[pct-l] stove tipping

[eckert]

I've dumped my pepsi can stove twice, once in practice and once while on 
a hike.  I liken the emotional sensation of knocking over a stove to the 
tipping of a wine glass at the dinner table.  There's a knee jerk 
reactive grab for it, and of course with liquid, there's nothing to grab.

The spill that happened when i was hiking, took place when I had the 
stove on top of a boulder about the size of a two-drawer file cabinet.  
It had a nice flat space on top, but while I was cooking dinner, I 
spazed into the pot, and bumped both the pot and stove to the edge of 
the flat area, and over they went.   It's amazing how far an ounce of 
burning fuel will run when it's on a hard sloping surface.  I was 
fortunate that the rock was in a designated camping area where the 
ground had been beaten down to dirt and that there was no brush or duff, 
because the little bit of fuel I was using spread out across the face of 
the rock and all the way down to dirt.  I'm sure panic stretched my 
sense of time, but I'd wager that it took at least 15 seconds for the 
last of the flame to die.  And there was nothing I could have done to 
control it outside of slapping at the flames with my hands and stomping 
the ground.

Before the days of lightweight, I used a generic propane canister stove, 
the kind where the blue canister sits vertically and is about six inches 
tall and powers a burner pan 3-1/2 inches in diameter.  Klutz that I am, 
I knocked that one over once too.  Same knee jerk reaction, but of 
course, was able to grab the stove at the base and stand it upright again.

Nowadays, I just use esbit.

eckert