[pct-l] If not alcohol stove, then what, query #2

[Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes]

On Sep 15, 2010, at 1:43 PM, pct-l-request at backcountry.net wrote:
>
> 1) my first concern is the inability to "turn them off"
I don't turn mine off. I let it burn out. You cannot pour water on it  
or blow it out. You could snuff it but your pot probably has food in  
it so what will you use? Not being able to turn them off does make  
them dangerous. To mitigate this factor, err on the side of too  
little fuel rather than too much.
>
> 2) the lack of color to the flame - but is this only true for some  
> fuels?
There is no color to the flame whether you use HEET or denatured  
alcohol. If you are cooking in the sun, you should see waves in the  
shadow. If not, wave your hand over the stove at a height sufficient  
to feel the heat but not get burned. Start out with your hand high  
and move down until you can feel some heat. If you get all the way to  
the stove, you have no flame.
>
> 3) can one pour the unburned fuel
> back into the fuel bottle?
You can put the fuel back in the bottle. This is hard to do if your  
stove has holes punched around the can. You get pretty good at  
putting the right amount of fuel in the stove after a while. It's not  
like the alcohol is all that expensive anyway.

A good stove that is easy to blow out and therefore reuse the unspent  
fuel is the Etowah Stove.
http://www.etowahoutfittersultralightbackpackinggear.com/ 
Alcoholstoves.html
It is not the lightest stove. I carried this stove in 2008. It has an  
outer container and an inner container. You can make this stove  
yourself if you can find a small tin with a lid and a small can it  
fits inside. You put the majority of alcohol in the tin. You put a  
little alcohol in the outer container. The burning fuel in the outer  
container heats up the inner fuel enough so that it will burn and  
push flames out small holes. Once the outer fuel is burned off, the  
inner container does all the cooking. It is easy to blow the inner  
container out (so long as it's not totally full and blazing like a  
roman candle). Once it has cooled off, you can empty the alcohol back  
into your bottle. There's a piece of cotton inside the inner  
container. If you keep the stove sealed, it will retain some of its  
absorbed fuel.
>
> 4) availability of HEET (or, if that's not the best choice, then  
> what).
It's available at gas stations or auto supply aisles in towns where  
people can expect to drive a part of the year in snow. So it is quite  
easily obtained throughout the trail. Many kind trail angles also  
keep a big container on hand and you can sometimes buy it by the  
ounce in hardware stores in some of the towns along the trail. It's  
so easy to obtain that you should not worry too much about it.
>
> 5) what are the chances of getting caught with an alcohol stove  
> only to have
> the NFS etc decide that that year is too dry to allow them... and  
> have to
> come up with something makeshift in the middle of a thru.
Does it matter? If it's too dry to cook with an alcohol stove it's  
too dry to cook. Do you really want to burn down the forest? If for  
some strange reason they single out alcohol stoves then switch to  
something else. It's not like you will have lost a huge investment in  
money (we're talking about a repurposed piece of garbage and fuel so  
cheap it's given away half the time.) Just purchase a canister stove  
or an esbit stove or a pocket rocket or whatever and continue up the  
trail. While you wait for your new stove (and fuel -- it could be  
harder to send yourself fuel), eat sandwiches, cookies, burritos,  
crackers, hummus, cous-cous, cheese, fruit, nuts, dehydrated stuff  
that will "cook" in water in the heat of the day, instant pudding,  
shake mixes, leftover pizza, energy bars, tuna etc... You get the idea.
>


Good luck with your planning,
Diane