Friday, July 21st, 2006...2:55 am

Choosing a lightweight backpacking stove

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Lightweight backpacking for beginnersIt’s All About Fuel

In the past few years, manufacturers have developed a large number of really small, light and efficient backpacking stoves.

Most of them are 4 ounces or less. But that’s only half the story.

The other half is the fuel. It’s my experience that when you read expert recommendations about picking light stoves, the experts forget that fuel can double or triple the weight.

A Glut of Stoves

I own four stoves: a Peak DLX electronic ignition , a Brasslite-designed alcohol stove, a home-made alcohol stove made from cat food cans, and an Esbit Solid Fuel Stove.

Four stoves? To my wife’s chagrin, that’s true. Why do you need another one of those? she complained. Well, I NEEDED a home-made stove because that’s what Flyin’ Brian Robinson, the ultimate lightweight backpacker, used when he established his Triple Crown record.

Then I NEEDED the Brasslite because it is a very nicely designed and refined version of the one I made from cat food cans.

I NEEDED the Esbit because it was lighter than the self starter.

What I Have Learned

So what have I learned that I can pass along to you in your quest to become a lightweight backpacker?

I’ve learned that it really doesn’t matter which you stove you buy (or build) because by the time you add enough fuel for a multiple day trip, the total weight of stoves is about the same. Your final weight will depend on how much cooking you do. I cook fresh pasta most nights, sometimes eat oatmeal for breakfast, make morning coffee and sometimes Hershey's Good Night Kisses Hot Chocolate at night. That requires a lot more fuel than if you merely heat a few cups of hot water for rehydrating food or having a single morning cup of coffee or tea or a single package of instant oats.

Be light. Be safe. Be one with the pack.

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4 Comments

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4 Comments

  • Mike Kretzler
    July 21st, 2006 at 8:50 pm

    I own three stoves: an MSR Whisperlite, an MSR Simmerlite, and a pop can alcohol stove I made myself. I agree with your conclusion that the fuel is the weight.

    I generally go with just boiling water, actually cooking seldom, but I have a hard time paring the fuel down to just what I need. I always come home with plenty left, which isn’t such a bad thing.

  • Bruce Lewis
    July 24th, 2006 at 1:35 pm

    Hi Mike,

    Thanks for your comment. To be honest, I have the same problem figuring out how much fuel to carry. After several trips where I tried to minimize the fuel to save weight and ran out at critical times, I have now been taking too much. Just trial and error, I guess. You’ve got a nice website.

  • Brian
    January 18th, 2007 at 10:21 am

    It’s much more complicated than that. You have to measure grams of fuel per litre of water boiled.

    Alcohol is very heavy, next is esbit, then diesel/avgas, then white gas, then canister fuel which is the lightest. The only reason alcohol and esbit can be lighter on short trips is that you save the dead weight of the stove.

    Brian

  • Jim
    August 17th, 2009 at 6:52 pm

    I agree that stoves really boil down to personal choice; I’ve until recently only been using gas.

    I currently own three gas stoves, being a heavy self igniting beast I bought when I first started hiking (weighing almost 200g), an MSR pocket rocket (my favorite due to reliability - having an inbuilt jet cleaner is worth every one of it’s 90 grams) and a Kovea titanium superlight (60 grams - but I’ve never used it in the field for fear of failure (I cannot find any maintenance information on it)).

    What’s doing me in with the weight of gas is the fact that the lightest decent size canister (210 gram) I could find weighs about 100 grams empty (based on weighing three different sizes of can it averaged about an extra 50% of gas weight in canister weight). It’s also worth noting that you have to carry out the empty canister – so carrying a heavier fuel could average out to a lighter pack as a daily average over the length of the trip.

    On a recent two day hike I averaged about 3.5 g to boil (only just in all but one instance) a cup (250ml) of water, add in canister weight and that ends up around 4.5 grams of canister weight per cup of water. Factor in the dead weight of the stove and you end up around the same weight as most of the other fuels (within about half a gram). I’ll admit I’m the short hike only type of hiker, and that the weight saving (of gas) might add up on a three week hike without resupply, but who’s going to go that long without resupply with what food weighs?

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