[pct-l] Stoves, stoves and more stoves....

[CHUCK CHELIN]

Good morning, Randy,

You don’t have it wrong.  There’s less to see in the stove discussion than
meets the eye.  Hikers love to discuss stoves:  We compare specs in
nauseating detail.  We are thrilled at the trinketry.  We handle them and
play with them; all the while imagining ourselves using them.  We are each
certain we have the exact right answer.

For a while back in the ‘60s I hiked with an old SVEA-123 stove; it being
about the lightest gas stove available at the time.  That fussy little
bitch provided me with two of the best moments of the day: First, when it
actually decided to start, and finally when I shut off its incessant
hissing and once again could enjoy the peace and quiet of the wilderness.

Having tried most other stoves over the following years, I became convinced
that Lt. Gen. Michail Kalashnikov was correct:  “Things that are complex
are not useful.  Things that are useful are simple."

Finally, after I had moved down the technology scale to an item that had
exactly no moving parts and found that it still involved too much fussing,
I subscribed to a theory from another useful thinker, Peter Drucker, who
said, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should
not be done at all.”

As a result I left the stove and pot at home and began eating cold food.

I suggest you use what you know works for you and “Sweetie”.

Steel-Eye

-Hiking the Pct since before it was the PCT – 1965

http://www.trailjournals.com/steel-eye
http://www.trailjournals.com/SteelEye09/

On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Randy Godfrey <randy3833 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> PCT friends,
>
> There is so much discussion over and desire to use the alcohol stoves. I
> feel like I'm missing something here. Are the advantages of using an
> alcohol stove that great over using a canister stove? My sweetie and I take
> a few 8-9 day backpack trips in the North Cascades and Utah every year and
> use an MSR Pocket Rocket canister stove. The stove itself, along with its
> little plastic tube case weighs 3.9 oz. The canister, containing 8 oz of
> fuel weighs 13.1 oz and lasts Lori and I one full week. We only boil water
> for coffee and hot cereal in the morning, and for freeze dried dinners in
> foil envelopes (either home made or Mountain House) in the evening. For an
> 8 or 9 day trip we will take along an extra small 4 oz container that we
> sometime will need to use on the last day or so.
>
> Wouldn't this system be viable for a thru hike?I understand that shipping
> the canisters is an issue in that they must be surface shipped, taking a
> while longer to reach the resupply destination. Are there other things to
> consider when using a canister stove for a thru?
>
> Thanks everyone,
>
> Randy
>