need to keep them clean and use them correctly, too. I found this difficult at home; it must be much harder when you’re tired, cold, and thirsty at the end of a long day on the trail, yet it’s essential if filters are to be effective. I’ve seen people handling filters with dirty hands, letting the outlet tube dangle in the dirt, allowing water still to be filtered to splash over the filter, and storing filters unwrapped in the pack: I definitely felt safer drinking straight creek water than their filtered supply. Filters can be hard to pump and clog very easily. Carrying a replacement cartridge or a chemical disinfectant as a backup is advisable. Cleaning filters is necessary, too, which means carrying cleaning items on a long trip. Like any piece of gear, a filter isn’t magic, despite what some users seem to think. Study the instructions carefully, practice at home, and make sure you know how to clean and store the filter properly.
The key with any filter is the pore size, since this determines what it will filter out. For Giardia and Cryptosporidium an absolute (maximum) pore size of 0.5 micron is the minimum needed; smaller pores are better, since pores may enlarge with use. Whether the filter is ceramic, carbon, or fiberglass and exactly how it works are far less important.
Filters come in three forms: bottle feed, gravity feed, and pump. The first are simple filters that substitute for the lid of a water bottle. They’re lightweight and easy to use, though you have to squeeze fairly hard to get water out. I wouldn’t want to use one if I needed large amounts of water, but for drinking from on the trail they’re all right. The tiny TFO Gatekeeper fits into a TFO or Platypus bottle, weighs a minuscule 0.5 ounce, and will filter up to 25 gallons. Other bottle filters are heavier. As an emergency backup, the Gatekeeper could be worth carrying.
Pump and gravity-feed filters are better for camp and group use. Pumping can be slow—a quart a minute is good—and surprisingly tiring, but it can be used for any amount of water. Of the pump filters I’ve tried, I most liked the Katadyn Hiker (formerly the Pur Hiker—Katadyn took over Pur), which weighs 11 ounces, has 0.3-micron pores, and has a pump rate of 1 quart per minute. The Hiker was easier to use than other models and is quite light and compact. If I carried a pump filter it would be this one.
The ULA H20 Amigo, a gravity-feed filter.
First Need DeLuxe filter/purifier fitted to a Sigg bottle.
Putting the inlet hose in a creek before filtering water.
With gravity-feed filters a bag of water is hung up with the filter unit and a hose leading into a water container below it. The first gravity filter I tried, the 15.5-ounce First Need DeLuxe, (which also has a pump option and is a purifier as well as a filter), took ten minutes to filter a quart of water. Much lighter and faster is Ultralight Adventure Equipment’s H2O Amigo, which weighs 8.5 ounces, including 0.9 ounce stuff sack. It takes about 1 minute to filter a quart, depending on how full the water bag is (it holds 1.25 gallons) and how dirty the water is. Sediment settles at the bottom of the water bag and there is a prefilter in the bag to stop larger contaminants from reaching the main filter. ULA says the filter will remove 99.8 percent of contaminants. The filter-unit life is over a hundred gallons. I prefer gravity filters to pump ones as you can do other things while the filter is working and they are generally simpler in design and easier to use. I can see one disadvantage though: you need something to hang them from. In forests this is no problem, but in deserts or above timber-lines it could be difficult. I guess you could just hold the filter up, though this would be tiring. If I had to use a filter, the H2O Amigo is the one I would choose … as long as there were trees around.
Filters can remove bacteria, organic chemicals, and protozoans, including Giardia. They can’t remove viruses unless they also include chemical disinfection, in which case you might as well just use chemicals.
Clear, cold mountain stream water is the most refreshing drink there is, the main reason I’m reluctant to treat water unless absolutely necessary. Aquamira doesn’t make water taste unpleasant, but the waiting time does remove some of the sparkle. If you like to flavor water, Kool-Aid, Wyler’s, and similar fruit-flavored powdered drink mixes are the traditional choice. There are three versions: those to which you add sugar, those containing sugar, and those containing artificial sweeteners. Those presweetened with sugar are the most useful—if you’re carrying the stuff, you might as well get a few extra kilocalories.
The modern alternatives to fruit-flavored sugar and chemical concoctions are powdered sports drinks like Gatorade and Gookinaid E.R.G. These contain electrolytes (potassium and sodium chloride) to replace those depleted through heavy sweating, plus carbohydrates and often much other stuff, sometimes including vitamins and minerals. While such drinks may be useful for athletes, they’re not needed for backpacking, even in desert regions. I’ve drunk them on occasion but never noticed any difference from drinking water and munching snacks, which I find more enjoyable. Such drinks have almost replaced salt tablets, which are no longer recommended because they’re too high in sodium and low in potassium. Over twenty years ago on my first desert hike across the Mojave Desert, I followed the current advice and carried salt tablets, though I never used them. Oral rehydration salts, which contain potassium as well as sodium, could be carried as an emergency item, though I’ve never done so.
Even where water is plentiful, you need some form of water container. In dry, hot country several may be essential, and they need to be of good quality, since a container failure could be serious. For that reason I always carry two or more containers, never just one large one. That said, it’s been many, many years since I had a container leak. Water containers used to be simple items. There were rigid ones—bottles or canteens—for carrying water and large, soft compressible water bags for camp use. Now we have hydration systems and reservoirs with drinking hoses, all made from flexible plastic, and the distinction between trail and camp containers has vanished.
Traditional rigid bottles come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and makes and in both plastic and aluminum, though the latter are becoming scarce—Sigg is one of the few remaining makes. Aluminum keeps liquids cooler in warm weather than plastic. A lacquered inside stops fruit juice or sports drinks from dissolving the aluminum and tainting the drink. Plastic bottles warm up more quickly. Food-grade ones don’t taint water. When you need to carry little water, pint bottles are adequate, but I prefer quarts for general use.
The classic aluminum bottles are the Swiss-made lacquered Sigg bottles, now called Traveler bottles. These come in half-pint, pint, and quart sizes, weighing 3, 4, and 5 ounces. Sigg bottles are durable and have screw tops with rubber seals that don’t leak—at least none of mine ever have. But they also have narrow openings, which make them hard to fill from seeps and trickles.
The big name in rigid plastic bottles is Nalgene. They come in rectangular and round shapes, in several sizes, and with narrow and wide mouths. I find the quart wide-mouth round Lexan bottle (5 ounces) the most useful, since it’s easy to fill from small trickles. Nalgene bottles are leakproof and hardwearing, unlike some cheaper bottles that leak and crack along the seams after a relatively short time. They’re made from high- and low-density polyethylene and more durable but slightly heavier Lexan polycarbonate. The Loop-Top bottles with attached caps are useful if you’re careless. (I’ve twice spent an hour or more searching for bottle caps I dropped in creeks—luckily I found them both times.)
Lighter and less expensive alternatives to the bottles found in outdoor stores are plastic soda bottles. Most of these are tough and long lasting. When I needed extra bottles for a two-week hike in the Grand Canyon, I bought two quart-size bottles of Gatorade, drank the contents the first day out, then used the bottles (3 ounces empty) for the rest of the trip. Ten years later, I’m still using them.
Many bottles have caps with valves so you can drink from them without removing the cap, often by squeezing the bottle. These are convenient if you want to drink while hiking, but I find they leak easily, so I carry them outside the pack in a mesh pocket or external bottle holder. I sometimes carry a 3-ounce polyethylene wide-mouthed GoLite bottle with a 21-ounce capacity that the company describes as a squirt bottle. (This bottle came with a tiny 50-cubic inch lumbar pack called the Quick—there are plenty of similar ones.)
Rigid bottles are heavy and bulky compared with the flexible ones that I now use for amounts larger than a quart and that can be packed flat when empty. I first tried these on the Arizona Trail; I reckoned I needed enough containers to carry three gallons, and I didn’t want to rely on just one or two, both in case of failure and because very large bottles are hard to fit in the pack. I also knew that the large water bags I had previously used in camp (see below) weren’t comfortable for carrying water. Wanting to keep the weight of the containers to a minimum, I chose Platypus bottles (made by Cascade Designs), the lightest I could find. The quart size weighs just under an ounce, the two-and-a-half-quart size 1.35 ounces. I carried four of the former and two of the latter for a total weight of 6.7 ounces and a capacity of 9 quarts. Because I wasn’t totally convinced that such thin, flimsy-seeming containers would survive long, I also carried a quart Nalgene bottle, useful for getting water out of tiny seeps and trickles, for which narrow-necked Platypus bottles are pretty useless, and a 4-quart flexible Ortlieb Water Bag (3 ounces). I’d used the last for years and knew it was tough. My concerns were unfounded, and the three Platypus bottles that did the whole trail survived intact and are still in regular use four years later, though one has started to delaminate around the neck. (I didn’t need all these containers, and I ended up putting the Ortlieb and three of the quart Platypus bottles in my running supply box.) Platypus bottles have a triple-layer laminate with food-grade polyethylene as the inner layer plus welded seams. They will stand upright when there’s water in them and are the best large flexible containers I’ve found for carrying water.
The standard Platypus bottles have a narrow neck that makes them awkward to fill in narrow streams or still water and hard to clean and dry. Big Zip Platypus reservoirs open fully at one end, which solves these problems. The zip closures add a fair bit of weight, however, and although they seem secure I don’t have the same confidence in them as in a screw-on cap. I’d prefer not to have openings at both ends, either. Other containers, such as those from Vaude and Dana Design, come with roll-down ends that clip in place. The 1-quart Platypus Big Zip weighs 3.5 ounces, the 2-quart 4.5 ounces. Nalgene, seeing the market for rigid bottles dwindling, leaped into the soft bottle fray with products they call Cantenes. These come with wide or narrow mouths. The wide-mouth 1-quart model weighs 2.1 ounces, the narrow-mouth 1.6 ounces.
On most trips I currently carry one wide-mouth rigid bottle, for ease of getting water out of shallow creeks and seeps, plus two 2.5-quart Platypus bottles. The latter are large enough that I only need to make one trip for water for camp, which minimizes impact and means I don’t have to leave camp again in stormy weather. When I started backpacking my camp water container was a collapsible water bag that held two gallons and weighed 3.5 ounces. This consisted of a double-layer flexible plastic inner bladder and a nylon cover, with a leakproof spigot and two webbing handles. All the parts were replaceable, and ripstop tape could be used for emergency repairs—and the bags did develop holes rather too frequently. Such waterbags are rare now, having been replaced by tougher single-skin bags that don’t need covers or two layers, though Moonbow makes one called the Camp Domo (4 ounces).
I replaced that water bag with an Ortlieb Waterbag, made from a single layer of coated nylon with welded seams. My gallon-size model weighs 3 ounces and has proved much tougher than double-layer ones. Of the other brands of water bags, the best quality and probably the most durable (but also the most expensive) are MSR’s Dromedary Bags, made from laminated Cordura nylon with brass grommets laced with webbing along each side. They hold 2, 4, 6, and 10 quarts at weights of 4.6, 5.4, 7.2, and 8.5 ounces. MSR DromLite Bags, made from lighter fabric and without grommets and webbing, come in 2-, 4-, and 6-quart sizes at weights of 3.1, 3.6, and 4.2 ounces.
Other uses of a water bag are as a portable shower and, so I’m told, as a pillow. They aren’t, however, very good for carrying water in the pack. The larger ones are especially awkward. I carried my two-gallon one full a number of times, usually strapped to the top or back of my pack, and the water sloshed around, altering the balance of the load in an unnerving way. For short distances I carried the bag in my hand by its strap. The Ortlieb bag isn’t much better; it also feels like wobbly jelly in the pack. I find Platypus bottles far more comfortable in the pack, since they’ll stand upright and behave much more like rigid bottles. Two bottles are easier to pack and to lift and pour from as well.
Hydration systems are flexible water containers (often known as bladders) with long tubes attached that dangle over your shoulder so you can drink while hiking. I’ve tried these, and I have to say I dislike sucking on a tube as I hike. I prefer to stop and take swigs from a water bottle. However, my stepdaughter uses one, and they are so popular that many packs come with sleeves for the containers. CamelBak was the first model to appear, but there are now plenty of others from Platypus, Nalgene, MSR, and more. Having quick access is a good idea, of course. I like to carry my water bottle in a mesh pocket or bottle holder on the side of the pack, where I can reach it easily.
In winter a thermos is very useful. By filling it with hot water in the evening, I have warm water that soon comes to a boil in the morning, speeding up breakfast. If I fill it before leaving camp, I can enjoy hot drinks (usually hot fruit juice, sometimes soup) during the day without needing to stop and fire up the stove. The best ones are unbreakable stainless steel. After smashing several glass-lined ones, I purchased a Coleman stainless steel pint thermos, which weighs 18.5 ounces. Each of its many dents shows how many glass-lined ones I would have broken. Steel ones have become lighter since I bought the Coleman, so I retired it to car use in favor of a pint Zojirushi Tuffslim Compact model with push-pour spout that weighs 11.5 ounces.
Another alternative is an insulated bottle cover. I have an Outdoor Research Water Bottle Parka that holds a 1-quart Nalgene bottle. It weighs 4 ounces, so with the bottle the weight is still half that of the stainless steel flask, yet with twice the capacity. The covers won’t keep liquids hot for long, so they aren’t suitable for coffee unless you like it lukewarm, but they’re fine for fruit juice. Platypus makes an insulated bottle holster for their quart flexible bottles that weighs 5.5 ounces.
It’s best to store water containers uncapped, so they can fully dry and not become musty. If ordinary washing doesn’t clean them fully, soak them in a mild solution of bicarbonate of soda. Iodine, chlorine, or bleach can also be used for disinfecting bottles. Wash containers regularly to prevent the buildup of dirt, especially around the screw threads.
Many people find sitting around a campfire the ideal way to end a day in the wilderness. But in too many places badly situated and constructed fires have left scars that will take decades to heal, and too many trees have been stripped of their lower branches, or even hacked down, to provide fuel. Even collecting fallen wood can damage the environment if not enough is left to replenish soil nutrients and provide shelter for animals and food for insects and fungi.
It is far better, and more efficient, to use a stove for cooking and clothing and shelter for warmth. But an essential element of the wilderness experience would be lost if you could never light campfires, and although I cook on a stove 99 percent of the time, I do occasionally light a fire. Fires should be treated as a luxury, however, and lit only where they have minimal impact on the environment. When the risk of forest fires is very high, fires may be banned for short periods. In areas where there has been too much damage or that are environmentally sensitive (often above the timberline), fires may be banned all the time. In national parks you may need fire permits and may be required to carry a stove. Such regulations may seem restrictive, but they prevent further degradation of popular areas.
Fires, officially permitted or not, are inappropriate in some areas, anyway. They shouldn’t be lit at and above the timberline, because trees and shrubs grow slowly there and the nutrients from deadwood are needed to replenish the thin soil.
In other areas, fires can sometimes be lit even on pristine sites without significant harm to the environment, as long as you use Leave No Trace techniques. The ideal places for such fires are on mineral soil (sand and gravel) below the high-water mark on the coast and below the spring flood level along rivers—any traces will be washed away, and there is usually plenty of driftwood to burn.
The results of poorly sited, misused, and overused campfires. Notice that the ground is trampled and bare, there is an unnecessary rock ring, and firewood and log seats litter the area. A fire should leave no trace.
No Fires sign in the Grand Canyon.
Fires should be built on mineral soil in other pristine places, too, and never lit on organic matter, for both environmental and safety reasons. In particular, meadows and soft vegetation should never be scarred by a fire. Dry vegetation and forest duff—conifer needles—can burst into flame very easily.
Mound fires make the least impact but require the most effort. To build one you first need to find some mineral soil such as sand from a streambed that is already disturbed. Dig up enough soil to fill a large stuff sack, then heap 6 to 8 inches of it on top of a groundsheet, trash bag, or other piece of cloth. The fire can be built in a shallow depression on top of the mound and should always be much smaller than the mound so that hot coals can’t fall off the mineral soil. The mound should be built in an area that will stand up to trampling, such as bare rock or earth.
Digging into the ground to create a pit for the fire is destructive and should be done only on mineral soil where there is no organic matter at all. Fires can be lit without a pit, but digging one makes it easier to disguise the site afterward.
Do not build a ring of rocks around a fire on a pristine site. Many people construct a fireplace this way, yet it really serves no purpose, although the concept is that it contains the fire. The best way to prevent a fire from spreading is to clear the area around it of flammable materials; a site 24 to 36 inches across should be big enough. Make sure there are no low branches or tree roots above or below the fire, and pitch your shelter upwind and some distance away, so that sparks can’t harm it. Other gear, especially nylon, also needs to be kept well away from fires.
Leave no sign of your fire. All wood should be burned to a fine ash, then scattered widely before you return the mineral soil to the place it came from. Spreading duff and loose vegetation over the site helps conceal it.
If you camp at a well-used site with many rock-ringed fireplaces, use one of these rather than making a new one, even a minimum-impact one. To reduce the impact it’s best to dismantle the least-used fire rings, scattering any ashes and charcoal, in the hope that they won’t be used again. Some backcountry sites in national parks have metal fireboxes. Obviously you should use them. Cut wood may also be supplied at such sites to prevent damage to the surrounding forest.
When collecting fuel wood, do so with care. Do not remove wood—even deadwood—from living trees. Snags are needed by wildlife and enhance the scenery and should also be left alone. A campsite surrounded by trees stripped of their lower branches and bare ground picked clean of every twig is depressing. In high-use areas, search for wood farther afield rather than close to the site. Shorelines and riverbanks are good places to scavenge for wood. Collect only what you’ll use, and use only small sticks that you can break by hand, since these are easily burned to ash. You don’t need axes and saws.
There’s a certain mystique to fire lighting, and survival and woodcraft books devote many pages to describing types of fires. Basically, the secret of fire lighting is simple: start small, with dry tinder. Paper makes good tinder, but I wouldn’t carry it just for this purpose. I sometimes lighten my load by using pages from the books I’ve read; food wrappings work well, too. If you have no paper, you can use the finest twigs, tiny pinecones, dry leaves, moss, and any other dry plant material. When the weather is wet, look for kindling in dry spots under logs and at the base of large trees. Good kindling can be created by shaving slivers three-quarters of the way off a dry twig to make a feather stick. A candle stub or solid fuel tablet can be used, too.
A properly doused campfire leaves no ashes at the site.
A feather stick.
Once you have a small pile of kindling, build a pyramid of small dry twigs around it, making sure there’s plenty of air space. Then light the kindling. When the twigs start to catch, add slightly larger pieces of wood. Don’t overdo it—it’s easy to smother a new fire. At this stage the fire’s shape is irrelevant; you can alter it once it’s burning well. I try to arrange an area of hot coals at one end of a cooking fire—coals, not flames, provide heat. Small metal grills with short legs make balancing pans over an open fire easy. The Coghlan’s Pack Grill (11 ounces) I carried on my long hike in the Yukon was worth the weight, because I often cooked over fires. Cake racks also make good lightweight grills—rest the ends on rocks.
If lighting the fire proves difficult, dismantle it and start over; don’t waste kindling by pushing bits of it into the fire and lighting them. People occasionally use stove fuel to get a fire going. This is highly dangerous. Never throw fuel onto a smoldering fire that won’t light properly. And never do something I once saw in a shelter one damp December night. Having failed to light the pile of damp wood stacked haphazardly in the fireplace, another occupant of the shelter attempted to ignite it with his lit canister stove. I was busy cooking over my stove at the time, so my companion hastily decided to devote herself to getting the fire lit conventionally and took over. Luckily, she succeeded.
Never leave a fire unattended, and make sure the ashes are cold to the touch before you leave the next day—huge areas of forest have burned because of carelessness with campfires. If you’re not scattering the ashes to the four winds because they’re in a well-used fire ring, douse them with water to make sure they’re out. Foil or silver-lined food wrappings won’t burn, so don’t toss them in the fire unless you’re prepared to fish them out and carry them with you when you leave. This applies to hut fires as well; I’ve spent many hours cleaning out shelter fireplaces blocked by foil.
Stoves have replaced wood fires for most back-country cooking. A stove ensures that you can have hot food and drink quickly whenever you want or need it. I always carry one. In foul weather, a stove enables me to cook in the vestibule or under a tarp while I stay warm and dry inside. When you wake up to the sound of wind and rain on the fly sheet, it’s wonderful to reach out, light the stove—on which you’d set a pan of water the night before—and quickly have a hot drink to brace you for the weather outside.
Perhaps it’s because they’re the modern version of the campfire and represent warmth, sustenance, and safety that stoves arouse such strong passions. Advocates of particular brands or models will argue fiercely that their chosen stoves are best. Some stoves are beautiful pieces of engineering, too—I have an Optimus Svea 123R displayed on a shelf in my study—and some people collect them and like to search out old models. For those interested in this, an excellent resource is the Classic Camp Stoves Web site—spiritburner.com. This is also the site to go to if you’re trying to find spare parts for a stove, particularly an old one.
There used to be few stoves to choose from, but the numbers have expanded greatly in recent years. Quality is generally good, although in some situations a malfunctioning stove is merely a nuisance, at other times it could be a serious problem, particularly if you’re relying on it for cooking dried food or need to melt snow for water. Some stoves work well in the cold and wind, others don’t. A stove that won’t produce hot water when you’re cold, wet, and tired is at the very least dispiriting. If you’re on the verge of hypothermia it could be dangerous.
A good stove should be capable of bringing water to a boil under the most horrendous conditions you’re likely to encounter, small and light enough to carry, and reasonably simple to operate. Ideally it should be field maintainable, too. Stability is also important, particularly with stoves that will be used with large pans.
Charts and tables that compare the weights, rates of fuel consumption, and boiling times of various stoves can be misleading. Many factors that affect a stove’s performance in the field can’t be duplicated in a controlled environment; moreover, individual stoves of the same model can perform very differently.
Weights aren’t always easily comparable either—some models include windscreens and pan sets in the total weight. The amount of fuel you have to carry for a given period and the weight of the fuel container need to be included in the total weight as well. Often the fuel plus its container is much heavier than the stove itself.
I’ve carried out my own stove tests (see sidebar, pages 282–83), so you can at least compare my findings with others’. Please note all the caveats. My overall conclusions are that all the stoves are efficient and pretty reliable. I wouldn’t use boil time as the main reason for choosing a stove; take into account reliability, weight, and type of fuel. In general, any half-decent stove should bring a quart of water to a boil within ten minutes of being lit, as long as the burner is adequately shielded from the wind and the pan is covered; and no backpacking stove should weigh more than 25 ounces, excluding pans and windscreen. Most weigh far less.
The availability of fuel may determine which stove you carry, especially on a long hike where you need to resupply with fuel. The choices are solid fuel, alcohol, kerosene, white gas, and butane-propane.
Different areas of the world favor different fuels, which is worth knowing if you range widely, as I do. In Scandinavia, alcohol is the common fuel; in the Alps and Pyrenees, it’s butane-propane; in Africa and Asia, kerosene. This doesn’t mean you won’t find other fuels in those places; but you’re more likely, especially in out-of-the-way places, to find the fuels that local people favor. Automotive gasoline can be found everywhere, of course, though obtaining small amounts can be difficult. Filling a quart-size aluminum fuel bottle from a high-pressure pump at a gas station isn’t easy, and in my experience the fuel usually sprays everywhere. (Three of us refueled this way during my Pacific Crest Trail hike, and I’d rather not have to do it again. The gas station staff thought the whole episode was hilarious and charged us only for the amount in our bottles rather than the somewhat larger amount vaporizing off our clothes and their bays.)
How much fuel you use each day depends on the type of stove you have, the weather, and the type of cooking you do. If you cook three meals a day, bake foods, or simmer foods for a long time, you’ll use more fuel than I do, since I cook just one meal a day and boil water for a hot drink at breakfast. My stove is running for approximately 30 to 45 minutes a day, and my figures for how long fuels last are based on this. If you run your stove for longer or shorter periods, you’ll need to adapt my figures. Estimates should be doubled if you’re melting snow, because it takes the same amount of energy to produce a given amount of water from snow as it does to bring that amount of water to a boil. The figures assume the use of a full windscreen, whether or not it comes with the stove. My figures are for solo use—but don’t assume that the amount of fuel per person is the same regardless of group size. I find that larger groups are far more fuel-efficient. On ski tours I’ve led, groups of ten used less fuel per person—including melting snow for water—than I would expect to use on a solo summer trip. Fuel use also depends on how careful you are to conserve fuel by running the stove only when necessary, using a windscreen, and covering pots. It’s also important not to have the stove turned up so high that flames reach around the sides of the pot, which wastes fuel. Adjust the stove so the flame just covers the bottom of the pot.
STOVE PERFORMANCE
There have been many changes in the world of stoves. A number of interesting new multifuel and white-gas stoves have appeared. One company, Sigg, has stopped producing stoves completely, and stoves that use only kerosene have vanished. Vastly more cartridge stoves have sprung up, most of them ultralight models. At the same time that the choice in the stores has increased and the weight of stoves has come down, there’s been a surge of interest in homemade stoves constructed from soda cans.
Different features are needed in different circumstances. No one stove is best for all situations. Good simmer control is essential for those who cook complex meals, but maximum heat output is more important for melting snow, and weight is crucial for ultralight hikers.
In my opinion solid fuel isn’t efficient enough for proper cooking, but it has become popular with some ultralight hikers because of the extremely low weight, ease of use, and lack of anything that can go wrong. Attracted by the very low weight, I tried solid fuel many years ago, but I soon grew tired of the long wait for water to boil, if it did at all. However, hikers have used solid fuel on through-hikes of the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails, so it works for some people. If your cooking needs are minimal or you usually use a campfire, solid fuel might be of interest. The Esbit Solid Fuel Stove weighs 3.25 ounces. It’s really just a platform for a fuel tablet (0.5 ounce) with two fold-up pan supports. Many people make their own solid-fuel stoves, and there are several Web sites showing you how (see the Wings Homemade Stoves Archive at http://wings.interfree.it). Hexamine tablets (Esbit, Coghlan’s) are reckoned by aficionados to be more efficient than trioxane tablets. One advantage of solid fuel is that you can mail it.
Alcohol in the form of methanol (wood alcohol, methyl alcohol), ethanol (ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol), or isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol, shellac thinner, solvent alcohol, alcohol stove fuel) can be found in drugstores, hardware stores, and outdoor stores, frequently under the names methylated spirits and denatured alcohol. Often the three types are mixed together. Gas-line antifreeze made from methanol can be used in alcohol stoves, though you should check the contents to be sure it is alcohol. Isopropyl alcohol doesn’t burn as cleanly or as hot as methanol or ethanol, but it does work, and of course as rubbing alcohol you can use it on your feet! Pure ethanol can be used to make alcoholic drinks and so is expensive because of excise tax. It burns well, though. The type found in paint thinners and methylated spirits has methanol and other substances added to “denature” it and make it poisonous and therefore inexpensive, since it’s not liable for duty. Don’t drink it! And of course you can burn brandy or rum in an alcohol stove if you run out of other fuel.
Alcohol is the only liquid fuel not derived from petroleum, which makes it more environmentally friendly than other fuels. It’s also the only liquid fuel that burns unpressurized, which makes it safer, and thus appealing to those who find most stoves a little scary. It’s clean, too, evaporating quickly when spilled. For these reasons, it’s a good fuel for cooking in a tent vestibule. It’s not a hot fuel, however—it produces roughly half as much heat per fluid ounce as gasoline or kerosene. I use 4 to 5 fluid ounces a day, so a quart lasts about a week, which makes it heavier than other fuels to carry on long trips. Trangia says that a quart of alcohol will boil twenty quarts of water, which fits with my experience, since I boil 2 to 4 quarts a day. As alcohol stoves heat up the output increases, so the first pot boiled will take longer than the second, and that one will take longer than the third. That’s as long as you protect the stove from the wind, of course. Strong gusts can blow out an alcohol stove.
Alcohol blackens pans, which many people don’t like. This doesn’t bother me; in theory, blackened pans should absorb heat faster than shiny silver ones, so I make no attempt to clean off the black. Once pans have cooled, the soot rarely comes off on your hands, unlike the soot from campfires.
One joy of alcohol stoves is that they are absolutely silent—you can hear water coming to a boil and also the wind in the trees, birdsong, the hum of insects, and other sounds that are drowned out by the roar of most stoves. Care is needed when using alcohol in daylight because the pale blue flame is invisible in bright light. Most stoves burn for only half an hour at most on one filling (depending on the wind and the use of any simmer device), so refilling while the stove is in use is sometimes necessary. However, inadvertently refilling a still-burning stove from a fuel bottle because you think it’s empty could cause the fuel bottle to ignite. Sometimes there can be a small flame left even if there doesn’t appear to be any heat given off. If a stove goes out during use, I refill it by pouring fuel into the burner cover or other small container, then into the burner. If this item catches fire, I simply drop it onto the stove. It is of course important to be sure there are no flammable items near any stove.
When packing an alcohol stove, I pour any unused fuel back into the fuel bottle after the burner has cooled; fuel tends to leak if carried in the burner, though Trangias come with a sealed lid that is effective as long as you don’t melt the rubber O-ring by putting it on a hot burner. I also pack the burner in a plastic bag and carry it separately from the pans so that it doesn’t dirty them and leave a lingering smell of fuel. Alcohol can be carried in light plastic bottles. Heavy metal ones aren’t necessary, which saves a little of the extra weight of fuel needed.
TRANGIA ALCOHOL STOVES Alcohol is very popular in Scandinavia, and the Swedish-made Trangia Storm-Cookers are well made, simple, and almost indestructible.
Trangia alcohol stove with windscreen.
Trangias come in several versions. Most are complete units, including burner, windscreen/pan support, pans, lid, and pot grab, that nest together for carrying. The excellent little burner itself weighs 2.5 ounces and consists of a short double-walled open brass cylinder with jets around the top, into which you pour fuel—2 fluid ounces fills it. To light it, you simply touch a match to the alcohol. In Trangia 25 and 27 units the burner rests inside a rigid aluminum windscreen, which contains foldout pan supports. With a lid over the top you have virtually a sealed unit, so heat loss is minimal. There are small holes in one side of the windscreen base, which can be turned into the wind to create a draft and make a stronger flame—these are the only stoves I know that boil water more quickly when it’s windy. The flame can be controlled somewhat by dropping a simmer ring (0.75 ounce) over the jets so that only the surface of the reservoir is burning, then partially covering this with a flat metal disk, which you knock into place with a spoon or knife until you achieve the required degree of heat. It’s a crude system and awkward to operate, but it does work. One filling burns for 20 to 30 minutes and will boil a couple of quarts.
Trangia alcohol stove with windscreen, pans, and pot grab.
Trangia 25 and 27 units come in two sizes, each with two pans, a frypan/lid, and an optional kettle. The cook kit comes in plain aluminum, nonstick aluminum, and Duossal (a laminate of stainless steel and aluminum) versions. For solo use, the Trangia 27 is ideal; including two 1-quart pans, lid, and pot grab, it weighs 30 ounces with aluminum or nonstick pans and 32 ounces with Duossal pans (without the pans and pot grab, the unit weighs 15 ounces). Substituting the pint-size kettle for one of the pans brings the weight up by an ounce. The larger Trangia 25 models have 1.5-and 1.75-quart pans and an optional quart kettle. The 25 weighs 38, 45, or 49 ounces, depending on the pan material—too heavy for one backpacker but fine for two or three. There is also a Mini-Trangia (Trangia 28) consisting of the burner, a simplified windscreen, and a quart pan with frypan/lid that weighs 11.5 ounces, plus the Trangia Westwind, which is just the burner plus pot supports and weighs 6.6 ounces. All the Trangia parts are sold separately, so you could just buy the burner, and perhaps the simmer ring and cover, and construct your own lightweight pot supports and windscreen.
A Trangia 27 was my first backpacking stove. I’ve had one for about thirty years. For a decade it was my regular stove and has been all over Scotland, Norway in summer and winter, Iceland, and on my 1,250-mile walk from one end of Britain to the other. Although dented, it still works perfectly. There is so little to go wrong that it’s just about indestructible. Indeed, I’ve heard of a Trangia that was run over by a truck; the windscreen was simply beaten back into shape before being returned to use. I haven’t taken mine on long trips for many years, though, because of the weight both of the unit itself and of the fuel. Despite what many people believe, the Trangia works well in cold weather, though it can be hard to get the fuel to light. I find the best method is to drop a lighted match into the burner.
HOMEMADE ALCOHOL STOVES Making your own stove might seem a rather difficult and even risky business, but with alcohol stoves it isn’t, since they’re so simple. The ultralight hiking movement, which seems to harbor a surprising number of innovative and inventive people, has spawned a mass of designs for homemade alcohol stoves. Wings Homemade Stoves Archive lists twenty-eight, most of them alcohol stoves, the others wood and solid-fuel stoves. Many of the alcohol stove designs are similar to a Trangia burner but much lighter because they’re made from thin aluminum cans. Some weigh as little as 0.35 ounce. I have one of these stoves, though I didn’t make it myself; my friend Jake Schas made it for me. It weighs 1.5 ounces including a wire pot stand. The boil time is surprisingly good. It’s not silent like the Trangia; you can hear the alcohol boiling inside once it’s very hot. Obviously it’s nowhere near as durable as a Trangia burner, but it’s incredibly light and inexpensive and would do for simple boiling. If you do make your own stove, I advise testing it thoroughly (outside of course) to check that it’s safe and durable before taking it into the backcountry.
BRASSLITE Brasslite stoves (brasslite.com) emerged from the homemade alcohol stove scene. These stoves attracted me as soon as I saw one. They look rather like a miniature Optimus Svea 123R (see below), both because they’re made of brass and because of the shape. I found that they not only look good, they work well too. There are two Brasslite models—the 0.8-ounce Turbo F and the 2.5-ounce Turbo II-D. The Turbo F is designed for solo use with pans up to 1 quart. The fuel capacity is just 1 fluid ounce, and on full flame it burns for nine and a half minutes. It won’t boil more than a quart without refueling. The Turbo II-D, the model I have, will handle pots up to 2 quarts capacity with a minimum base size of 5 inches to prevent flames from spilling around the sides, which wastes fuel. Capacity is 2 fluid ounces, and burn time is twenty minutes on full flame. Both burners have fuel chambers with a hole in the top, air ports with a simmer ring that can be closed for simmering, and wire pot supports. The difference is that the II-D has a double-walled chamber, which Brasslite says makes flame control and simmering much easier. The simmer sleeve is closed by moving a lever, which needs to be done with a metal utensil, since it gets hot.
Homemade soda-can alcohol stove with wire pot support, made by Jake Schas. While inexpensive and very light, this stove lacks any flame control.
Brasslite recommends use of a foil heat reflector under the stove and a foil windscreen. I used ones from a multifuel stove. I also used Brasslite’s 1.5 ounce, 8-ounce capacity plastic custom fuel bottle, which makes filling the stove easy and precise. The bottle has a reservoir that takes up to half an ounce of fuel. Measurement marks on it make it easy to see how much fuel you’re using. I first used the stove on a two-day trip in temperatures below freezing (the lowest was 26°F [−3°C]). Once I learned to squeeze fuel on the priming pan at the base of the stove and light that, the stove lit quickly. It then boiled a pint of water in about eight minutes, about half the time of a Trangia. The simmer sleeve worked well, and by moving it carefully I could control the flame surprisingly well, certainly better than with a Trangia, though not as well as with a canister stove. I like the Brasslite and will be using it on future trips where I don’t have to carry more than a few days’ fuel at a time. It’s not as sturdy as the Trangia, but it’s much tougher than soda-can stoves.
The Brasslite Turbo II-D is an ultralight, hot alcohol stove with a controllable flame.
OTHER ALCOHOL STOVES Unsurprisingly, some other makers of homemade stoves started offering them for sale for those who don’t want to make their own. Antigravitygear.com sells a 0.4-ounce Beverage Can Alcohol Stove, and Hike N’ Light (hikenlight.com) offers a 2-ounce stove. Mo-Go-Gear’s (mogogear.com) Go-Torch stove weighs 1.25 ounces including pot stand. Vargo Outdoors (var gooutdoors.com) has a neat little stove, the Triad Titanium, with fold-out pot supports and legs, which weighs just 1.06 ounces. Since it’s titanium, it should be much tougher than soda-can stoves. Slightly more sophisticated though still ultralight at 2.5 ounces is the ThermoJet MicroLite Stove (ther mojetstove.com), which claims a very fast boiling time of 3 minutes, 45 seconds for a pint of water. This stove has a combustion chamber that doubles as a windscreen plus a simmer control. These stoves look interesting, but I haven’t tried any of them.
White gas is probably the most efficient stove fuel, lighting easily and burning very hot. Automotive gasoline is a substitute; you can get it everywhere, and for stove use it’s very cheap. But it’s dirty and smoky, clogs fuel lines and jets, which need frequent cleaning when run on it, and gives off fumes you really don’t want to breathe. Stoves run best and cleanest on refined white gas such as Coleman fuel, the most common one. White gas is sold in outdoor, sporting, and hardware stores and often, especially in towns near popular national parks or wilderness areas, in supermarkets. White gas is volatile fuel and ignites very easily. It requires a lot of care but it is very efficient. I use 2 to 3 fluid ounces a day, so a quart lasts at least ten days.
Kerosene is easy to get, reasonably cheap, and burns at least as hot as gasoline. MSR says its stoves boil slightly more water per amount of kerosene than of white gas. Kerosene doesn’t ignite easily, so it’s relatively safe—far safer than white gas. That means it’s harder to light, of course. It won’t burn just as a liquid as white gas will, so a wick is needed. Multifuel stoves have a pad or wick for this purpose. I find kerosene messy and hard to work with, so I use it only as a last resort. It also stains badly and takes a long time to evaporate, leaving a strong odor unless you use a deodorized version. Refined kerosene (heater or lamp fuel) is much cleaner than crude versions, which can produce dirty, smoky fumes. I became very familiar with kerosene on an eighty-six-day walk up the length of the mountains of Norway and Sweden when I used it in an MSR XGK Expedition. I’ve also used it on several ski tours in places like Greenland and Spitsbergen, where it has worked fine at −15°F (−26°C). Kerosene is efficient—I use 2 to 3 fluid ounces a day—but the difficulties with lighting and handling mean it’s not my favorite fuel.
White-gas and multifuel stoves burn vaporized fuel, not liquid. The fuel has to be pressurized (these are sometimes called pressure stoves) to get it to flow to the burner. Once a stove is lit, the heat from the flames keeps the burner hot so that the fuel vaporizes as it leaves the jet. On many stoves the fuel line runs in a loop next to the burner. This preheat tube heats the fuel before it reaches the jet, speeding vaporization, which is particularly useful when using kerosene. In the simplest stoves, the fuel is transmitted from the tank to the burner by a wick that draws it up to the jet.
Originally white-gas stoves had integral fuel tanks sitting under or next to the burner. This design is still around, but most stoves now connect to a fuel bottle with a long fuel line, giving them a low profile that makes them more stable than taller models. Both types operate best when the tanks are at least half full—they should never be totally filled, because then the fuel can’t expand, and you won’t be able to pressurize the stove properly. Built-in fuel tanks are usually small, ⅓ to ¾-pint capacity, so they may need refilling every day or two. I find it best to top up the fuel tank last thing before packing away the stove in the morning. That way I’m unlikely to run out while cooking the evening meal. If you run out of fuel while cooking, you must wait for the stove to cool down before you can refill it.
Stoves have either roarer or ported burners. In the first a stream of vaporized fuel is pushed out of the jet, ignites, and hits a burner plate that spreads it out into a ring of flame. Roarer burners, as you might guess, are noisy. In ported burners the flames come out of a ring of jets, just like a kitchen gas range. Ported burners are much quieter than roarer burners, though still pretty loud. Neither type seems more efficient than the other.
The main makers of white-gas and multifuel stoves are Primus, Optimus, MSR, Snow Peak, and Coleman.
PRIMING For fuel to flow to the burner and then vaporize, it has to be preheated, known as priming. Priming liquid-fuel stoves is quite easy, but it does require a little practice and should always be done with care outside, since the fuel can flare up. It’s the trickiest part of using a pressure stove. Pump stoves are all primed in much the same way, though you should always follow the specific instructions. First the fuel is pressurized by pumping, usually for about twenty strokes when the bottle or tank is full. Then you open the valve a little and allow a tiny amount of fuel to dribble out into the priming cup or onto the priming pad or burner, depending on the model. Alternatively, you can use priming paste (such as Optimus Burning Paste, which comes in a plastic bottle), alcohol, solid-fuel tablets, or even bits of paper. These are all less likely to flare than fuel from the stove, but they’re something extra to carry. Next you close the valve and light the priming fuel. If you’ve used too much fuel the stove can flare, so don’t have your face over it. As the last flames die away, slowly open the valve again until the burner lights—have a match or lighter handy so you can light the stove if the priming fuel goes out before you open the valve. If you’ve primed correctly, the flame will be blue. If the flame is yellow you need to turn the stove off and prime it again, after it has cooled down. With stoves that have a control valve on the pump and a flame adjuster at the burner, use the adjuster to control the flow of fuel, leaving the control valve open.
Lighting a white-gas stove. Pump the fuel bottle until you can feel firm resistance when you push the pump in—usually after about twenty strokes when the bottle is full (1). The emptier the bottle, the more pumping is required. It’s easiest to do this before you attach the fuel bottle to the stove. When the fuel bottle has been pressurized, open the valve a little until a teaspoon or so of fuel has squirted out and run down into the priming cup or onto the priming wick or pad (2). With stoves without a pump, dribble fuel into the priming cup from a fuel bottle with a pouring spout or an eyedropper filled from the fuel bottle. Light the priming fuel and wait until it has almost burned out (3). Just before it does so open the valve; the stove should roar into life, burning with a blue flame. If the priming flame goes out before you’ve opened the valve, use a lighter or a match; do this quickly, before the stove cools down. If the stove spurts yellow flames, turn it off; you haven’t primed it enough. Wait for the yellow flames to die down, then turn it on again. If it still doesn’t light properly, turn it off, wait for it to cool, and then prime it again. Once the stove is lit, let it burn for a minute or so at a low flame and then turn it on full (4). Don’t turn the valve more times than recommended in the stove’s instructions or you could damage the connection with the bottle. To maintain full power, pump a few strokes every so often (5). If you want a simmering flame, use the stove’s simmer control (it it has one), leaving the main valve on full. If there’s only one control, turn it down to simmer and don’t pump the stove again as it will simmer better with low pressure in the fuel bottle. There will be a short delay between turning a valve on the pump housing and the flame changing. Controls on the burner affect the flame immediately.
OPTIMUS SVEA 123R The Optimus Svea 123R has been around for over a century and is the classic white-gas stove. (The first Svea stoves were produced by a company called Nyberg and ran on kerosene. Production was three thousand stoves a week in the 1890s.) In the 1960s and 1970s it was one of the most popular white-gas stoves. My first white-gas stove was a Svea that I used on through-hikes of the Pacific Crest and Continental Divide Trails. It performed faultlessly.
The Svea looks like a brass can with perforations; though it doesn’t sound attractive, it’s aesthetically much more appealing than most stoves. It’s made up of a simple roarer burner screwed into a ⅓-pint brass fuel tank and a circular wind-screen/pan-support unit that fits around the burner. A small aluminum drinking cup fits over the top to protect the burner when it’s in the pack (though I usually leave this at home—it burns your lips). The tank has a screw-on cap with a built-in safety valve designed to release pressure if the tank overheats. (If this happens, the jet of fuel that spurts out will almost certainly become a flame, so it’s wise to point the tank cap away from you and anything flammable—like your tent.) The Svea’s burner is operated by a key on a chain that fits onto an arm jutting out from the burner and doubles as a maintenance tool. The key is inserted through the windscreen. That and folding out the pan supports are the only setup procedure required, so this stove can be ready to use in seconds.
The Optimus Svea 123 white-gas stove is a classic that has been around for decades.
The Svea doesn’t have a pump (though a minipump is an optional extra), so the tank has to be pressurized by priming it. The simplest way to do this is to fill the shallow recess at the foot of the burner tube with about a teaspoon of gasoline from the fuel bottle (you need a fuel bottle cap with a pouring spout or pouring holes) and light it. Priming paste or alcohol can be used instead, though I don’t find them as effective. By the time the last of the flames are dying away, the tank and burner should both be warm enough so that when you turn the key and open the jet the burner lights. If you miss this point, quickly applying a match will usually light the stove. The flame should be blue. If it’s yellow, the burner hasn’t been primed enough, and the stove is burning semiliquid fuel. Turn it off, let it cool, then prime it again. Once it’s lit, you can use the key to control the flame, though the range of control is limited. The key also controls a built-in jet-cleaning needle, operated by turning the key beyond the “on” position. This should be done infrequently to avoid widening the jet hole. The stove will burn at full heat for up to 75 minutes on one filling, according to Optimus, which seems about right. The Svea is stable enough for small pans, but large ones demand care, because of its tall, narrow shape.
Sveas are tough and long-lived. When I did the burn test for the previous edition, I hauled my blackened Svea—veteran of the Continental Divide Trail but not used for more than five years—out of a jumble of old gear, brushed off the cobwebs, filled the tank, and primed it. It lit straightaway and boiled the water faster than some new white-gas models, which left me wondering why I hadn’t used it for so long. I used that same stove for this edition’s test.
To make starting the Svea and Hunter (see below) stoves easier, especially in cold weather, there’s a pump called the Mini Pump. I’ve never used one because it can’t be fitted to the Svea when the windscreen/pot support is in place. Reports suggest that these pumps can overpressurize the tank and perhaps blow the safety valve, so they must be used with care.
The modern Optimus Nova multifuel stove is easy to light and powerful.
OPTIMUS NOVA While the Svea is a classic white-gas stove, Optimus also make a modern multifuel stove, the Nova, that uses a fuel bottle as the tank and is arguably the most advanced model yet made. In my tests it’s certainly the quickest priming and easiest to use. It has a redesigned burner unit with conductor ribs that transfer heat to the fuel tube below the burner much more quickly than traditional designs do. This means that priming only takes 15 to 30 seconds with white gas and a little longer with kerosene, which is much faster than with other stoves. Whichever fuel you use, you don’t need to change the jet, an excellent feature that saves time, the hassle of having to take the stove apart, and the risk of losing one of the tiny jets. Once lit, the flame is very powerful but can easily be turned down for simmering. Because the control lever is next to the burner rather than being on the pump, there’s no delay when you adjust the flame. One of the aspects of the Nova I like most is the self-purging pump. Instead of depressurizing the fuel bottle by unscrewing the pump slightly, which inevitably lets a spray of pressurized fuel escape, and then detaching the fuel line from the pump, with attendant drips of fuel, you just flip the fuel bottle over and wait (it says On and Off on the pump). Fuel in the tube then burns off to be replaced by air, which helps clean the jet. As this air is released, the fuel bottle is depressurized, so there’s no need to unscrew the pump. Now that I’ve gotten used to having a clean, nondripping stove to pack I really resent models that drip fuel and leave gas on my hands. The Nova can be turned off with the control lever, so the fuel bottle stays pressurized if you’re going to use it again soon. If the jet gets blocked, there’s a built-in cleaning needle that you can operate by shaking the stove or by using an included magnetic tool to push the needle into the jet. With this tool you can clean the jet while the stove is lit. The magnetic tool weighs 1.5 ounces and can also be used to disassemble the stove for maintenance, though I’ve never had to do this. The Nova is very ruggedly built and has a metal pump. It packs up neatly (the legs/pot supports close around the burner) and weighs 15 ounces.
OPTIMUS HUNTER AND HIKER The Hunter white-gas stove (23 ounces) has been around for decades, though it never achieved the popularity of the Svea. It comes in a steel case and is more stable than the Svea because of its lower profile, but keeping the 3-ounce tank pressurized is apparently more difficult because it’s next to the burner with a heat shield in between rather than directly below it. The multifuel Hiker also comes in a steel box, but it’s a much bigger stove, weighing a hefty 58 ounces, which makes it most suited for expedition and group use.
COLEMAN EXPONENT FEATHER 442 AND MULTI-FUEL Coleman is another traditional stove maker; its first stove appeared in 1923. Its backpacking range used to be called Peak 1 but now is called Coleman Exponent, though the stoves haven’t changed. The Feather 442 Dual-Fuel and Multi-Fuel stoves are high-tech constructions bristling with levers and knobs. Both have ported burners set atop 11-ounce fuel tanks and built-in pumps. They need priming only in very cold weather—at least in theory. They’re not fully field maintainable, so I wouldn’t want to rely on either stove on a cold-weather or remote-country trip.
The Feather 442 weighs 24 ounces and runs on white gas and unleaded gasoline. Lighting it without priming is possible, but the instructions need to be followed precisely, and flaring is likely—my success rate is about 25 percent. I find it easier to light the stove by priming with a little fuel around the burner, especially in cold weather. Once lit, the Feather 442 is a powerful stove with a very fast boil time. Simmering is possible, but it doesn’t allow the fine control of some stoves. The Feather 442 is on the heavy side for solo backpacking but would be all right for groups or base-camp use.
The Coleman Exponent Feather 442 dual-fuel stove is very powerful but bulky and heavy.
The Multi-Fuel Stove is similar to the Feather 442, though slightly lighter at 21.6 ounces. For some reason it lights without priming more easily than the Feather 442, especially in the cold. A tapered plastic ring around the base lets you adjust the short legs to keep the stove level on uneven ground. The weight and bulk make it better suited to group than solo use.
The Multi-Fuel Stove can run on white gas, unleaded gasoline, or kerosene, but to use kerosene you have to change the generator using a small wrench that, together with the generator, adds an extra 2.5 ounces to the weight.
COLEMAN EXPONENT APEX II The third Coleman liquid-fuel stove, the Apex II, also runs on white gas, kerosene, and unleaded gasoline. As with the Multi-Fuel, you have to change the generator to use kerosene, however, and I’ve always run mine on Coleman fuel. It’s the lightest Coleman model, weighing 18.5 ounces, and the only one that uses a fuel bottle as the tank. Though in theory it can be lit without priming, I’ve found that this works only when the fuel bottle is full, there’s no wind, the temperature is well above freezing, and the instructions are followed precisely. The Apex II was the first stove using a fuel bottle as a tank to have a flame adjuster on the burner as well as a fuel control knob on the pump, which makes fine flame control possible and simmering easy.
I once used an Apex II along with an MSR WhisperLite to cook for ten on a two-week ski trip in the High Sierra. The Apex II was great for simmering sauces, though not strong enough to hold a large pan of pasta, since it’s a bit fragile and easily dented. Unlike other stoves that use fuel bottles as tanks, it can’t be folded up for packing and so is slightly bulkier. It’s not field maintainable, either, which would worry me on a long hike, especially in a remote area.
MSR XGK MSR first came up with the idea of using a fuel bottle as a remote fuel tank back in the 1970s; its first model, the No. 9, appeared in 1973. This became the GK and then the XGK, which still looks very similar to the original. The MSR XGK deserves the name multifuel, since it will run on white gas, leaded and unleaded gasoline, aviation fuel, kerosene, diesel, and more, though you may have to clean it regularly when using anything other than white gas and kerosene. The same jet can be used for white gas and kerosene, though a second one is recommended for diesel and low-grade kerosene and any other fuels that burn with a sooty yellow flame using the standard jet. For remote areas where you don’t know what fuel you’ll find, this stove is a good choice. I once ran one on something called white spirits for a week when that was the only fuel I could get in a remote part of Norway. The stove gave off appalling dirty fumes but otherwise worked perfectly.
The MSR XGK Expedition multifuel stove is probably the best stove to use with dirty fuel.
The XGK has a roarer burner (and it does roar!) and a rigid rather than flexible fuel tube. This tube has a wide diameter and is easy to clean if it clogs. Like other MSR stoves it has a Shaker Jet, a weighted cleaning needle built into the burner that cleans the jet when you gently shake the stove. The weight is 15.8 ounces including a windscreen and heat reflector, 14 ounces without them. The XGK is field maintainable and comes with a maintenance kit weighing half an ounce.
The XGK is easy to light, but simmering is difficult. It’s great for melting snow (for which it was originally designed) and boiling water, however, and a reliable and durable well-proven expedition stove. I previously commented that the then current model, the XGK II, wasn’t as powerful as its predecessors. This has been remedied by altering how far from the burner the pot supports hold the pan, and the XGK is again one of the most powerful stoves.
MSR WHISPERLITE AND WHISPERLITE INTERNATIONALE MSR’s WhisperLite and WhisperLite Internationale stoves are in essence the same, the only difference being that the first burns only white gas while the second has a wider fuel tube and will also burn automotive gasoline and kerosene, though you need to change the jet for kerosene. Both have the same Shaker Jet as the XGK. WhisperLites are small, spidery stoves with ported burners and foldaway legs/pan supports. The weight is 14 ounces for the Internationale and half an ounce less for the WhisperLite without windscreens and reflectors (which add 1.8 ounces). Both stoves are powerful enough for group cooking. I’ve used my Internationale to cook for ten for two weeks at a time on spring ski trips, using both white gas and kerosene, and it’s worked perfectly with both fuels. Flame control is limited, however, so simmering is difficult. Both stoves are maintainable in the field; maintenance kits, which include spare parts, weigh 0.5 ounce.
The MSR WhisperLite Internationale stove is the multifuel version of the popular WhisperLite.
For a while the WhisperLite became the nearest thing to a standard backpacking stove. I joined the throng and used a WhisperLite Internationale on my long Canadian Rockies and Yukon walks. It proved very reliable, the only maintenance needed being to the leather pump washer, which dried out. I greased it with margarine, and it worked perfectly.
MSR DRAGONFLY The big complaint with the XGK and WhisperLite stoves has always been that it’s difficult to make them simmer even a little. To answer this MSR launched the DragonFly, which has a flame adjuster on the burner so the heat can be easily turned down for simmering. The burner is a roarer, and the DragonFly is one of the noisiest stoves. It has sprung-steel pan supports that fold inward and a pivoting burner and forms a neat unit for packing, though a little bulkier than a WhisperLite. The burner is also suspended above the stove base and so less affected by cold ground. The DragonFly is a multifuel stove and will burn most liquid petroleum fuels. There are different jets for white gas and kerosene. The DragonFly is powerful—I’ve used it for melting snow and cooking for ten on ski tours—and it does simmer well. MSR rates it the most efficient of its stoves, saying it boils more water per volume of fuel. It weighs 14 ounces without windscreen and heat reflector, and there’s a 0.75-ounce maintenance kit.
The MSR DragonFly multifuel stove offers separate flame control, which is good for simmering.
The MSR SimmerLite white-gas stove is the lightest white-gas stove available.
MSR SIMMERLITE Having made a stove that simmers with the DragonFly, MSR’s designers turned their attention to weight and came up with the Simmer-Lite, the lightest white-gas stove at just 8.5 ounces without windscreen and heat reflector (2 ounces—there’s no hole in the heat reflector, unlike those with other MSR stoves). The SimmerLite looks a little like the WhisperLite, with foldout legs/pan supports and a wide ported burner. The legs are flat rather than round, however, and there’s no cup around the burner. Unlike the WhisperLite, the SimmerLite simmers quite well, as the name implies. It’s also much quieter. My initial tests—it’s new—suggest it’s an excellent stove that makes the WhisperLite somewhat redundant, since it performs better and weighs less. Like other MSR liquid-fuel stoves, the SimmerLite has a Shaker Jet and is field maintainable. A maintenance kit weighs 0.5 ounce.
PRIMUS MULTIFUEL AND OMNIFUEL In the late 1990s Primus, once a big name in liquid-fuel stoves but that hadn’t made one for many years, introduced the MultiFuel, which looks quite similar to other liquid-fuel stoves. Unlike any of them, however, it also runs on self-sealing butane-propane cartridges, making it extremely versatile. This is achieved by one of those simple but brilliant devices that make you wonder why no one thought of it before; a valve on the pump that’s the same as the valve on standard self-sealing cartridges and a fuel line valve that will fit either of them. The OmniFuel has the same valve plus a redesigned burner, rather along the lines of the Optimus Nova, to shorten the preheating time and make lighting the stove easier. The OmniFuel also has a flame adjuster on the burner to aid in simmering. Both stoves have self-purging pumps. To shut the stove down, you flip the fuel bottle over and wait while the fuel line clears and the bottle depressurizes. This means no drips from the fuel line when you detach it from the pump and no need to partly unscrew the pump to release the pressure, allowing a spray of vaporized fuel to escape. The stoves are field maintainable and very ruggedly built. They come with foil windscreens and heat reflectors.
The two stoves look much the same, with three foldout legs/pan supports and a squat profile. The MultiFuel weighs 13 ounces without the pump, the OmniFuel 14.5 ounces. The solid metal pump adds five ounces to both stoves. Both burn very hot and boil water fast with cartridges, but the Multi-Fuel is slower than other stoves with white gas and kerosene. Both stoves also simmer well with cartridges, but again the MultiFuel is not so good with white gas and kerosene. The OmniFuel is better with white gas but doesn’t seem to like kerosene, sputtering and flaring and burning slowly however much it’s primed or pumped. I took the OmniFuel and the Optimus Nova on a ski tour in Lapland with two friends and ended up just using the Nova, which worked so much better with the kerosene we were using.
The Primus OmniFuel multifuel stove is the only multifuel stove that works with butane-propane canisters.
The idea behind these stoves is excellent, and they do work well. But there are disadvantages. With the MultiFuel you have to change the jet if you switch between white gas and kerosene, so it’s easier to change from one of those fuels to a cartridge. With the OmniFuel there are three jets: one for butane-propane, one for white gas, and one for kerosene and other heavy fuels. Changing the jets is only a minor hassle, but I’d rather not have it. The jets are tiny, too, and easily mislaid or lost. The stoves are quite heavy for cartridge stoves—though they support big pans better than most—but reasonable for multifuel ones. I wouldn’t want to use either of them with kerosene again because of their poor performance, but if you want one stove to use with white gas and cartridges, the OmniFuel is a good choice.
The Snow Peak GigaPower Titanium is a tiny, ultralight stove.
The VariFuel, which I haven’t tried, is the same stove but without the cartridge valve. The weight is given as 14.8 ounces with the pump. Again, there are different jets for white gas and kerosene.
SNOW PEAK GIGAPOWER WG The GigaPower WG is a lightweight white-gas stove that looks a little like the DragonFly. It weighs 12.5 ounces and comes with a foil windscreen. Snow Peak says that no priming is required and that there is precision flame control. Backpacker gave it an Editor’s Choice Award in 2001, which suggests it’s pretty good. I haven’t used it, though, so I can offer no comment other than that it seems worth a look.
Light, clean and simple to use, cartridge stoves are excellent for three-season use. The fuel is a blend of butane, propane, and sometimes isobutane kept under pressure as a liquid in a sealed cartridge. Open the stove valve, and the fuel rushes out as a gas, which is then ignited. Pure butane has just about vanished. It performs poorly in cool weather because it doesn’t vaporize below 31°F (−1°C) at sea level and is slow to do so below 40°F (5°C). As the altitude increases the boiling point of butane drops, which is the reason butane stoves have been used successfully for Himalayan mountaineering. At 10,000 feet, butane stoves will work down to 14°F (−10°C).
Butane-propane cartridges. From left: Coleman Powermax 300, Coleman 250, Campingaz 270, Primus 2207, Snow Peak GigaPower 110.
Propane, however, vaporizes at −43°F (−42°C) and so works fine at all altitudes. Unfortunately it’s also very volatile, so cartridges have to be strong and therefore heavy. Mix it with a larger amount of butane, and a lighter cartridge can be used, hence blended fuels. Isobutane, which boils at 11°F (−12°C), is sometimes used along with or instead of butane. Coleman cartridges are 70/30 butane/propane; Primus, 70/10/20 butane/isobutane/propane; MSR, 80/20 isobutane/propane; and Campingaz CV, 80/20 butane/propane. I’ve used all these cartridges, and I can’t say I’ve noticed much difference between them. All are slow in subfreezing temperatures unless the cartridges are warmed. The only exceptions to this are the Coleman Powermax 60/40 butane/propane cartridges, which work well in cold conditions (see below).
The problem is that butane and propane don’t bond very well, and the more volatile propane burns off first, giving very fast boiling times with new cartridges. As the cartridge empties there is less propane and more butane left, and performance in the cold declines. This is made even worse because as gas is released the pressure in the bottle falls, and as the pressure drops so does the temperature of the cartridge. You end up with less pressure to force the gas out of the cartridge and a colder cartridge that makes the fuel less likely to vaporize anyway. Thus in temperatures much below freezing cold cartridges don’t give out much power. Once they’re more than half empty, they may not produce enough energy to boil water at all. To overcome this you have to warm the cartridge, which can be done with gloved hands (bare ones can freeze to the metal) or by stuffing the cartridge inside your clothing. Keeping cartridges in your sleeping bag overnight or bringing them in as soon as you wake up can help too. Insulating cartridges against frozen ground or snow is also worth doing. A piece of foam or even a book makes a difference. Whatever you do it’s a hassle, though, and I don’t use standard cartridge stoves if the temperature is likely to be below 25°F (−4°C).
The longer you run a standard cartridge stove the more it cools, so running a stove for a long time—often necessary for group cooking—leads to a much more rapid drop in performance than running it in short bursts. This also makes these stoves less efficient for melting snow than stoves that run on other fuels. Overall, most cartridge stoves are best for solo or duo use when the temperature is above freezing. Under those conditions the latest stoves are very powerful, equaling or bettering white-gas boil times. Cartridge stoves are fuel efficient too. In laboratory tests with 70°F (21°C) water, MSR’s figures show that its cartridge stoves are up to 25 percent more efficient than its white-gas/multifuel stoves, depending on the model. Their cartridge stoves boil on average 1.9 quarts of water per fluid ounce of fuel, the white-gas/multifuel stoves 1.5 quarts. This is a big change, white-gas stoves always used to be much more efficient than cartridge ones. The weight advantage of white-gas stoves has disappeared for long trips without resupply, when the weight of the stove was more than canceled out by the lower weight of fuel needed.
Most cartridges are vapor feed—the fuel leaves the cartridge as a gas. Powermax cartridges use liquid withdrawal and have a fuel tube inside the cartridge up which fuel is drawn. The fuel then passes through a preheat tube next to the burner head, and it is there that the fuel vaporizes rather than when it leaves the cartridge, so the temperature of the cartridge and the pressure in the cartridge don’t have much effect on the vaporization. The fuel tube in the cartridge is weighted so the end always lies on the bottom of the cartridge and fuel is withdrawn at the same rate even when the cartridge is almost empty. This all sounds wonderful, and it is. It works. I’ve used Powermax cartridges at 20°F (−7°C), and there has been no falloff in performance until the last few minutes’ worth of fuel. To see what would happen, I’ve left the cartridges on frozen ground overnight, too, then fired up the stove when they’re covered with frost, and they’ve worked fine. Coleman says the cartridges will work down to 0°F (−18°C). Powermax cartridges come with a “green key” so that they can be punctured and easily recycled, unlike other cartridges. They’re made of aluminum, too, and so are lighter than steel cartridges. There are two sizes: 170 (6 ounces) and 300 (10.5 ounces).
Powermax cartridges can be used only with Coleman X stoves, since they have a nonstandard valve. The industry-standard self-sealing cartridges have a Lindahl valve that most stoves fit. The other nonstandard self-sealing cartridge is the Campingaz CV, which can be used only with CV stoves or the MSR SuperFly. Non-self-sealing cartridges, which can’t be detached from the stove until they’re empty, are harder to pack, and you can’t change the cartridge for a new one when the performance falls off in the cold. They can be discounted for backpacking and anyway have just about disappeared, at least in North America.
Cartridges contain from 3.5 to 21.5 fluid ounces of fuel. The tiniest, lightest ones are all right for one- or two-night trips when you don’t need to carry more than one cartridge, but they’re not efficient for longer trips because the ratio of metal to fuel is greater than in larger cartridges. Problems with cartridges are rare, but occasionally you get one that doesn’t work. This has never happened to me, but I have hiked with people who’ve found their cartridges wouldn’t work and had to borrow fuel. I always check every new cartridge by attaching a stove and lighting it briefly. Stove makers always say you should use only their brands of cartridges with their stoves. In fact, standard cartridges are interchangeable, and when you can’t find the same brand as your stove, which often happens to me, a different brand will work just as well.
Whatever the cartridge, I use about 1.5 to 2.5 fluid ounces a day, which means that an 8-ounce cartridge usually lasts me three or four days (though with the Primus Micron stove this increases to five to six days). If you want to know how much gas is left in a cartridge, you can weigh it when new and after each trip, marking the figure on the cartridge. Alternatively, keep a record of how much empty cartridges weigh (each brand is slightly different, but 8-ounce ones weigh about 5 to 6 ounces) and then weigh any partly full cartridge and work out how much gas should be left. I do this occasionally, but mostly I rely on knowing how many days the cartridge has been used or go by the even less reliable method of hefting the cartridge in my hand and guessing.
There’s one big problem with cartridges: the empties. Too many lie glinting in the sunlight at the bottom of once-pristine mountain lakes or jut out, half-buried, from piles of rocks in wilderness the world over. I have no solution to this problem. Perhaps mountain stores and cartridge makers could offer a deposit system with a refund for the return of empties. Ultimately, users must be responsible enough to carry out their trash and dispose of it properly. Cartridges can be recycled but need handling as hazardous waste. Don’t crush them, since there might be a little fuel left that could explode if there was a spark from anything.
Cartridge stoves generally have ported burners, some noisier than others but quieter than white-gas/multifuel stoves. Heat output is easily adjusted, making these stoves excellent for simmering. Stoves attach to self-sealing cartridges in two ways. The most basic and lightest models simply screw into the top of the cartridge. These are often called piggyback stoves and are best used with low-profile cartridges. Heavier but much more stable are stoves with a flexible hose connecting the burner to the cartridge. With these stoves the burner can be safely encircled with a windscreen, something you shouldn’t do with screw-in burners because the cartridge could overheat and explode, though you can use a windshield around three sides of a piggyback stove or fit a screen just around the burner (for more, see Windscreens and Heat Reflectors, page 311). Screw-in cartridge stoves are good for solo use and perhaps for duos. They’re not very stable with large pans, however, and so are not ideal for groups. Many cartridge stoves come with electric Piezo ignition. Turn on the gas, click the button, and a spark lights the stove. This is great when it works. Spill soup on the igniter or snap the end off, both of which I’ve done, and it will fail, so I always carry a fire steel, matches, or a lighter as well. Given that, I’m happy to do without Piezo ignition. Cartridge stoves are generally reliable, but if they fail they’re not field maintainable. Burner heads can clog if you spill food on them, but wiping them clean usually clears them.
PIGGYBACK STOVES At the time of the previous edition, the lightest cartridge stove was the then ridiculously expensive Primus Titanium at a fraction under 3 ounces. Sensibly priced stoves started at 5.5 ounces. Primus’s stove was the start of a rush of ultralight models, however, and there are now many that weigh 3.5 ounces or less and don’t cost a fortune. Good 3-ounce models I’ve used are the MSR PocketRocket, Coleman Exponent F1 Ultralight, Markill Hot Rod, and Optimus Crux. Slightly lighter is the Snow Peak GigaPower Titanium at 2.8 ounces; slightly heavier is the Primus Micron at 3.5 ounces. The differences between these stoves have to do with how they fold up and the size of the burners and in my opinion are not significant. They all perform amazingly well, with fast boil times and good simmer control. The packed bulk is minimal, of course, and many of them can be held in a closed fist. The flame tends to be concentrated, so hot spots in the center of pans are likely, though I’ve had no problems with burned food. The widest flames are those on the Primus Micron and Optimus Crux. These stoves are best used with small pans anyway, since they’re unstable with large ones. While the boil times are similar, the Primus Micron does seem to be more fuel efficient than the others. Primus says a new catalytic burning system is the reason. I took the Micron on a cold fall hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and used it in temperatures mostly just below freezing; I was surprised and pleased when a Coleman 7.5-ounce canister lasted for six days—a fuel usage of just 1.25 fluid ounces a day, considerably less than I use with other stoves.
The Markill Hot Rod stove is reasonably priced.
The Optimus Crux is ultralight and ultracompact and has a folding head.
The Primus Micron stove is one of my favorites. It’s ultralight and fuel efficient and has a hot flame.
There are plenty of piggyback stoves from the companies named above plus Campingaz (which hasn’t entered the ultralight fray) that are bigger and heavier and more suitable for larger pans, but they don’t have the stability of hose-connected stoves, which I think are better when cooking for two or more. One model is worth mentioning, though—the 4.5-ounce MSR SuperFly, the only stove that fits both standard self-sealing cartridges and Campingaz’s proprietary CV ones. To do this the SuperFly has an aluminum clamp with a plastic collar that slides onto the cartridge valve before the burner is screwed in place. Being able to use different types of cartridges could be useful if you travel widely, particularly to the Alps and Pyrenees, where Campingaz cartridges are all that may be available. On one two-week trip to the Queyras Alps before the SuperFly came along, I took a standard self-sealing stove and four 8-ounce cartridges (which weigh 6 ounces empty, so I had 56 ounces in total), because I knew I probably wouldn’t find the cartridges locally. Sure enough I didn’t, but there were plenty of CV cartridges, and I could have resupplied several times and carried only one cartridge at a time if I’d been able to use them. Now I would take the SuperFly. It weighs an ounce and a half more than the stove I used, but it would have saved me 42 ounces in cartridge weight.
LOW-PROFILE STOVES Hose-connected stoves are more stable because they sit on the ground and usually have larger pan supports than screw-in models, making them more suited for large pots. The Primus MultiFuel and OmniFuel stoves (see pages 296–97) fit in here and are very powerful when used with cartridges. Without the pumps needed for liquid fuels, they weigh 13 and 14.5 ounces respectively. The same model with no provision for using liquid fuel is called the EasyFuel and weighs 12 ounces. Snow Peak makes an 11.5-ounce hose-connected stove similar to the white-gas GigaPower WG stove called—potentially confusingly—the GigaPower BF (blended fuel); it looks good.
The MSR WindPro butane-propane stove is the lightest low-profile, hose-attached canister stove.
The weights of the stoves described above are fairly typical for hose-connected stoves, but there are some that weigh less. MSR has dropped its 12.5-ounce RapidFire for the 6.8-ounce WindPro, which is the same stove as the white-gas Simmer Lite except that it has a cartridge connection instead of a pump. It comes with the same MSR 2-ounce windscreen and heat reflector. It’s not quite as powerful as some other cartridge stoves, but it’s the lightest hose-connected stove. Not quite as light is the 8-ounce, spidery Olicamp Scorpion I, which has been around for many years. I bought one sometime in the 1980s but didn’t find it as powerful as other stoves. I didn’t like the vulnerable-looking black rubber hose, either. The slightly heavier and larger 9.7-ounce Scorpion III should be a little more powerful. Both stoves are inexpensive.
An unusual hose-connected stove is the Markill Stormy, which comes complete with integrated windscreen and two pots at a weight of 25.5 ounces. It has folding legs but also a chain so you can hang it if required. Wind resistance should be superb—Markill says it’s for “extreme conditions.”
Trangia 25 or 27 unit owners who want to use cartridges can buy 8-ounce hose-connected burners made by Primus that fit inside the windscreen with the hose running through a cutout in the side. The system works very well, but the weight and bulk are high compared with a cartridge stove and foil windscreen. You can also turn a piggyback stove into a hose-connected one with the Markill Sidewinder, a tripod base with a cartridge-type valve and a hose with a cartridge attachment. It weighs 6 ounces and folds up neatly. With one of these a 3-ounce piggyback stove can become a 9-ounce low-profile stove when you want the advantages of the latter and don’t mind the extra weight.
The Coleman Exponent Xtreme stove is the only canister stove that works well in temperatures below freezing.
The most interesting hose-connected stoves, though, are the Coleman Exponent X stoves, the only ones that will work with the Powermax cartridges described above. There are three models: the 11-ounce Xtreme, the 13.5-ounce Xpert, and the 26-ounce Xpedition double burner. I have the three-legged Xtreme, which is made from magnesium alloy and looks like many other low-profile stoves. The difference is in the performance. This is a very powerful stove, boiling water faster than virtually anything else in warm weather, and as well as anything else when it’s cold. In subfreezing temperatures it’s the only cartridge stove I’ve used that works well throughout the life of the cartridge, making it the only one suitable for use year-round. Problems? For a cartridge stove it’s expensive, and the cartridges aren’t sold everywhere. The legs don’t lock, either, so you have to take care that they don’t fold in on themselves, or else wedge them in place with tent pegs.
The packed Jetboil with a Snow Peak GigaPower 110-gram cartridge.
The Jetboil stove.
JETBOIL STOVE The Jetboil stove has attracted more attention than any stove for many years. Backpacker gave it an Editor’s Choice award and Outside gave it a Gear of the Year award. However backpacking light.com was more critical. The stove is so new at the time of writing that I’ve only had it a few weeks, so my comments are tentative. The Jetboil is an integrated canister stove and includes an anodized aluminum 1-quart pot/cup, neoprene pot cozy, and heat exchanger. It all packs together into a neat unit, and 100- or 110-gram canisters can be stored inside the pot.
Jetboil says the heat exchanger doubles fuel efficiency by improving the heat transfer, so a cartridge will last twice as long as with other stoves. The Jetboil runs off standard resealable butane-propane cartridges. One of Jetboil’s own 3.5-ounce Jetpower cartridges is claimed to boil 12 quarts. According to MSR their most efficient canister stove, the PocketRocket, would boil 7 quarts with the same amount of fuel. Unable to find any Jetboil canisters, I’ve used the stove with Snow Peak GigaPower 110 and Coleman 250 canisters. With the GigaPower the stove used 0.2 fluid ounce to boil a quart, which would mean 2.4 fluid ounces for 12 quarts. With the Coleman however it used 0.4 fluid ounce, which would mean 4.8 fluid ounces for 12 quarts. This was in an air temperature of 60°F (16°C), water at 58°F (14°C), and no wind. Boil time for 16 fluid ounces of water was four minutes, twice that quoted by Jetboil, but still perfectly acceptable.
Without fuel, the Jetboil weighs 15 ounces. An ultralight cartridge stove and quart titanium pot weigh around 8 ounces. My brief tests and Jet-boil’s figures suggest twice as much fuel will be needed with other stoves. For four days I would carry one 9-ounce canister weighing 12 ounces when full, making a total of 20 ounces with the ultralight stove and pan. I could probably get by with a 3.5-ounce canister weighing 6 ounces when full with the Jetboil, for a total weight of 21 ounces. For eight days with a 16-ounce canister weighing 21 ounces when full, the ultralight unit would weigh 24 ounces; the Jetboil with two 3.5-ounce canisters or a 9-ounce canister weighing 12 ounces when full would weigh 27 ounces. These are rough figures that need backing up with some long field tests but they suggest that although certainly very light the Jetboil isn’t quite the lightest solution, especially as there are titanium pots lighter than 8 ounces and you might not need quite so much fuel with the ultralight stove as I’ve presumed. Compared with anything other than a 3-ounce ultralight canister stove the Jetboil is much lighter, however. Weight isn’t the only factor in stove choice of course, but Jetboil does claim their stove is the “lightest cooking solution ever.”
The efficiency of the Jetboil is probably mainly due to the integrated heat exchanger, which increases the area of the base of the pot, the key area for heating. This more than overcomes the narrowness of the pot, which I find inefficient. The pot cosy helps too. When I didn’t use the pot cozy, boiling times increased by nearly 50 percent. When used, the cozy never becomes more than hot to the touch, showing that little heat is being wasted up the sides of the pot. The heat exchanger acts as a partial windscreen too, though I would still use a separate one in anything more than a light breeze. The cosy helps here too by insulating the pot from moving air. I haven’t yet been able to test the Jetboil in cold weather but I imagine it should work well, unlike many canister stoves.
The Jetboil isn’t perfect, however. It’s tall (11¼ inches long with a 100- or 110-gram canister) and narrow (the pot has a diameter of 4 inches), which makes it unstable on rough ground and a little top-heavy. Narrow pots aren’t as easy to use or clean as wide ones either. You can’t use other pots with the Jetboil and the one provided only holds a quart. Care is needed when the pot is full too, as liquids can easily spill out. The pot/heat exchanger unit should only be fitted to the stove when the stove has been lit, which can be awkward and is best done with a low flame. In wind the stove must be shielded until the pot is in place or it may not light or blow out if it does. Overall, though, the Jetboil is an impressive innovation, and a stove I’ll be using in the future.
Sierra Stove dismantled, showing fan.
All the stoves described above need fuel that you have to purchase beforehand and carry with you. Not the Sierra Stove. This unique device burns natural materials that can be found around most campsites, such as twigs, pinecones, bark, charcoal, and even dried dung. It consists of a hollow-walled open chamber that sits atop a small battery-operated fan and operates like a miniature blacksmith’s forge. Light a small fire in the chamber, then switch on the fan to blow air through holes in the hollow walls, and you get a roaring inferno that quickly brings water to the boil. One AA battery is said to power the fan for six hours, while an adapter with a C cell will run it for thirty-five hours. The fan and battery unit pack inside the chamber for carrying. I hadn’t used a Sierra Stove until recently, but I finally succumbed to curiosity and bought the 18-ounce stainless steel version. After brief use I have to say I’m impressed. I have a few caveats, though. I wouldn’t like to rely on it in wet country unless I carried a bag of dry fuel, which rather defeats the purpose. The battery compartment would need protecting in the wet too, since it’s not remotely water resistant. However, in mostly dry places like the High Sierra I can see its working well and allowing you to stay out for long periods without having to carry a great weight of fuel. The weight of my standard version is about the same as an ultralight cartridge stove and one 9-ounce cartridge, which would last me four days. So for trips that long and longer the Sierra Stove would not add extra weight. There’s a titanium version weighing 10 ounces if you really want to cut the weight. The stove goes through fuel pretty fast when the fan’s on full (the fan has three settings—high, low, and off), so you do need to gather a fair amount before starting it. If you want to use longer sticks there’s a Cross Grate (2.5 ounces) that raises the height of the stove. As long as the fire is kept hot there’s not much smoke, though pans do turn black, as on any wood fire. If you turn the fan down or off for simmering, more smoke is produced. Light fire tongs (0.5 ounce) let you add and move wood without singeing your fingers. The initial fire can be started with any of the kindling you’d use for a campfire or with Zip Fire solid-fuel blocks from ZZ Manufacturing, which makes the Sierra Stove (otherwise known as the Zip Ztove). A pack of eighteen weighs 3 ounces. One is enough to start the stove with dry fuel. Once you’ve finished using the stove, leave it to cool down before dumping out any ashes and scattering them widely. Running the fan for a while after the fire is out cools the stove quickly. Some wood sends out sparks, so it’s safest to set the stove up on rocks or on bare ground.
Sierra Stove with fire lit and fan on full.
A simpler wood-burning stove is F. H. Enterprises’ Trekstov, which consists of a base with air holes in the sides, a firebox, and windscreen/pot supports that nest neatly together. The weight is 21 ounces. The flame can’t be controlled. There is also a stove you can make yourself, the Nimblewill Nomad, a simple wood-burning box with airholes. The weight will depend on what material you use. Details are on the Wings Homemade Stove site, http://wings.interfree.it.
All stoves can be dangerous and should be used carefully. The most important safety point: never take a stove for granted.
Before you light a stove, always check that attachments to fuel tanks or cartridges are secure, tank caps and fuel bottle tops are tight, and controls are turned off. Study the instructions that come with all stoves, especially white-gas and multifuel models, and practice using them at home. When you’re cold, wet, and tired, it’s half-dark, and you desperately need a hot meal, it’s important that you can safely operate your stove almost automatically. By testing stoves at home you’ll also discover any faults. With one brand-new white-gas stove the pump leaked badly as soon as I started pumping. After I dismantled the pump, checked all the seals, and reassembled it, it still leaked, so I replaced it. In the backcountry I’d have had a useless stove. I also check stoves that haven’t been used for a while just in case they need cleaning or maintenance.
Stoves should be refilled carefully, after making sure that there are no open flames such as campfires, burning candles, or other lit stoves nearby. This applies whether you are changing a cartridge or pouring fuel into a tank. Refueling should always be done outside for safety.
An overheated cartridge or fuel tank is a hazard. When the burner is directly above or alongside the fuel tank, make sure there is enough air flow around the tank or cartridge to keep it cool. It should never become too hot to touch. Windscreens shouldn’t fully surround such stoves. If you use large pans that overhang the burner, periodically check to see if the fuel tank or cartridge is getting hot because too much heat is being reflected off the pans.
STOVE AND FUEL WEIGHTS FOR TRIPS OF DIFFERENT LENGTHS
1With MSR 11-ounce fuel bottle
2With MSR 22-ounce fuel bottle
3With MSR 33-ounce fuel bottle
4With Optimus 20-ounce fuel bottle
5With Optimus 34-ounce fuel bottle
6With Primus 8-ounce cartridge
7With Primus 16-ounce cartridge
8With Primus 8- and 16-ounce cartridges
9With Powermax 11-ounce cartridge
10With Powermax 6- and 11-ounce cartridges
11With two Powermax 6-ounce and one 11-ounce cartridges
12With Trangia 16-ounce fuel bottle
13With Trangia 32-ounce fuel bottle
14With Trangia 16- and 32-ounce fuel bottles
15With Brasslite 16-ounce fuel bottle
16With two Brasslite 16-ounce fuel bottles
17With three Brasslite 16-ounce fuel bottles
Considerations and Conclusions:
1. These figures are comparative only and are based on my fuel usage. Figures have been rounded to the nearest 0.5.
2. Stove weight counts with white-gas and cartridge stoves. The ultralight PocketRocket is the lightest option even for twelve days, despite the extra weight of the cartridges.
3. Alcohol is heavy even if the stoves aren’t. For long trips it is very heavy.
4. MSR Titanium fuel bottles would save weight with the white-gas stoves. A light plastic bottle saves weight with the alcohol stoves.
5. If you’re out for more than four days the Sierra Stove is the lightest option.
Stoves, especially white-gas stoves, can flare badly when being lit. Never have your head over a stove when you light it. Also, don’t light a stove that is close to any flammable material. If you need to cook in the vestibule or under a tarp, it’s safest to light the stove out in the open, even if you have to stick it out into the rain and then bring it back under cover when it’s burning properly. If you do light a stove in the vestibule, leave the door open so you can quickly push the stove out if anything goes wrong (but be careful where you push it if there are other tents around). I was once walking across a crowded campground on a blustery winter day when I saw a bright yellow flash inside a nearby tent. A second later, a blazing gasoline stove came hurtling through the tent fly sheet—leaving behind a neat hole—and landed near my feet. If another tent had been close by, there could have been a disaster.
A threat when using a stove inside a tent is carbon monoxide poisoning, which can be fatal. All stoves consume oxygen and give off this odorless, colorless gas. In an enclosed space they can use up all the oxygen, replacing it with carbon monoxide. There should always be good ventilation when a stove is in use. In a tent vestibule air can usually enter under the edge of the fly sheet, but this can be blocked by snow piling up around the edges of the tent or by a wet fly sheet freezing to the ground. In those cases, if there’s no vent, a two-way outer door zipper is useful—the top few inches can be left open to ensure ventilation.
It’s best never to use a stove in the inner tent, partly because of carbon monoxide poisoning, but mainly because of fire.
Most stoves need little maintenance. Many white-gas and multifuel stoves have built-in cleaning needles. With those that don’t, you may need to clean the jets occasionally with the thin jet prickers (weighing a fraction of an ounce) that usually come with stoves that need them. They should be used only when the stove’s performance seems to be falling off, since too much cleaning can widen the jet and lessen the burn rate. If you lose, break, or forget your jet pricker, as I did once on a winter trip, and your soup boils over and blocks the jet, a bristle from a toothbrush makes a good substitute. (This idea was suggested by two walkers in a mountain shelter where I went in desperate search of anything that would restore my stove to working order.)
Check rubber seals and O-rings on tank caps and cartridge attachment points periodically and replace them if worn. I carry spares on long trips. You may need to carry a complete tank cap. On the Pacific Crest Trail I was glad I did so—the original one on my Svea 123R started to leak after four months of constant use.
A stove maintenance kit is necessary for white-gas and multifuel stoves. The contents depend upon the model, but a kit usually contains O-rings, a tool for dismantling the stove, pump leather oil, jets, jet needles, and a leather pump cup.
Fuel bottles need to be leakproof and tough. They’re best carried away from food, preferably in an outside pocket of the pack, just in case they leak.
Plastic bottles are fine for alcohol. Even empty soda bottles can be used. Brasslite’s 8- and 16-fluid-ounce plastic bottles have pouring spouts and reservoirs and weigh 1.5 and 2.5 ounces. Nalgene and Trangia make polyethylene fuel bottles in pint and quart sizes that are suitable for white gas and kerosene as well as alcohol. The Trangia bottles weigh 4 and 5.6 ounces and have safety valves. The Nalgene bottles have pour spouts under the caps and weigh 3.7 and 4.6 ounces.
Metal fuel bottles double as tanks for hose-attached stoves. The standard for decades has been the Swiss-made Sigg bottle. I used the 21-fluid-ounce size, weighing 3.5 ounces, for many years for all fuels, and despite getting very battered and dented, the bottles never leaked. Sigg bottles come in sizes holding 10.5, 21, 35, and 53 fluid ounces. For many years Siggs were the only round fuel bottles—the original MSR stoves were designed to use them. Now MSR, Optimus, Primus, and Snow Peak all make similar aluminum bottles with the same size threads. MSR’s 11-, 22-, and 33-fluid-ounce bottles weigh 2.8,4.9, and 7.3 ounces, Optimus’s 20- and 34-fluid-ounce ones weigh 4.2 and 5.6 ounces, and Primus’s 18- and 30-fluid-ounce ones weigh 4.2 and 5.8 ounces. Snow Peak’s 18.5-fluid-ounce bottle weighs 6 ounces. MSR also makes titanium bottles if you want to shave weight. Titan bottles come in 14-, 21- and 28-fluid-ounce sizes at weights of 3, 3.5, and 4.1 ounces. Coleman’s 22-fluid-ounce bottle for the Apex II stove has different-size threads and so isn’t interchangeable with the others. It weighs 5 ounces.
It’s almost impossible to fill small tanks directly from standard bottles without spilling a little fuel. However, various ingenious devices help. I have a Sigg pouring cap and spout, bought many years ago for filling my Svea 123 tank. This is a standard cap with a small plastic spout inserted in one side and a tiny hole drilled in the other. By placing a finger over the hole you can control the flow from the spout. It’s inconvenient to use—you have to remove the normal cap, screw in the pouring cap, fill the stove, and then change the caps again. To avoid losing either cap, I’ve linked them with a piece of shock cord. The Sigg pouring spout is no longer sold, but REI’s 0.5-ounce Super Pour Spout does the same job. Olicamp’s Ulti-Mate Pour Spout looks similar but also functions as a standard cap, which is much more convenient. The caps on Optimus and Trangia fuel bottles can also be used for pouring. The Trangia cap is sold separately for use with other bottles.
For filling fuel bottles from larger containers, I use a small Coghlan’s polypropylene Filter Funnel (0.75 ounce). I usually carry it on long hikes when I may have to refill with white gas from gallon cans or use fuel of dubious cleanliness.
The one stove accessory that’s essential is a windscreen. No stove will function well in a stiff breeze without one. Even if the stove stays alight, it will take a long time and a great deal of fuel to boil water, if it does so at all. In a strong wind an unprotected stove may be impossible to light. MSR’s crude-looking but ultralight foil windscreen is arguably one of the greatest advances ever in backpacking stove cooking. If you don’t have a windscreen, a foam pad held around the stove at a safe distance works quite well, or you could prop up your pack or boots. These are all a hassle, though, so I always carry a windscreen.
Primus and MSR multifuel and white-gas stoves come with foil windscreens, as does the MSR WindPro cartridge stove, while solid alloy ones come with the larger Trangia models. No other stoves come with adequate windscreens as components. Crosspieces on the burner that stop the flame from blowing out do not count as true windscreens. Foil windscreens, sold by MSR, Primus, and Optimus, are ideal for low-profile stoves with remote fuel tanks. They weigh 1.5 to 2 ounces.
Taller stoves that sit on top of fuel tanks and cartridges shouldn’t be completely surrounded by a windscreen; there needs to be some airflow to the fuel container so it doesn’t overheat. However, you can protect them on three sides, which is adequate. The tank or canister should always be cool enough to touch. Standard foil windscreens aren’t tall enough to protect these stoves, though you can staple two together or make your own from heavyduty aluminum foil. Taller rigid aluminum wind-screens are generally quite heavy. When I used the Svea 123 regularly, my windscreen was a 10-inchtall folding Coghlan’s model made of five sheets of aluminum with anchor rods at each end. This windscreen is efficient and durable and works well with screw-in cartridge stoves, but it weighs 8 ounces. Markill’s similar 10-inch-high five-panel windscreen is much lighter at 3.5 ounces. It looks like a good choice, and I’ll probably get one. An alternative is a foil windscreen that wraps around the burner only, with another sheet of foil around the base of the burner as a heat reflector. For details, go to the Homemade Canister Stove Wind-screen page at backpackinglight.com.
Whatever windscreen you use, it’s most effective if it’s close to the pan—less than half an inch away—since this traps most heat and minimizes air movement.
Heat reflectors that fit under the burner or the stove speed up cooking times only slightly in my experience. They do protect the ground and fuel tanks and canisters from the heat, however, and can be used as stove stands, especially on snow, when one is essential.
In theory heat exchangers conduct heat from the burner up the sides of a pan, speeding cooking times and reducing fuel consumption. MSR’s XPD Heat Exchanger is a corrugated aluminum collar that comes as part of the XPD Alpine Classic Cookset, which consists of two stainless steel pots (1.5 and 2-quart capacities) with frying pan/lid and pot grab. According to MSR, the Heat Exchanger increases heat efficiency by 25 percent. Since the exchanger weighs just 7 ounces, it should save weight overall on long trips. On short trips, the main advantage would be faster boiling times. Although designed for MSR pots, the XPD Exchanger can be used with other brands. It won’t work with ones less than 6 inches in diameter, though. I used the heat exchanger on several ski tours with groups and thought it did speed up boiling times, though I never quantified by how much. I did eventually get around to doing some tests, and the results were surprising. A quart of water in an MSR Alpine pan on a Primus OmniFuel stove attached to a cartridge took 3 minutes, 55 seconds to boil. I then fitted the Heat Exchanger so it hung an inch and a half below the pot and boiled another quart. It took 4 minutes, 40 seconds. Moving the Exchanger so it was level with the base of the pot, I boiled a third quart. It took 5 minutes, 30 seconds. The Heat Exchanger was having the opposite effect from that intended. The OmniFuel has a roarer burner that spreads the flame across the bottom of the pan. To see if there was any difference, I did the test again using an MSR PocketRocket, which has a narrow flame focused on the center of the pan. With the XPD Exchanger hanging an inch and a half below the pot the quart of water boiled in 4 minutes, 45 seconds. With it level with the pot base, it boiled in 5 minutes, 45 seconds. Without the heat exchanger, it boiled in 5 minutes, 30 seconds. These are confusing results—at least they confused me—so I consulted a physicist friend. He thought the heat exchanger was acting as a radiator when used with a stove with a wide flame. The flame was heating the exchanger, which then radiated the heat into the air, slowing heating of the pot. With the narrow flame he thought the exchanger trapped a cushion of hot air below the pot, which speeded up heating of the pot. This effect was lost when the exchanger was level with the base of the pot. In that case, with both flames the heat exchanger absorbed some heat, effectively creating a pot with a larger surface area, and so slowed the heating of the water. My conclusion is that the XPD Exchanger is best used with large pans and stoves with narrow flames. If the XPD gets hot, then it’s probably not doing its job. With stoves with wide flames, they could be turned down to prevent the XPD from absorbing heat. My friend thought it wasn’t worth using and that a windscreen would be much more effective. Certainly a windscreen and a lid are the two most important items for fuel conservation and fast boiling times. (The heat exchanger on the Jetboil stove sits under the pot, which is why it’s so effective.)
Use a Scorch Buster heat-dispersion plate to spread the heat while simmering.
MSR XPD Heat Exchanger. Heat exchangers are claimed to increase fuel efficiency.
The Pot Parka is a soft, aluminized fiberglass dome that keeps pots warm. It weighs 3 ounces for the 8-inch size and 4.3 ounces for the 10-inch. It also forms the main part of the Outback Oven (see below). It saves fuel because when it’s in place you can melt snow or warm water with the stove on a low setting. It starts to burn if you use it with a stove on full, however, so it can’t be used to speed up boil times. It can also be used to keep food warm when the stove is off—for example, to cook pasta or rice added to boiling water.
Stoves with poor flame control can burn food that needs simmering for any length of time unless you stir constantly and lift the pot above the burner every so often. An answer to this is the Scorch Buster heat-dispersion plate, a ribbed stainless steel disk that weighs 2.8 ounces and is, in fact, the same as the diffuser plate of the Outback Oven described below. It works well and is worth carrying if you tend to burn meals.
Hanging cook systems, which can be suspended from pitons or other supports, are designed for mountaineers bivouacking in tight places. Examples are the Bibler Hanging Pot Set, which has a combined windscreen/heat reflector and a 1- or 2-quart pot (20 or 22 ounces), the ultralight 3.5-ounce Primus Suspension Kit, a wire framework that supports both stove and fuel bottle or cartridge, the 9.5-ounce MSR SuperFly Ascent System, which includes the SuperFly stove plus hanging wires and a windscreen/pot holder, and the 17.5-ounce Markill Stormy Hanging, with two pots, windscreen, and hanging chain, which is designed for the Markill Devil stove. You could use one of these in a tent in winter to avoid cooling the fuel by placing it on the snow or suspend it from a tree if you want to cook without bending over. I’ve never used one.
Stoves need support on snow and, sometimes, soft ground. They also need insulating from cold ground. You can use a small square of wood, metal, or fiberglass insulation or even a book. On ski tours I usually use the blade of a snow shovel. In the snowbound High Sierra on the Pacific Crest Trail I used my natural history guide to stop my Svea stove from melting down into the snow. MSR makes a flat-folding three-section base called the Trillium that weighs 3 ounces and can be adjusted to fit different MSR stoves, and UCO offers the Mightylite stove stand at 4 ounces that has an elastic cord for attaching the fuel bottle to make a single unit. For piggyback stoves there is the Foot Rest from Primus. This has three folding legs and fits under the cartridge. It weighs 0.75 ounce. Mostly, though, I use a flat rock. I do like the look of the Trangia Multi-Disc, however. This circle of hard plastic with holes in one side can be used as a strainer and a cutting board as well as a stove stand. It could be used as a Frisbee, too. The weight is 3.5 ounces, and I’ll probably use one on my next snow-camping trip.
It’s best to carry more than one item for lighting your stove. Soaked matches and empty lighters won’t help you. I always used to carry a box of strike-anywhere matches (half an ounce) in my food bag, another in the stove bag, and a third in a plastic bag with some toilet paper. I always kept them in Ziploc plastic bags, but waterproof metal or plastic match safes (Coghlan’s makes both) provide extra protection and weigh about an ounce. Empty film canisters or other small plastic containers with secure lids can be used too. You can tear the striker off the matchbox and store it inside with the matches. I don’t like book matches—the striking strip wears out quickly, and it always seems that half the matches don’t work.
The chance that several boxes kept in different places in the pack all will get soaked is remote, but it could happen in a downpour or during a river ford, so carrying an emergency backup fire starter is good for peace of mind. I used to carry a canister of waterproof, windproof Lifeboat matches in my repair kit. The waterproof plastic canister contains twenty-five large matches, has strikers top and bottom, and weighs 0.75 ounce. They work when wet and burn for eleven to fifteen seconds, but beware of the hot embers after one has gone out. You can get other windproof and waterproof matches from companies like Coghlan’s.
An alternative to matches is a lighter. Disposable butane lighters weigh less than an ounce, and just a spark from one will ignite white gas and butane-propane, though not kerosene or alcohol (at least not easily). If a lighter gets wet, it’s easily dried; a sodden box of matches is useless. Refillable lighters like the classic Zippo (2 ounces) are an alternative. Lighters can be touchy, though, and don’t always work. I wouldn’t rely on one alone.
Until recently I’d never tried any fire starters other than matches or lighters, regarding other methods as rather esoteric and complicated—fun maybe, but little practical use. Then I discovered the Swedish FireSteel, a modern version of the old flint and steel. This consists of an alloy magnesium rod with a plastic handle and a small flat steel bar linked by a short length of cord. Striking the rod with the bar produces extremely hot bright white sparks (5,430°F, say the makers). There are two sizes of FireSteel. The smaller Scout weighs 1 ounce and is said to produce at least 3,000 ignitions. The larger Army weighs 2 ounces and lasts for 12,000 strikes. Lighting a white-gas or cartridge stove with the FireSteel is easy, and it really does work when wet. I dunked it in water and struck it while it was still dripping, and bright sparks appeared immediately. I started carrying the FireSteel as a replacement for the Lifeboat matches, but I’ve ended up using it as my main fire starter. Not having to protect it from damp makes it a great tool. A box of matches or a lighter is now my backup in case I lose the FireSteel.
Swedish FireSteel and Tool Logic SL3 knife with FireSteel insert. Fire starters like this one are hot and work in any weather, even rain.
There are several other fire starters of the flint and-steel type. The Doan Magnesium Firestarter Tool (1.3 ounces) is perhaps the classic model. To use it you scrape flakes from a magnesium bar, then ignite them by scraping a knife across the bar to create sparks.
Survival manuals describe in detail methods of fire lighting such as bow drills that use natural materials, but these all strike me (on the basis of no experience, I should add) as unworkable in the cold and wet—when you’d need a fire most.
If you’re planning to fly with your backpacking equipment, check the airline regulations before purchasing a ticket. Federal Aviation Administration regulations say you may carry properly purged stoves and fuel bottles—ones that are well aired and empty with no fuel smell. However, many airlines have much stricter rules of their own. Some won’t carry any used stoves or used fuel bottles, some won’t carry any stoves or fuel bottles at all even if new, and some won’t carry used fuel bottles but will carry purged stoves.
To be sure stoves and bottles are purged, air them, preferably in sunshine, for as long as possible before the flight. Bottles can be washed out with soapy water, too.
You can send used stoves and empty fuel containers as air freight, but this is so expensive and such a hassle that you might as well buy a stove at your destination.
Some airlines will let you carry cartridge stoves but not liquid-fuel stoves. When planning a ski tour to the Yukon, I checked with the airline about stoves and was told that no used liquid-fuel stoves or fuel bottles were permitted but that cartridge stoves were fine as long as I carried no cartridges. We took cartridge stoves and discovered how difficult they are to use at 0°F (−18°C).
Fuel is obviously a hazard, and no airline will carry it. Buying fuel at your destination is the solution.
Your cooking habits determine what kitchen gear you carry. One advantage of minimal cooking is that it requires minimal tools. For many years my basic kit has consisted of a 0.9-quart titanium pot with lid, a 1-pint stainless steel cup, a small knife, and two plastic spoons—total weight 11 ounces. This serves my needs both on weekends and on long summer trips. When snow camping I carry an insulated 12-ounce mug instead of the stainless steel cup that happens to weigh exactly the same.
Pots and pans for camping are hardly the most exciting items of gear, and most people give them little thought. I used aluminum pans for well over ten years, then changed to stainless steel, followed by steel-aluminum laminate and finally, for the past decade, titanium. To see how they performed, I’ve tried a wide selection over the years.
Aluminum, the standard backpacking cookware material for decades, is lightweight, heats evenly without hot spots, and conducts heat quickly, making for fast boiling times. But it pits, scratches, and dents easily, which makes it hard to clean and can give some foods a slight metallic flavor. Concerns that aluminum might contribute to Alzheimer’s disease led aluminum pans to lose popularity to stainless steel. Now that these fears have turned out to be groundless, aluminum has had a revival. This has been helped by its low cost and by the introduction of hard-anodized aluminum, which is tough, scratchproof, and hard to dent.
Many aluminum pans, however, are made of soft metal and are poorly designed, low cost being the manufacturers’ only concern. Trangia aluminum pans—sold separately from the stoves—are high quality. The 1-quart size weighs 3.5 ounces, the 1.75-quart, 5.5 ounces. I have a 5-quart Trangia pot with a lock-up bail arm that weighs only 18.5 ounces; I use it when cooking for groups (when it makes a good receptacle for packing tortillas). Open Country and Coleman are among other makers of plain aluminum pans. One pan that has become quite popular with ultralight hikers and that is very inexpensive is the Wal-Mart Grease Saver Pot, designed for straining grease. Take out the strainer and you have a 1-quart pot that weighs 2.5 ounces plus a 2-ounce lid with black plastic knob. The pot has black sides with the word “grease” imprinted and a silver base. It’s very light, but the aluminum is soft and easily dented—a pot gripper made marks the first time I used it. There’s a lip around the rim that could collect dirt, and the right angle between the base and sides is harder to clean than a rounded edge. For the sake of an ounce and only a small amount of cash, I’d rather have the 1-quart Trangia pan.
Pot selection. Clockwise from top left: Trangia 5-quart aluminum, Olicamp 1.5-quart copper-bottomed stainless steel, MSR Alpine 2-quart stainless steel, Evernew 0.9-quart titanium, MSR DuraLite Mini 1.5-quart hard-anodized aluminum, GSI Bugaboo 1-quart nonstick aluminum.
Wal-Mart Grease Saver Pot is a budget, ultralight aluminum pan.
Hard-anodized aluminum is more expensive than standard aluminum but should last far longer. MSR, Primus, Outdoor Designs, GSI, and more all make hard-anodized aluminum cookware with nonstick coatings that are meant to be much harder wearing than those found on other metals. Primus’s Litech Cook Kit has 2.1- and 1.7-quart pans, a lid, and a pot gripper and weighs 20 ounces. Primus also make the 1-quart Litech Trek Kettle, a tall pot with a pouring spout that weighs 7.5 ounces. MSR makes two hard-anodized aluminum cooksets: the DuraLite Classic with 1.5-and 2-quart pans and the DuraLite Mini with 1-and 1.5-quart pots. Both sets have a lid and a pot gripper and come with a PackTowl cloth for cleaning and to separate the pans when packed. The Classic weighs 18 ounces, the Mini 15.5 ounces. I’ve used the Litech Trek Kettle and the MSR DuraLite Mini pans, and they do heat evenly and are very easy to clean. The nonstick coating is far tougher than on other pans I’ve used, too. The 1-quart DuraLite pan weighs 4.75 ounces, comparable with titanium and lighter than steel.
Many standard aluminum pans come with nonstick coatings. These are fine as long as you’re prepared to treat them carefully and always use plastic or wooden utensils. I prefer pots I can mistreat and scour with sand or gravel if necessary. (I know this shouldn’t be required, but in my experience nonstick means “doesn’t stick as badly or as often.”) The latest nonstick coatings do seem to be tougher than those in the past, though. I’ve been using a rather pretty blue GSI Bugaboo nonstick 1-quart pot that weighs 11.5 ounces with lid and have found it surprisingly tough. A neat touch is that the pot gripper fastens to the outside of the pan, not the rim, and so can’t scratch the Teflon coating.
Stainless steel is easy to clean, noncorroding, scratchproof, tough, and long lasting, and it doesn’t taint food. Unfortunately, it’s significantly heavier than aluminum and also conducts heat more slowly, leading to fractionally longer boiling times. Evernew makes excellent stainless steel cooksets, but its smallest set—1- and 0.75-quart pans, frying pan/lid, and plastic cup—weighs 21 ounces, three times the weight of an equivalent-size aluminum set. MSR’s stainless steel Alpine Classic Cookset, the same as the one that comes with the Heat Exchanger, with 1.5- and 2-quart pans plus lid and pot grab, weighs 26 ounces. The lightest stainless steel pans I’ve found are from Olicamp; I have a 1-quart copper-coated pan taken from a larger set that, with its lid, weighs 7.5 ounces. It was my choice for a solo pan until Inoxal (see below) and then titanium came along. The copper-coated bottom is meant to speed up heat conduction. It wears off eventually, however. My pan had a shiny steel base by the time I retired it.
The best qualities of steel and aluminum can be obtained by laminating the two, with steel as the inner surface. Pans made from this are sold by Trangia under the name Duossal. Sigg used to make a fine set under the name Inoxal but these are sadly no longer available, but my usage of them applies equally to Duossal pans. The laminate is lighter than stainless steel, though not as light as aluminum. An aluminum 1.5-quart pan (without lid) tipped the scales at 4.5 ounces, stainless steel at 8.5, and Inoxal at 7.
The first time I used an Inoxal pan, the water boiled so quickly that I wasn’t ready for it; during the first few days of use the pan kept boiling over and putting out the stove. I was so used to my standard stainless steel pan that I knew how long soups and meals took to come to the boil without timing them. Clearly, the Inoxal pan was more efficient.
I eventually did a comparison test using aluminum, stainless steel, and Inoxal 1.5-quart pans. I wasn’t too surprised when the water took longer to boil in the stainless steel pan than in the Inoxal, though a third longer was more than I’d expected. The real surprise was that water also boiled faster in the Inoxal than in the aluminum pan—one-sixth faster, in fact. I did the test again to double-check, and the results were almost identical.
How much of this performance is due to the Inoxal material and how much to the black exterior (the other pans were shiny silver), I don’t know. Duossal pans aren’t black, so maybe they won’t be as efficient. Faster boiling time helps conserve stove fuel, and on long trips it would make a difference to the amount of fuel you had to carry. The difference would be more marked when boiling larger quantities, of course, and I suspect that while large groups might notice it, solo hikers wouldn’t. Certainly when I look at my fuel usage on solo hikes over the years when using aluminum, stainless steel, Inoxal, and titanium pans, it hardly varies. It also doesn’t vary whether the pans have been silver or black on the outside.
MSR DuraLite Mini Cookset is made with hard-anodized aluminum.
Titanium pan and mug: my favorites.
Titanium is my favorite material for pans. It doesn’t pit, scratch, or affect flavor, and it cleans easily. It’s much lighter than steel—45 percent lighter according to MSR—conducts heat better, and is more durable. I have a ten-year-old 0.9-quart Evernew pan with foldout handles that weighs 5 ounces with lid. It’s my most-used pot by far and has had well over a year’s worth of use in total, during which it’s acquired just one small dent. The latest version of this pan has a nonstick coating, unfortunately from my point of view. However, there are plain titanium alternatives such as MSR’s Titan Mini Cookset with 1- and 1.5-quart pans, lid, and pot gripper at 10.9 ounces and Snow Peak’s Multi Compact Titanium Cook Set with 1- and 1.5-quart pans with foldout handles and lids at 11.5 ounces. MSR also makes a 30-ounce Titan Kettle that weighs just 4.2 ounces with lid that looks excellent for solo use. The only downside to titanium is the very high cost. But once you have a pot it will last a very long time.
Whatever they’re made from, pans should be simple. Fairly shallow ones with rounded edges are best, because food is less likely to burn in them and they’re easy to clean. They also conduct heat more efficiently from the stove to their contents due to their large base area. Rounded bottom edges are also more efficient in theory since heat can more easily travel up the sides of the pot. Tall, narrow pots conduct heat inefficiently. Very shallow, wide pots, such as those found in many traditional-style mess kits, aren’t very good for boiling water, though they’re OK for frying. Pans that nest are standard. Often, though, cooksets don’t contain the mix of pans you want. I like to make my own sets from different pans, checking that they nest together.
Although low weight is welcome, very thin pans can distort, making them hard to balance on stoves, and food tends to burn quickly in them.
Avoid attached handles on aluminum pans because they become very hot, but foldout handles on stainless steel and titanium pans stay reasonably cool unless you use the pan on an open fire. Bails that rise above the pan can get quite hot too. They’re useful for suspending a pan above a fire and with large pans that can be hard to lift when full with a side handle or a pot gripper. Check the welds of handles or bails. They can fail, leaving you with a pan that has holes in it and a useless handle.
How big a pan you need depends on how many you’re cooking for. I find a 1-quart size is easily large enough for solo cooking. For two I add a 2-quart pan; when I’ve cooked for ten I’ve found a 5-quart pot just big enough for cooking pasta or rice, with a 2-quart pan adequate for the sauce.
Lids are very important for faster boil times and lower fuel use. In strong winds water may not boil at all unless the pan is covered. Good lids should fit tightly. Many are designed to double as frying pans, but people who fry foods tell me that lids don’t work very well this way. They’re often relatively heavy—the lid for my 1-quart titanium pan weighs 1.5 ounces, the one for the 1-quart Inoxal pan, 3.5 ounces—so I sometimes substitute a piece of heavy-duty foil that weighs just 0.3 ounce.
For pans without handles, you need pot grippers, or pot grabs, that clamp firmly onto the rim. I used a 2-ounce Trangia pot grab on almost every trip for nearly twenty years. MSR makes excellent pot grippers too; the 1.6-ounce PanHandler will support up to ten pounds, and the 1-ounce LiteLifter will lift full 4-quart pots. Not all pot grippers are of this quality, though; some thin aluminum ones quickly twist out of shape. Now that I usually use the titanium pot with its fold-out handles and a lid with a knob on solo trips, I carry a pot grab only when I intend to cook over an open fire, where the handles get hot.
Outback Oven with Pot Parka, which can be used on its own to keep pots warm.
A selection of pot grippers for pots of different sizes. You’ll need the larger ones for pots that hold more than a quart.
When I first heard about ovens for backpackers I was highly dubious, suspecting they would be heavy and difficult to use. I couldn’t imagine baking anything on a small stove in the wild. However, my assumptions started to waver with reports that the Outback Oven really did work well, so I decided I had to try it. I wasn’t disappointed. (Back then the Outback Oven was made by Traveling Light; now it’s under the Backpacker’s Pantry umbrella—back packerspantry.com.)
If you’re the sort of backpacker who hates dehydrated food and dreams of pizza, fresh bread, or apple pie, you can have them all with one of these ovens, without too much hassle.
The Outback Oven comes in three versions: the 43-ounce 12-inch for large groups, the 26-ounce 10-inch for two to four people (both include a Teflon-coated baking pan), and the 7-ounce Ultralight for one or two. The Outback Oven consists of a foil reflector collar that fits under the burner of your stove and directs heat upward, a stainless steel riser bar and diffuser plate to spread the heat evenly and prevent scorching, a fiberglass convection dome that fits over your pan and concentrates the heat, and a simple thermometer. All the components can be packed inside a small pan.
To use the oven you need a stove with a controllable flame plus pan supports that the heat reflector can be fitted to and that will support the riser bar/diffuser plate unit. Most stoves meet these criteria, but check that the oven will fit your stove before buying one. A windscreen is essential unless it’s calm. The Ultralight oven is designed to be used with pans from 6 to 8 inches in diameter and 3 to 5 inches high, which includes most 1.5-and 2-quart pans but rules out smaller ones.
Simpler and lighter than the Outback Oven is the BakePacker. The standard version weighs 8 ounces and the ultralight one weighs 4 ounces. I’ve tried the latter, which is designed for pots 6 to 7 inches in diameter. The BakePacker consists of an aluminum grid of heat pipes that sits in the bottom of the pan and conducts heat up through its honeycomb. You put enough water in the pot to cover the grid, then place the food to be baked on top in a plastic freezer bag or oven-roasting bag and spread it out. You then close the bag loosely and put the lid on the pot. Once the water is boiling, medium heat is enough to steam bake the mix in the bag. Because the BakePacker cooks with steam it can’t produce crisp crusts, unlike the Outback Oven, and you need a supply of plastic bags. However, it’s light and easy to use.
BakePacker baking grid.
Having eaten freshly baked food on the trail, I can’t go back to living on dehydrated meals all the time—or so I thought when my dalliance with baking was new and exciting. For a short while I did bake in camp occasionally. I have to admit, though, that despite my intentions it’s now many years since I bothered baking in the wilds. I’ve discovered I can live on dried food after all.
I usually don’t bother with plates or bowls because I eat straight from the pot, but this is practical only for the solo hiker. Shallow plates spill easily and don’t hold much. Deep bowls are a better choice; I carry one when I’m with a group. Plastic is the standard material, with Lexan the toughest type. Plastic bowls weigh 2 to 5 ounces, depending on size. Metal bowls and plates are also available, but are cold in freezing conditions. MSR’s steel Alpine Mountain Bowl holds 27 fluid ounces and weighs 3.6 ounces, the Mountain Plate has a 7.5-inch diameter and weighs 4.4 ounces, and Trangia’s aluminum 8.5-inch plate weighs 3.5 ounces. Many people eat out of their mugs, but you obviously can’t have a drink at the same time, which I like to do, unless you carry two mugs.
Selection of mugs. Clockwise from top left: Aladdin 12-ounce insulated, Aladdin 21-ounce insulated, GSI 32-ounce Fair Share Lexan, MSR double-wall stainless steel, Cascade Cup stainless steel, and polyethylene.
A good mug can become a favorite item, perhaps not surprising when it provides that wake-up drink in the morning or warm-up drink after a long cold day. Plastic (usually polyethylene) is light and cheap but not very durable, and it soon develops scratches and cracks. Plastic also retains tastes—last night’s tomato soup will flavor the morning’s cup of coffee no matter how well you wash the mug. A typical half-pint plastic mug weighs 0.75 ounce. Lexan mugs are better; Lexan is unbreakable and doesn’t retain tastes. GSI’s 12-fluid-ounce Glacier Ice Lexan Mug weighs 2.9 ounces. If you like large drinks or use your mug for eating, GSI’s FairShare Lexan Mug is probably the largest around, with a capacity of 32 fluid ounces. It has a screw-on lid and weighs 7 ounces.
Drinks cool down fairly quickly in a single-walled polyethylene mug, which is fine on a hot summer day but not so good on a frosty morning. The classic foam-insulated mug is the answer. This keeps drinks warm for a long time in the cold, even if you leave the lid off. The main brands are Aladdin and Whirley, which offer a large array of shapes and sizes and also make own-brand mugs for other companies. The nearest to a standard size is probably the 12-fluid-ounce mug. The Aladdin model weighs 5 ounces, including a half-ounce lid. If you want a larger mug there’s a 21-fluid-ounce one that weighs 7 ounces. I use the 12-fluid-ounce mug for cold-weather trips. In summer I find it keeps drinks too hot for too long. If you want your drink to stay really hot for a long time, leave the lid on the mug. This really does make a huge difference.
Insulated plastic mugs still hold tastes, though not as badly as polyethylene ones. Metal doesn’t. But to drink hot liquids out of aluminum or enamel mugs you need asbestos lips. This means that, except for cold drinks, the cup that comes with the Svea 123R stove and doubles as a burner cover is useless. However, stainless steel and titanium mugs are fine: they don’t burn your lips or get scratched and are very durable. I have a pint mug, REI’s Cascade Cup, that I bought many years ago; it can be used as a pan on any stove because it has a wide base. It weighs 4 ounces and has a clip-off handle that folds away under the cup. Because I can boil water in it for a drink while I’m eating out of my larger pan, it’s my favorite of the ten camping mugs that I’m somewhat surprised to discover I own. It nests neatly inside my 0.9-quart pan. The Cascade Cup is a larger version of the classic Sierra Cup, which holds 10 fluid ounces and weighs 3 ounces. I find the Sierra Cup a little unstable, since the top is much wider than the base. Drinks cool down in it very quickly, too, but many people like it. Olicamp makes a titanium Sierra Cup weighing 1.5 ounces.
To save an ounce, I’ve sometimes used a 3-ounce MSR 23-fluid-ounce titanium pan with foldout handles as a mug. It’s not quite as easy to drink from as the Cascade Cup because liquid can dribble down the sides, though it’s fine as a pan. MSR doesn’t make this model anymore, but the 23-fluid-ounce pan in Snow Peak’s Multi Compact Titanium Cook Set seems effectively the same.
There are conventional tall, narrow stainless steel mugs; I have a pint one that weighs 4 ounces. It can just about be used as a pan on stoves with closely spaced pot supports, such as the Svea 123R, but it’s not really the right shape for this. Titanium mugs weigh less (and cost much more). Snow Peak’s 21-fluid-ounce single-walled mug weighs 2.9 ounces.
Double-walled stainless steel mugs come in 10-and 12-fluid-ounce sizes if you want to keep drinks hot in a metal mug. They’re heavy though,—the 10-fluid-ounce Markill mug weighs 11.5 ounces. Titanium ones are again much lighter and much more expensive. Snow Peak’s double-walled 16-fluid-ounce titanium mug weighs 4.2 ounces.
Lexan plastic works well for cutlery and is very strong. It can be broken, despite claims to the contrary, though this has happened to me only once, and the GSI spoons I now have are over a decade old. A tablespoon and teaspoon together weigh 0.8 ounce. Other plastic spoons break under the weight of a baked bean. If I carried them, I’d take several. Stainless steel cutlery is durable but heavy. Titanium is lighter but pricey. MSR’s Titan Spoon weighs half an ounce. Special clip-together camping cutlery seems unnecessarily fussy and always includes forks, which aren’t needed in the wilds. Everything can be eaten with fingers or a spoon. If you do want a fork occasionally, you could try a spork—a spoon with tines on the top edge. Snow Peak makes a titanium spork weighing half an ounce. A knife is useful, but I don’t bother with a cutlery knife when I have a pocketknife anyway. Knives are discussed in the next chapter.
Wash pots well away from water and pour wash water into thick vegetation or onto bare ground.
Forest kitchen with the stove on a rock to prevent it from scorching the ground or setting the pine needles alight.
Stainless steel and titanium clean much more easily than aluminum. Generally a wipe with a damp cloth is enough, although for hygienic reasons you should sterilize pans and utensils thoroughly every few days. I do this with boiling water.
I don’t carry detergent or dishwashing liquid—it’s unnecessary and a pollutant, even if it’s biodegradable. Nor do I wash dishes directly in a water source or tip food scraps into one. Dirty dishwater should always be poured onto a bare patch of ground or into thick vegetation. To make dishwashing easier, pour cold water into a pan once it’s empty to stop food residue from cementing itself to the inside. Some foods are worse than others—oatmeal is particularly bad. Hard-to-clean pans can be scoured with gravel or even snow to remove debris. Mostly I just use a soft dishcloth, which I rinse out regularly and hang on the pack to dry. Scourer sponges are an alternative but are harder to keep clean. A bandanna can be pressed into service if necessary, something I’ve done on trips where I’ve forgotten a dishcloth.
I generally pack my stove, pans, and utensils together in a small stuff sack. I don’t pack the stove inside the pans, since this tends to dirty them, although manufacturers tout this packing “convenience” as an advantage of many small stoves. I usually carry fuel bottles in outside pockets in case of leaks or stand them upright at the bottom of the main compartment below my food bag, which is where I keep fuel cartridges, too. The stove and pans also end up there, since I rarely use them during the day. If you cook at lunchtime, you’ll need to pack them somewhere accessible.
I like to site my kitchen next to my sleeping bag. That way I can have breakfast in bed—a good way to face a cold or wet morning, and nice any time. The stove needs to be placed on bare earth or on short, sparse vegetation so that the heat doesn’t cause any damage. If the plant growth is long and luxurious, I try to find a flat rock to place the stove on, to avoid singeing the vegetation. You must, of course, return the rock to its proper place when you’ve finished. I set up the stove, then sort out the food I need for the evening. When all the kitchen items are arranged near the stove and I know where everything is, I start cooking.
Kitchen dug out of snow.
Melting snow inside a floorless single-skin pyramid tent.
You have to modify this pattern anywhere bears are potential visitors. In this case it’s advisable to site the kitchen at least 100 yards downwind of where you sleep, because the smell of food might attract a bear during the night. I look for a sheltered spot with a good view, and perhaps a log or tree stump to sit on or lean against. Clean utensils can be left in place overnight. Dirty ones should be hung with the food.
