Hot Backcountry Stoves - Fire When Ready

Beginner's Guide to Backpacking

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"Fire is the best of servants; but what a master!"
Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, 1843

As someone who used to review equipment regularly for Outside Magazine, I've had the privilege of experimenting with a wide variety of recently introduced equipment, including, on several particularly thrilling occasions, new stoves. The incident that provoked the most burning excitement occurred when I was reviewing a new multi-fuel stove from a company that shall remain nameless, since they fixed the problem with remarkable haste. This stove, ostensibly, was capable of burning both white gas and kerosene. Naturally, I wasn't about to rely on this unproven contrivance to actually cook my dinner when I was in dire straits 10 miles from the nearest McDonald's, so I filled it with white gas while it was sitting in the middle of my concrete driveway, well away from important flammable structures like my garage, and fired it up. No problem. I shut it down, drained the remaining white gas back into its one-gallon steel storage container, and, like a flaming idiot, left the lid off the container. For equally inexplicable reasons, I now moved the scene of operations to my front porch – I was still operating on concrete, mind you, but now was only about three feet from another important flammable structure, namely, my front door. I filled the innocent-looking stove with kerosene, pumped it up as directed, opened the valve and flicked my Bic. A wispy flame sprang to life. I pumped again, and suddenly liquid kerosene flooded the burner. A miniature fireball erupted, with flames shooting three feet high. I grabbed the stove by its base, knowing it would only remain cool to the touch for another few seconds, and heaved the stove into the middle of my concrete driveway. Sandy Koufax couldn't have made the pitch to home more accurately – the flaming stove landed within inches of the wide-open, nearly full can of explosively volatile white gas. I sprinted down the steps of my front porch, snatched away the can of white gas and stood there shaking as the broken and battered stove gradually sputtered out.

I called the company and immediately launched into an apology for breaking this marvelous example of American craftsmanship that they had entrusted me with, but only managed to utter a sentence before I was interrupted by the spokeswoman's profuse apology. They had just discovered, somewhat belatedly, that the stove's design was defective.

The moral, of course, is that the only difference between men and boys is the flammability of their toys. Seriously, now, all backpacking stoves can be dangerous if used by careless or ignorant people. Learn your stove's idiosyncrasies thoroughly by practicing with it in a safe place where nothing nearby can be damaged if the stove leaks and catches fire. Given my track record, I should do my stove testing at the Nevada Test Site.

Once upon a time, when backpacking stoves (and backpackers) were scarce and firewood was plentiful, everyone cooked over an open flame. As I'll explain further in the chapter on clean camping, those days are gone forever in nearly all parts of the country. In many prime backpacking locations, campfires are illegal, immoral and maybe even fattening. Good backpacking stoves today are inexpensive, readily available and essential to preserving the wilderness feel of what little wild land still exists.

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