Chris Townsend

by The Backpacker's Handbook - 3rd Ed

  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.

  THE CAMPFIRE

  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.

  Lighting and Tending the Fire

  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

  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.

  Comparisons and Weights

  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.

  Fuels

  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

  Models

  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.

  Solid-Fuel Stoves

  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 i
nterest. 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 Stoves

  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.