Stove Safety
A friend once lost half his tent – and half his hair – when his stove overheated and the pressure-relief valve burst open and spewed a two-foot arc of flame. Two experienced Swiss mountaineers died on Mt. McKinley in 1986 from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by operating a stove in an unventilated tent. If mishandled, every type of stove and every kind of stove fuel can cause an accident that destroys expensive equipment and inflicts severe burns. All stoves produce carbon monoxide, a deadly, odorless gas. To operate a stove safely, you must know and follow these simple rules.

Never fill a liquid-fueled stove or change the cartridge on a butane-powered stove near a source of heat or sparks. If you're using a liquid-fueled stove, be sure to use a funnel when filling it to reduce the chance of a spill that could accidentally ignite. Never refill a liquid-fueled stove while it's hot. To avoid temptation when you're hungry and impatient for dinner, make sure the stove is full before you start cooking. That way you won't run out of fuel in the middle of preparing your salmon soufflé. Most stoves should be filled only three-quarters full to allow room for an air space. Pumps actually compress air, not fuel. The compressed air then drives the fuel out of the tank and up to the burner.

All reputable backpacking stoves come with explicit lighting directions, but a few general pointers may be helpful. First, never lean over any stove while lighting it: it could flare up and singe your eyebrows or worse. Never light or operate a stove inside a tent. You risk both burning down your wilderness house and asphyxiating yourself with carbon monoxide. Use the minimum amount of priming fuel possible. Excessive priming is a leading cause of accidents. Make sure that your fuel tank doesn't become overheated, as it might, for example, if you confine it too tightly within some kind of homemade windscreen system. Liquid-fueled stove tanks will normally be warm but not hot when the stove is running; the cartridge on a butane stove should be cool to the touch. Be sure to carry your liquid-fueled stove and extra fuel separate from your food and pots. Gasoline fumes can permeate food with surprising ease. Finally, if your stove is liquid-fueled, you should expect it to malfunction periodically. Carry a repair kit containing all the little washers and gaskets that are likely to crack or begin to leak. Most backpacking shops carry repair kits for specific brands of stoves. I've never seen a butane stove break down, but I'm sure it has happened. Most of those stoves cannot be readily repaired in the field, so your only option in situations where a stove breakdown would be very serious is to carry a backup stove. I've carried a backup on lengthy Alaskan expeditions, but never while backpacking in the Lower 48.

The amount of fuel you need depends on the efficiency of your stove, the kind of food you're cooking, the wind speed, the altitude and the temperature. Rather than trying to plug all those variables into some formula, try this approach. Most stove instruction manuals give run time on a tankful of fuel. Add up the amount of cooking time you anticipate, taking into account the fact that food easily takes 20 percent longer to cook above 10,000 feet than it does at sea-level, then give yourself a 25 percent safety margin. Don't forget to add in the time it takes water to come to a boil as well as the actual cooking time. You'll probably come home with a lot of extra fuel, but that's better than the alternative. Stretching food is easy. Stretching fuel is not, and many backpacking foods are completely indigestible unless they're cooked. In the summer, Cora and I find that we go through one 6.75-ounce butane cartridge in about two days with our Camping Gaz stove, running our stove about 45 to 60 minutes per day. A two-person team using a liquid-fueled stove might go through two or three ounces of fuel each day. Fuel consumption with either kind of stove will be much higher if you have to melt snow for water. On McKinley, a two-person team using a white-gas stove will burn a minimum of eight ounces of fuel per day. Two-person teams using 6.75-ounce butane cartridges usually figure on one cartridge lasting one to 1½ days. These figures assume the use of freeze-dried food that doesn't require cooking. You'll need more if you're boiling non-instant rice or macaroni. Bring plenty of fuel on your first few trips with a new stove and log the amount you actually burn. You'll soon know how much you need.

Next Page: Kitchen Chores

Site Map  - 

Copyright © 2006 Beginner's Guide. All content rights reserved.
Trademarks and brands mentioned are property of their respective copyright owners.