Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board alcohol stove vs gas

Howdy, Can anyone help with figuring out how much fuel to bring on the JMT? I have an Etowah alcohol buring stove (very lightweight), but my experience is that it takes about 2 ounces of fuel to boil a liter of water at lower elevations. Does it use more at higher elevations? We'll be hoping to boil a total of 4 liters per day (2 at breakfast, 2 at dinner), so that's 8 ounces of fuel per day. We'll be traveling 10 days with no resupply, so thats at least 80 ounces of alcohol fuel, which weighs 4 pounds (2 extra pounds of weight per person)!! Any experience using this kind of stove on the JMT? Seems silly for each of us to carry 2 pounds of fuel for an ultralight stove. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

A Jetboil stove is pretty lightweight and a single fuel cannister keeps two of us going for nearly a week.

That's a lot of water to boil every day. Here are a couple suggestions:

(1) I'd look at how you might boil less water each day. If it is for drinking water perhaps a bottle of iodine tablets would be less weight. If it is for cooking meals perhaps taking a couple days worth of meals that don't require cooking.

(2) Look at a different stove. If your stove is super lightweight but the fuel you carry is heavy the overall package is still heavy. I don't have much experience with alcohol stoves but a light weight propane/butane mix boils water very fast. A Whisperlite burning white gas also boils pretty fast. In the summers I use a little Snowpeak or Primus stove with the cannister of propane/butane mix. With a fairly small pot it boils water very quickly. Jetboil is also a popular model these days.

To answer your question about boil times, water boils at a lower temperature at higher elevations but can take longer depending on factors such as air temperature and wind.

Have a great trip!

Kurt

As this board is "all things Whitney", the best place to ask your question is over on the PCT listserver, where the long distance hikers hang out. They know more about alcohol stoves than anyone I've run across. They make 'em, they use 'em.

http://mailman.hack.net/pipermail/pct-l/2007-August/date.html

However, it seems that the one you are using is using an unusually large amount of fuel, and is quite inefficient. They work less efficiently and less well at higher altitudes.
There are many alternative options that you will probably find work better for what you are doing.

I think your questions is relevant to Whitney hikers.

I can't find it now, but on some obscure website I saw a chart comparing the overall weight efficiency of various types of stoves, depending upon how many days on the trail. The bottom line is that after several days on the trail, the original weight savings from an alcohol stove is eaten up by having to carry a larger mass of fuel. From what I recall, it doesn't take too many days—a week maybe—for an alcohol system to be the heaviest choice of all.

Weight wise, an alcohol system make more sense for a Whitney overnighter or weekend. But I have never used one and have heard different reports on how well they work, including complaints that they take way too long to heat water sufficiently and use a larger volume of fuel than anticipated. "Never again," was one comment I heard from an employee at a local camping supply store.

But I think there may be a place for alcohol stoves on Whitney hikes and would like to hear from folks who have used them at elevation.

Here is a link to a company that claims to make one of the most efficient alcohol stoves, but some of the claims seem almost too good to be true: www.packafeather.com/stove.html

I use an alcohol stove I made out of a catfood can on short trips. Pros: quiet, simple, ultralight, and I think it's cool cause I made it. Cons: slower(to boil) than my whisperlite, requires more fuel than my whisperlite, hard to light when it's really cold.

Check
http://zenstoves.net/LinksGeneral-DIY.htm#OpenFlameAlcoholStoves

Lots of good ETOH stove info there.

On a long trip I do not take my ETOH stove.

Also, to help the alcohol stove work at it's best, make sure the pot you use is at least 6 inchs in diameter. How close or far from the flame will have an effect. If your windscreen is too tight or doesn't allow air from the bottom can cause longer boil times. Experiment with all these factors and you might be able to get more from your stove. However as was said earlier alcohol stoves at altitude just don't work as well as down lower. Cheers.

Depending on trip types, I use Esbit Pocket Stove and like it. Has anyone else tried it, and your experiences?

With that said, I also use, and have for 25 plus years, a gaz stove. On my 8 day trip (this past week), I used 2 canisters of fuel. It's reliable, never fails.

paul

Thanks everyone for your replies!! I have been doing a bit of research, and have decided to go with the Jetboil Personal system...looks like it has a one-liter cup "pot" included and is very efficient. Whew! I feel very relieved for the lightening of our packs!! I love this message board (and we will be climbing Mt Whitney at the end, so it was a some-what Whitney-related question). Thanks again.

VLA the jetboil is amazing. I boiled a liter in 30-60 seconds!!!It boiled so fast at Outpost elev. 10,500 I was shocked.I turned around to do something else and it immediately boiled over. I thought at that altitude it would never boil just get hot and take for ever.The eletronic starter was instant also. Highly recomend the Jetboil.

As others have said, the light weight of an alcohol stove is no longer a benefit on longer trips when you have to carry so much fuel.

This year I have switched to a hybrid setup. I wanted the efficiency of the Jetboil GCS, but I did not like the unsteady nature of a stove mounted on top of the canister (I have had them tip over before), as well as the GCS shortcoming of having very poor performance in windy conditions. So I bought just the GCS pot and coupled it with the MSR Windpro stove. It is very stable and very efficient. On my most recent trip, a five day outing from Horseshoe Meadow to Portal, I boiled over 7.5 quarts of water and simmered for an additional 25 minutes, and used only 3.3 oz out of the Brunton fuel canister. This means that for my cooking habits, one 8 oz canister will boil about 20 L of water. For your 10 day trip, two full canisters would do it for you. The stove plus pot weighs 24 oz, and the canisters weigh 12.8 oz full, so the total weight of stove, pot, and fuel would come to about 50 oz. That is far less weight than just your fuel using the alcohol stove, and you could take another fuel canister for insurance and still be under that weight.

My setup allows me to safely use a windscreen, since the Windpro is not mounted on top of the canister.

From what I hear, the Primus ETA might also have similar performance at about the same weight.