Trail Snacks

Story Break

Trail Snacks

Lydia Pudzer

I don’t know what all this packbacking stuff is about. I never went outdoors much. The church picnic on the 4th of July was always about good enough for me, and I don’t see why it isn’t good enough for the rest of them but some people are like that, mostly the boys. They got to have their outdoor stuff and hunting and all. Now some girls do it too if you can believe that, but none of mine they wouldn’t. The church basement was good enough for me.

I guess I had a good life. My sister Esther and I are twins. I married Reiny and then Esther got ahold on his brother Rex and she married him. Our maiden name was Schmidt. We didn’t want to change it especially to something like Pudzer. What kind of a name is that? I had to laugh at him the first time I met him. I never would of thought. Reiny and Rex came from a big family but there was only the two of us in ours, Esther and me.

I heard them others talking once, Reiny’s family, talking about Reiny and Rex, calling them the Schmidt brothers going around by the nose because they married my sister and me and we shaped them into line. Well we had to, they weren’t quite right at first. I don’t know what’s wrong with them people sometimes. Inlaws. None of them is quite right, I can tell you that, but we got the men and we bent them straight. We made good men out of them. We keep them shaped up. They couldn’t do it without us. I don’t care what they say.

Overall I guess Reiny has been a good husband. He listens. Sometimes I make some food for him to take along when he goes out to do his stuff. It seems to do him good and I want to keep him for awhile yet. He works hard all day and when he goes out hiking he works at that too. You won’t catch me out there like that, not even, but he needs good food when he’s out doing that whatever so I send him off with a little something every now and then.

One of his favorites is gravy. It sticks. All-American food, like you can’t find anymore in this country if you know what I mean. It’s all changing but my family still eats good. Here’s a good gravy recipe. Don’t forget it. You can eat it with crackers on on bread, hot or cold, or right from the Tupperware.

Handy All-American Gravy

• 1 cup beef fat
• 1 cup pork sausage drippings or bacon drippings
• 1 cup flour
• 2 cups skim milk
• salt and pepper to taste

Add salt and pepper to the fat and flour in a large skillet over medium high heat, stirring all the time. Continue stirring until brown. Reduce heat and add milk, stirring constantly. Stir until thickened. Add water as needed. Pretty good over just about anything except chocolate ice cream.

For snacks you can make this next stuff. I found it in a book for dogs, but I tried it on my husband and some kids, and they thought it was pretty good too. Anyway, now I make some extra for them too, every time around when I make treats for the dog. You can give them a little reward when they do good, just like the dog. Works for either one. I got them all trained now.

Apple Cinnamon Obedience Bits

• 4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 small apple, grated
• 1 1/3 cups water

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Grate apple and add, with water. Mix and make a dough. Turn out on a lightly floured surface and knead well. Roll out to 1/4 to 1/2-inch thick. Score dough horizontally and vertically to make a grid of 3/4-inch squares. Place the dough on a greased baking sheet and bake at 325 degrees F for 1 hour. Break apart for storage. Feed to husband or dog — they both like it.

This last one is a little bit special. I think I came up with it for hunting season one year. It makes you into a regular guy if you aren’t one already, and it’s kind of spicy too. All those men like the pepperoni sticks too. All of them.

Prune-Pepperoni Trail Bites

• 12 dried pitted prunes
• 2 beef pepperoni sticks
• 1/2 cup dark beer
• 1/4 cup water
• 12 slices bacon

Stuff each prune with a piece of pepperoni stick. Mix beer and water and pour over prunes in bowl. Let stand, stirring now and then, until prunes are plump, about 2 hours. Wrap bacon around prunes and pin with toothpicks.

Broil in electric oven about 4 inches from burner, turning once, until bacon crisps, 10 or 12 minutes. You can wrap each one separate and send them out with the boys for a quick snack on the trail or when they’re doing some kind of yard work or farm work or whatever.

Make sure they don’t eat too many though.

Solo Backpacking Issues

Solo Backpacking Issues

Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad. — Samuel Johnson

So, you’re a loner then? Reminds me of my mother. Not her, exactly, but what she thought of me. Every time the news ran a story of another nice, quiet, law-abiding guy without a whole lot of friends who went nuts, took a gun to work, and murdered everyone, she said she thought of me.

If there’s time we can get back to mass murder a little later, but right now let’s think about some of the practical aspects of traveling solo.

For one thing, you have to carry everything yourself. You and you alone. You’re completely dependent on the integrity of your equipment and your skills to deal with any and all problems. Your pack may rip. You may spill fuel or food. You can fall and get hurt. You can get lost. Something big may bite you.

Then what?

Well, we always get back to the personal basics: smarts and experience. And equipment basics: weight, size, complexity, cost, mechanical reliability and repairability. And stove basics: heat output, durability, fuel availability, stability during use, toxicity of fuel, and general danger.

Traveling alone just means that you do it all. Cost might be an issue, but then again, if your life depends on something, you’ll buy the best you need, regardless of cost. For a solo hiker, weight, size, complexity and reliability become a lot more important.

Alcohol, solid fuel and wood stoves shine. You can’t get anything lighter or simpler, and if you make it yourself you can make a stove that’s at least as good as anything coming out of a factory.

When you’re out alone you need to be focused. You need a fumble-proof stove in the morning when you’re stiff and cold, an easy-to-use stove during the middle of the day when you just want a quick cup of something warm, and a hot stove in the evening while you’re settling in for the night. Because you’re carrying everything yourself, you need the lightest option available.

I counted all the items that I carry on a typical backpacking trip. There are about 55 of them. If I add just one ounce to each item (28g), my pack ends up weighing almost three and a half pounds (1.6kg) more. Add two ounces per item and it’s seven pounds (3.2kg). I can feel that. So can you. It doesn’t sound like that much until you heft it. I’ve gotten tuned in enough that I can feel the difference after filling a 25-ounce water bottle.

But go the other way. Cut your base pack weight down to 15 pounds, then cut an average of one ounce off everything, and your base weight is now down to 11 and a half pounds. That’s about a 23 percent difference. Do it again and you’re down to eight pounds. That’s about a 30 percent difference. The lighter you go the harder it is to shave off more weight, but the more dramatic the difference is, and the proportional change too, so after you start to lighten up, switching to a light stove and cook set can make a real difference in itself.

And when you’re 15 miles from the nearest road, halfway through your dream trip, all alone out there somewhere, you’ll have lots of strength and endurance in reserve. If something happens and you need to travel fast you can. You won’t be under a killer pack, groaning, leaning and stumbling with each and every step. You’ll be in charge.

Exercises

1. Get some more friends. You’re not really that ugly. “Things in mirror are prettier than they appear,” as the saying goes, but of course you may be an exception, so get a second opinion if possible.
2. Pick one of your new friends and have him or her climb onto your back. Then try to walk around. Yeah, right. Now you’re catching on. Humps become you.
3. Make a list of everything you need to take backpacking with you, under any and all circumstances. Since you’ve already weighed it, you can write the weight next to each item. Keep this handy as a checklist for your trips. You’ll find that it’s now a lot harder to forget things you need to take. Once you do this, you can give up some of your memory by removing unneeded parts of your brain, for even bigger weight savings.
4. Sure you’re going to die, but you need to do that every now and then to keep in shape. Don’t worry about it. Plan ahead, be smart, and you will delay that inevitable moment. Meanwhile you can relax. Breathe deeply. Everything will be OK. Use the time to scan overhead for incoming asteroids.

Story Break: Where’s The Esbit?

Story Break

Where’s The Esbit?

Joe “Dirty Maggot” Periwinkle

Lots of people use fuel tabs. They’re not all Esbit but that’s what people call them. I have to give it to them on the rock simple scale. Nothing simpler for outertainment than just sitting there and pounding rocks together. Good enough for some but not for me. Call me crazy.

Makes my brain hurt just thinking about Esbit. I mean what could be better than a pocket full of sugar cubes and you light one whenever you need some heat? Some day somebody’s going to get it right but I haven’t quite seen it yet.

Simplest stove you can think of — get a length of steel ribbon like they use to bundle together a load of two-by-fours or some other kind of lumber at the lumberyard. Or maybe you can find some at a construction site.

Say your pot is six inches across. Take a 19-inch piece of the steel band, measure seven inches in from each end and bend it towards you into a right angle bend, then measure two inches in from each end and do the same.

Now you have a square five inches on a side open on the front side (a one-inch gap). Your pot should sit right down on it and at each corner there’ll be a little gap where the square corner peeks out from under the round pot.

Cut a piece of sheet aluminum out of an oven liner and put that down on the ground then put the steel band on that. Light an Esbit tablet and put that in the center then put your pot on top, now you have a stove and a pot support and a reflector all in one. Just protect the stove from wind and chill with a wind screen and you’re set.

I heard about this. The Esbit people say that you need the pot down low to the flame, and this is the simplest setup I’ve ever heard of.

I tried some fooling around at home with fuel tablets but they didn’t do too well for me, even sheltered from the elements. One tablet sort of almost brought 16 ounces of water to a boil and two tablets together didn’t do any better, just burned faster.

Here’s why I left it there: number one it didn’t get the water hot enough, number two I got a thick gummy coating on the bottom of my pot that took about two hours to scrape off, and number three, these tablets cost about 50 cents each. I assumed one would be enough and for me it wasn’t, nor were two.

If alcohol is 20 dollars a gallon and you use an ounce for each meal (which is a lot), and you cook two meals a day, then you’re going to spend about 30 cents a day for fuel versus two dollars a day for Esbit, assuming you use one tablet to cook and one to make a hot drink with, every meal, and you can get it to work better than I did. Some people do.

Anyway, that’s how I see it. That’s why we’re not taking up fuel tablets here too much.

Using for Long Trips

Using for Long Trips

The westerner, normally, walks to get somewhere that he cannot get in an automobile or on horseback. Hiking for its own sake, for the sheer animal pleasure of good condition and brisk exercise, is not an easy thing for him to comprehend. – The WPA Guide to Utah

For some people a long backpacking trip is a four-day weekend. For others it’s a 7800-mile (12,558 km) walk across the United States on the Sea to Sea Trail. Just between you and me and just for right now let’s call it a trip between seven and 14 days. That’s about as far as a person can go without resupply. In other words, if you travel longer than that you won’t be able to carry all the food and fuel you need, and you’ll have to resupply.

That seems like a nice cutoff.

Think of time as distance. We don’t really care if you hike 300 miles in 14 days or just 25 miles. You’ll still be carrying your food and fuel. You’ll need to eat more if you really hoof it out there, but not a huge amount more, so the weights will be roughly equivalent. For most people food weight amounts to maybe one and a half pounds a day way on the low end to about two pounds per day (of dry food – zero water content). Given 14 days, you’ll be carrying roughly 21 to 35 pounds of food (10 - 16kg).

Assume that you use an alcohol stove and are frugal with it. You just heat water and add that hot water to your food. You heat some more water for tea or instant coffee. We’ll call it one ounce of fuel per day, with a quarter-ounce safety margin. For a 14 day trip we’ll round this off to 18 fluid ounces. A fluid ounce of denatured alcohol weighs 0.8 ounces, so this gives us 14.5 ounces of weight. Compare that to a three-ounce compressed gas stove with a four-fluid-ounce fuel container weighing eight ounces, for a total of 11 ounces. Throw in a quarter ounce for the alcohol stove and a hair for a pot support and you’ve got 15 ounces for alcohol versus 11 ounces for the canister stove.

Pretty close overall, with the advantage obviously going to the canister stove. It’s more convenient but larger. It has moving parts. Carrying a spare stove would add another three ounces and from $50 to $150 for cost. If the fuel canister isn’t full, you either leave it at home, or take it plus a full one, or two or three partially-full ones.

Take another alcohol stove as a spare, and add another quarter ounce. For a solid fuel tablet setup, you can throw in a few more tabs, and use rocks to support your cooking pot – no pot support needed. Wood fires serve as a safety backup for any kind of stove.

Speaking of wood, you can make a four or five ounce wood burning stove, or go all the way with one of Nimblewill Nomad’s Little Dandy stoves, at about six ounces, folds flat, too). Once more, the weight of fuel is nonexistent. You can burn as much as you want and don’t have to carry any fuel at all.

Any commercially-made stove with moving parts is subject to repair or adjustment, in case you need to be reminded again. If you have to field strip it and fiddle with anything, there is always the chance of losing a part or two. This isn’t likely, and it’s not common, but there is a chance there. This is yet one more reason why simplicity might pay off.

OK, going for two weeks with an alcohol stove requires a relatively large amount of fuel. One way to manage this is to divide the fuel between two bottles, so if one spills or gets punctured, the other is still intact. You will remain short of fuel, but you won’t lose all of it all at once. Since the fuel (for grain alcohol or ethanol, anyway) is almost totally non-toxic, a leak isn’t a health threat on top of an accident, and the fuel won’t explode. Methanol (wood alcohol) is a little pricklier but still relatively benign, especially compared to white gas.

Here’s the final point. Say you compare an alcohol setup with a canister stove using the numbers above. You have a total 15 ounce weight for alcohol and 11 ounces for the canister stove, as stated (425 v. 312g). But that isn’t the whole picture, because you’ll be using up fuel as you go. That picture is only a snapshot for the first day. By the end of your trip you can expect to be just about out of alcohol.

Say you have one ounce of alcohol left. The weight will be 0.25 ounces for the stove, maybe one ounce for the pot support, and 0.75 ounces for the fuel bladder, plus 0.8 ounces for the leftover fuel. Total: 2.8 ounces (79g).

Now the canister stove: starting weight, 11 ounces. Using 0.2 ounces of fuel per day, you cut off a total of 2.8 ounces over 14 days, leaving you with 8.2 ounces (232g) to carry all the way to the end. It’s a 5.4 ounce (153g) difference.Thinking in rough practical terms, it’s a half pound difference.

Big snorking deal, right?

But here’s another way to look at it. The 5.4-ounce difference is about half the weight of the canister stove/fuel combination, or about a 50% weight reduction. Apply that to some of your other gear, say shelters, for example. Instead of carrying a six pound tent you’re suddenly carrying a three-pounder. Same with your pack, or sleeping bag. Cut the four pound pack back to a two pound pack. Ditch your three pound synthetic-fill sleeping bag for a much warmer 1 ½ pound down bag.

Apply this thinking all the way through, and compare starting a long trip with a pack of 30 pounds base weight and 25 pounds of consumables (55 pounds total) to a 15 pound pack plus 25 pounds of consumables (40 pounds total). That’s a real difference. After learning your way into ultralight backpacking and making some careful food choices you could start with a 10 pound pack and 20 pounds of food, for a total pack weight of 30 pounds. Anyone can feel the difference between a 30 pound pack and a 55 pound pack. Even dead people. It’s a real difference. And it is possible. It might even mean the difference between going backpacking and not.

Is that not inspiring?

Exercises

1. Think about hiking the Sea To Sea Trail, 7800 miles east to west across the United States, or about the Appalachian Trail, or the Continental Divide Trail, or the Pacific Crest Trail. Buy a couple of Lynne Whelden’s videos. Read some books. Try not to sell your house and take off immediately.
2. Take a longer trip than you have before. Be careful. Plan ahead. Think. Get good maps, and preferably travel with some friends. Go light.
3. Weigh all your gear. Once you do that you’ll know where you are. You can’t improve unless you know you know where you’re starting from.
4. Take care, be kind, and try to live a good life. We’re in your corner. Don’t forget to buy a lottery ticket and put us in your will, just in case that asteroid comes visiting this weekend.

Story Break: Short Trips

Story Break

Short Trips

Reinhold Pudzer

OK, Mr. Boone, Dan’l sir, lets us get started here, if you dont mind. Your still in your bunny slippers and you havent ever stepped into the woods yet. Hiking let alone backpacking is over the horizon yet like a dream thats only penciled you in.

They call you tenderfoot because without them slippers you cant even make it out to your car and back. But neither can I come to think of it, I never did any barefoot and theres no reason for it as far as I can tell, but thats the term for it and it fits, so your a tenderfoot.

Now your first step with or without slippers is to decide if you want to do it, hiking or backpacking. Lets say you know deep inside your one of us and you say yes. Your talking to yourself now of course but we’ll overlook that for the moment and just give you a big welcome aboard and a howdy pardner handshake.

Now get dressed. Were not fancy but we got some standards, so make sure you got on a pair of pants at least. Lets try making a cup of coffee first. Or whatever suits you. You need a stove with fuel, a pot and a cup of some kind, and water. Keep it simple.

Your First Trip

Make your first trip real short. Go out the back door into the yard. A concrete patio is a good place to set up, a driveway, a flat rock, anything that wont burn. If this trip looks too scary, tie a string to the back door and the other end to your pants. Thats another reason to wear pants. So you can find your way back home again. Tie the string onto a belt loop. Allay those fears.

Now your out in the boonies so to speak. Lets say your out there so far you cant even hear the TV set any more. You got no running water (no hoses allowed now!!!) and your on your own, except maybe the cat came along for its own amusement. This is your first survival mission, to make a cup of coffee before the wildlife gets you, and then hightail it back again with all your fingers and toes, no charred spots on your hide, still wearing those pants. The cat can stand in for a pack of wolves. Stay up close to the house if you start feeling scared or dizzy. If you have been out before and you can navigate OK, then head for the back fence and make it an expedition. Never turn your back on the wolves. You dont know for sure what there thinking.

Lay everything out, take it easy, and dont set yourself on fire.

When you get back home again, take stock. What did you forget to take? Did you get things done in the right order? Does it work to lay everything out first and then rig it all up, or should you pull things out as you need them? Have trouble losing things? Like your matches? Spill all your fuel? Whatever. Evaluate. How did it go with the wolves? Are they still amused?

Once you survive this you have some confidence. If you still feel partly ignorant your right on track. The ignorant part of you will get smarter, and the smart end of you will welcome some company. Those two parts of you will eventually run together and become one competent person and things will improve, as long as you dont kill yourself first, so take care. If you have more than two parts, then have a conference, negotiate. Dont let anyone walk out, you need to hold all of them together or it wont work.

Ignorance is natural, nothing to be ashamed of. Everybodys pretty near 100 per cent ignorant about everything, but its curable in spots, you just keep at it. Not stupidity. You never know when or how a stupid person is going to spook and charge around, so give him a wide berth and go around, and dont join there ranks or your done for.

Now you got this far, you have proved your not stupid, and if you got in here by mistake somehow, you have our best wishes and just turn around, please. And leave right now, OK? The exit is right behind you.

Next, Your Foray Into The Neighborhood

Got a small park or a school playground nearby? Shoot for that. Take your stove, your fuel, etc. Take a friend, take your girlfriend or boyfriend, or your husband or wife, or one of your kids, somebody. Thats your cover. You need it these days. Single guys especially. Your gonna look like a suspicious weirdo now, no getting around it, because you are one. In the park playing with some gizmo, setting fires, doing unauthorized things, you need cover. Take someone. Look harmless. Have a alibi.

Do your thing, practice with the stove, learn your way into it. This is your second short step, one more easy step from home. Keep on keeping it simple. Heat some water, make some soup. Try it on a weekend, in the afternoon when people are relaxed and its nice out. Maintain your cover. Playing a genial idiot usually works, especially alongside your normal looking companion.

Now, again review the experience once its over. Did you set the park on fire? Did the police come by for a little talk? How many fire trucks were there? Still having difficulty boiling water? If your confused, then go back home and do some figuring – is this really for you? Your call, but it gets harder from here, a little at a time, sure, but it does get harder. Its a gentle slope uphill all the way. Start over with step one if needed but take it easy. Never forget to wear pants. A bunny suit is OK in your back yard, but you have to keep the pants on, and no bunny suits at the park. Bunny suits at home only, please, indoors if you can.

Advance To The Bush

Now your going to stay out over night like a real camper. This is your first giant step. Everybody has some place they can go, a real campground, a place down by the river, a safe empty lot that your friend owns. Somewhere. This is one more step up. Your significant otherwise will likely peel off at about this stage, but one of your kids might tag along, if you got one, to look after you (but limit yourself to one at a time). Assuming you know how to work a tent, take that, a sleeping bag, a little food, and your cook kit. Sleep out overnight and make breakfast the next morning.

One small giant step into backpacker kind.

This trip will teach you self-reliance, endurance, patience, how to fend off stray pets (and maybe other stuff, depending on where you end up), how to blend in (if you camped somewhere sketchy).

If you pay for a campsite your probably safest. Otherwise, practice your genial idiot act if you end up where you might not have full rights to, and dont blame me. Your an adult and you need to make your own decisions. Your life. We have to use what we got, but a real campground is best – your legal, people expect you to be camping there, and maybe you can learn some from watching out the corner of your eye.

Practice the tent in your yard first. Put the tent up, lay out the sleeping bag. Maybe spend the night out there once or twice. Then do it away from home.

Try To Stay Legal

Maybe you got a public park thats wooded. Maybe its a daytime-only park, with picnic tables and little loop trails but its got a brushy back lot full of trees. Got one like that here, where a guy could get familiar with the place, then ease in toward dusk, keep a low profile, and spend one night. If thats all you got, thats all you got, a first introduction to stealth camping, which is another subject however.

Litz, a friend of mine did this once, slid in under the radar, took his gear in a small pack. Plan was to stay overnight, make breakfast the next morning, just like a real backpacker, and walk out. That was the plan. The sheriff wont understand, the police wont be kindly, and the park staff will stampede from someone creeping around, and then your in trouble. A person has to be cool. Litz was, he thought. Staying close to home and keeping it simple, doing it on the cheap, being illegal but technically innocent, just this one time.

A first night out will feel funny, though some harmless fear is good for a person, being out in the woods where you never know who your neighbors are, or what they want to eat.

Meet Your Local Predators

Like your park squirrel, as Litz found out. Officer Nightstick isn’t always the biggest worry. A looming worry, true, at least in your head, but there are worse problems to be found, ones with beady black eyes and scratchy claws mounted all over. So ask yourself what squirrels eat, then ask yourself whats a word for completely crazed.

Nuts.

Litz was in the wrong territory, Squirrel Land, and mistaken for something else. Maybe the scent of supper was still on him, or maybe in that sleeping bag he looked like the worlds biggest peanut, or both. Hows a squirrel gonna react?

A squirrel could lose control and try to take a guy out, thats how. So thats how it was, man against squirrel, or vice versa, and no warning to speak of.

At dawn, there was Litz, on the ground, all wrapped up in his poofy new down bag, hiding under some friendly bush in the park, tingling with his new sense of adventure as daylight came on, thinking how he did it, made it through his first night in the woods safe and sound, without any fuss. And how all he had to do was get up, make some breakfast with his new ultralight stove, and walk out like anybody else because he was legal now, with daylight, and then heres this thing coming at him real sudden, with an appetite and an attitude. It was also headed for breakfast and Litz figured he must be it.

Dont underestimate your park squirrel, not even once. He knows his home turf. He has a hard life, scuffing all over for bites of this and that, never enough to eat. And now a miracle, theres you, the jackpot, a giant Mr. Peanut right on Mr. Squirrel’s front lawn. In this case the lucky target was a Mr. Bill Litz, about to have his opening encounter with wild life. He parted his eyelids and what was he looking at? Food lust, looking him right back in the face, thats what. Litz the nut of a lifetime and Mr. Squirrel planning to take him down, chop him up and haul him back home in pieces, no negotiating. And Litz was already horizontal.

The hand is quicker than the eye, and the squirrel is quicker than the hand. A lot quicker than me and you put together. A squirrel has sharper teeth and claws than you or me. Mr. Squirrel can twist and jump every whichway up and down trees like magic, here, there, everywhere, blink, blink, faster than you can follow.

Litz was in his poofy cocoon on the ground and nothing free but his face, which was his only weapon, arms and legs being trapped inside with the rest of him. He couldnt move, just his nose and eyebrows. Thats what he had to fight with. Him in one corner of the ring and a furry buzz saw in the other, moving out at a full gallop.

Likely This Wont Happen To You, Maybe

Likely you wont have to roll over on your belly when a squirrel leaps for you, you being like some big worm starting to hump through the brush to outrun a hungry beast. The beast on your topside, the one thats ripping into your shell to get at the nut inside. Likely you wont be hollering and clawing around in there, trying to get out, and not making it, terrorized by this demon. Knowing that somehow it might get inside with you, in this place that you thought was so warm and cozy and safe a second ago.

Likely this wont happen. You wont be bumping and rolling along the ground, getting muddy and wet with dew and thrashing around, crashing into bushes and over mossy logs, and hit the edge of a slope, the one that will roll you down into that creek where your now afraid of drowning as well, with this beast still on your back. Likely you arnt strong enough to rip the seams of your sleeping bag somehow, and get up and go wailing into the picnic area in your underwear chased by a furry demon, one thats after the big nut that hes not going to lose, not by any means whatsoever.

Well, likely not. You will avoid this embarrassment. You will be more careful. But if your gonna be a backpacker you will see lots of strange things, some of them crawling on you some of them coming at you, and you need to be prepared.

Practice!

Thats why you need practice. It gives you experience and perspective. Ease into it with short trips, one at a time, and deal with the real simple stuff first. Get used to night sounds, sleeping out, bugs, knocked-over cook pots. Learn how to handle the unexpected and your own mistakes, then get more adventurous and go farther and longer and face bigger challenges as you feel you can.

As your confidence improves, make it more complicated. Travel with a group. Plan ahead. Cook several meals a day. Clean up afterward. Stay out for two nights, or three. Learn how to camp and carry things in a pack and get around on foot rather than being dropped off at a campsite with a ride back home again. You can do it. One step at a time.

Dont worry about squirrels. They wont hurt you. Squirrels are totally harmless, aside from sitting in a tree and cheeping at you. This didnt really happen like this. It wasnt a squirrel, I threw that in because everybody knows squirrels, it was mice. Its mice you got to fear. They come in waves. And they will eat you alive.

Using for Short Trips

Using for Short Trips

Typical short trip complaints which the US Forest Service received from backpackers in 1998
(from the AmericanTrails.org humor section.):

• Too many bugs and spiders. Please spray the area to get rid of these pests.
• Trails need to be reconstructed. Please avoid building trails that go uphill.
• Chairlifts are needed so we can get to the wonderful views without having to hike to them.
• A McDonald’s would be nice at trailhead.
• Too many rocks in the mountains.
• The coyotes made too much noise last night and kept me awake. Please eradicate these annoying animals.

L et’s face it, folks, most backpackers go out for a weekend every now and then. Sometimes a long weekend. Maybe two or three times a summer. That really isn’t much. It may be what you like. It may be just right for you, but it isn’t that much.

Maybe every other year you’ll go out for four nights and five days, or push it and go even one day longer. If you get only one week of vacation time a year you may not want to spend it all in one place. Even if you get more vacation time, a week in the woods is a lot of time out there for most people.

As with weather though, where good weather represents an extreme, short trips represent an extreme. On a short trip you don’t need much. On a short trip in good weather during the middle of summer you really don’t need much at all. That’s where the idea of ultralight comes into its own.

If you’re hiking somewhere between five and 50 miles over a three-day weekend when you know the temperatures will be warm, the winds calm, and the chance of rain less than getting hit by a falling asteroid on your birthday right after winning the lottery, you can pare your equipment, food, and safety margin right down to bare, shiny metal. Do you really need to carry a two-person, six pound, double-wall tent just for yourself? Do you need that winter-weight sleeping bag? Or that six pound internal frame pack?

Naw.

Likewise, do you need your white gas stove and a liter of fuel? Hmmm.

How about a quarter-ounce alcohol stove and six ounces of Everclear? (To burn in the stove, of course.) With an aluminum cup to heat water in, an aluminum foil wind screen, a wire pot stand and some matches, your cooking kit might total eight ounces or less (227g). Total cost, between zero and maybe six or seven dollars. Compare that to $100 for a manufactured stove weighing a pound, and a pound or two more for the fuel bottle and fuel, plus another pound for a big cook set, and so on. You see the difference, I know you do.

For short trips in good weather you can choose your equipment carefully and head out with a base pack weight of nine to 12 pounds (4 - 5kg). Add some food, fuel and water, and you might hit 14 to 20 pounds at the start of the trip (6 - 9kg). Compare this to the 35 to 50 pounds (16 - 23kg) that you might be carrying now. Some people, thinking long and hard, choosing their gear carefully, and having gained enough experience to work it all out, have set out with base pack weights of under five pounds (2.3kg).

These are the times that alcohol or solid fuel tablet stoves really shine. And of course a four-ounce (113g) wood-burning stove fits right into the picture as well.

Exercises

1. Try a really short backpacking trip. If you’ve gone out for a week, try a day. If you’ve gone out for a day, try an hour. If you’ve hiked 20 miles in from a trailhead, try camping in your back yard, and then on your back porch. Next, try going ultralight. Walk around the house naked for an entire weekend. Longer, if you have a good bod and big picture windows.
2. Calculate the probability of getting hit by a falling asteroid on your birthday right after winning the lottery. If the chance seems significant at all, then please put me in your will. Please, please, please, please.

Story Break: Bad Conditions

Story Break

Bad Conditions

Reinhold Pudzer

Some of your worst hiking is going to be because of who your with on the trail. Some thoughts here about handling those situations, starting with insects.

The Single Bee

We’ll start small, so you city people can follow along. The second letter of the alphabet is B, but the first thing you got to look out for is a bee. Some of you have seen a bee, but we are not taking too much for granted here, so lets talk about one bee at a time. Try to follow along. The thing about bees, now, is you never see just one. Bees dont do that. Think of a shotgun shell. Its full of BBs. Not one. Lots. Like bees. Think bees bees, like the sound they make – beezzz beezzz. If you see one that means the place is full of them and most of them are behind you somewhere or right overhead. They know which side of you your eyes are on, and they can see you, even with those little specky eyes they got. The most important thing is they arnt too bright. Not deep thinkers, most of them. They fly around and suck flowers all day, for crying out loud, so dont plan on negotiating. If a bee stings you it will die because it cant get its stinger back out again. It stays with you. Thats kinda bad for both parties. Whether a bee knows this or not I am not aware, but they dont go around stinging people for fun. If you have a bee come and buzz around you or butt you with its head, then its time to make like a tree and leaf. Pronto, though personally I have never seen that head butt thing. Some fancy writer made that up I think. Anyhow, if you see one, theres more of them waiting in the bushes, thats the important thing. They dont want to give up the flower sucking to work on you unless they got a good reason, so take the hint. Othern that, maybe you smell too good. If your really a hiker then this isnt very likely, but who knows what the hell things smell like to a bee? If your a guy and you smell like flowers then tell me which trail your gonna be on so I can go somewhere else. I will leave you and the bees in peace. Dont let the buzzing sounds surprise you.

The Bee Hive

This is where the bees live. Its like a big apartment house in the wrong neighborhood. You can tell if your near a hive if you cant hear to keep up your conversation. There will be lots of buzzing coming from each direction, lots of bees flying around. You will see them. This here is a real strong clue. Time for a change of scenery. Bees can fly as fast as you can run. You can run, right?

The Bee Attack

Even one of these can ruin most days. When you feel that first suicidal bee ramming his stinger into your hide and hear thousands more right behind him, then you know you have hit paydirt and its about to hit back. Pretty soon you will be covered in bees, all butt-end down against some part of you, shoving those stingers in. Maybe you have seen pictures. It aint pretty but it can be fun to watch from a distance, especially to the right person, but not you. All of these bees are female, by the way. Dont ask me I didnt make the rules, just try to live by them.

Chapter Two: The Snake

These guys give most people the willies. Maybe thats a good thing cause it keeps whole bunches of dumb hodknockers off the trails. My experience, I would rather spend a day inside a bag of snakes than around most people, nine days out of ten. Overall they keep to themselves and dont cause any trouble. They have smooth little bodies covered with clean dry scales, and little jewels for eyes. They dont bark. Never once did I lay in bed and listen to my neighbors snake bark all night. Not once, ever.

The Poisonous Snake

Same as the above, but with that special blend of spices. A snake wont bite unless you scare the piss out of it. They need that venom to buy lunch with. Any snake knows your too big to eat and the last thing a snake wants to see is your big heavy boots coming its way. Its down on the ground with no legs to run with, so what the heck would you do? You act nice, the snake will too, but if not it will bite as a last resort.

The Swarm Of Snakes

You see one of these your damn lucky, unlike a swarm of bees. A swarm of snakes is a ball of snakes all wiggling together with a female inside somewhere that everybodys trying to mate with. Similar to what you can see down at the bar on a Saturday night, but quieter and less likely to explode.

The Mountain Lion

You see one of these, your damn lucky too, because somebody made a mistake and it wasnt you. The big cats can hear a human coming for about six miles, more if you have got your mouth open and have a bunch of words falling out. You see one its a special day. Maybe it wants you to come over for lunch, or its trying to figure out what the heck you are, or it just plain wasnt paying attention. Now which one of these is appealing to you? The good news is mountain lions dont much like the way we taste, though they do play with their food. If you noticed, lions are cats. Cats like to chase things, so think of yourself as a big catnip mouse and good luck there.

The Swarm Of Poisonous Mountain Lions

If you see one of these coming, its time to lift up your tail and kiss your butt goodbye. They got teeth sticking out every whichway, and exactly every one of them is just dripping with the worst kind of poison you can think of. Just try to imagine that for a second. Well, its worse than that, lots worse when theres a whole swarm of these things coming down the mountain at you. They dont swarm often, and those that have seen it didnt live to tell about it, mostly, so you got an experience on your hands here, might as well enjoy it. You will see a big cloud of dust and hear a sound like a runaway freight train, like a tornado coming at you, as people say. Only this one has fur on it, and a point of view. You cant tell for sure which way the swarm will go, so its your choice where to run and hide, or stand and fight, or stand and enjoy the sight for your last few moments. Either way its likely to ruin your week. Probably best if you can make yourself look like a big puddle of water because you know about cats and water. That might work. As you have found out if you ever tried to drop Fluffy in the bathtub just to see what would happen. Likely Fluffy didnt talk to you for a spell, until you were pretty near healed again. I never did figure out how a cat will never actually contact the surface of any amount of water, but sort of always bounces up right back at your face. Anyway, if your standing in a puddle already, you might have a chance. Try to get real flat. Go with the flow. Nice knowing you.

Bears

These are big dumpy things with more fur than most other things. Big teeth. Big paws. All that. Like all big wild things they pretty much leave you alone, except for the ones that like to surprise people and eat them. You have heard this. Black bears are smaller and grizzlies arnt. Bears sleep a lot in the winter and eat the rest of the time. By and large they go their own way unless you smell really delicious. One hungry bear equals one swarm of poisonous mountain lions. One hungry grizzly equals two swarms.

Finally, The Idiot

By far worse than being sucked dry by mosquitoes or dismantled by horseflies is having some idiot glom onto you for a week or so. You might find one of these wandering around alone up in the mountains with a pack the size of a boxcar, and he’s lonely. He will follow you like a rubber balloon stuck on a cat with static electricity and you cant shake him and he’s looking for friendship. He will tell you how good it is out in the open away from his job and all his problems, in the backcountry where a man can breathe free and be alone, and if you so much as blink you will see the look of fear in his eyes that you might sneak off leave him alone again. So if your too nice to kill him outright, or just afraid of being caught afterwards you will have a buddy for a while and you will learn all about his life and his family and what he liked best about third grade and what his favorite school lunch was, and why his stuff is better than yours, and meanwhile your looking up in the trees for any sign of a wasp nest you can whack with a stick in hopes of a restful distraction. If you cant shake him you will have him twitching and snoring all night next door to you, thrashing around like some crazy inmate, and then coming over at breakfast and leering down into your food and asking you how you slept and giving you this creeping feeling all over your skin. And then the seconds will start to drag something fierce. You will think about that time you set your shirt on fire and smile at the memory and look over to your new friend and wonder how fire would look on him. And all the while he’s telling you stuff you dont want to know, about people you dont want to hear about, and your getting desperate for someplace to scrape this guy off your hide, and maybe you do it and maybe you dont but whatever happens, its an experience that stays with you for life. Happy trails.

Using In Bad Conditions

Using In Bad Conditions

When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble. – Dr. James Boren

Bad conditions make everything more interesting, including cooking and eating. (Hey, we’re assuming a positive attitude here. Everything short of dismemberment or immolation is hereby defined as “interesting”.)

Here are some things you might define as “bad”:

Wind: Makes stoves hard to light and hard to keep lit. Sucks the heat out of the flame and away from the pot. If strong enough, can remove your toupee.

Rain: Need we go into this? Makes absolutely everything harder. Stay out in the rain long enough and you and everything you have with you will eventually get wet, no matter what you do. It’s messy, just messy. And inconvenient.

Cold: Sucks heat like the wind does. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less, but who’s comparing? Makes stoves hard to light, and uses more fuel.

Heat: Not really much problem most of the time, though you may want to protect your bulk fuel container from getting too hot. Cooked food cools more slowly, so you have to wait around for it. Or get a burned tongue. Quit whining. It’s called “summer”. It’s what you’ve patiently waited all year for. Enjoy once.

High altitude: This is a combination threat – usually windy and cold, but may have precipitation thrown in for extra fun, and the precipitation could be stinging ice pellets, combined with lightning. Keep your eyeballs peeled for large mythical gods throwing things around and remember to duck. Bring along someone you don’t like all that much, in case an emergency human sacrifice is needed.

Fuel hard to get: Not weather-related but can really spoil your fun it if happens. A bigger problem on long trips over 14 days or so.

So where does this leave us?

Stoves burning hydrocarbons have some advantages here, but maybe not all that much. Hydrocarbons have a lot more energy to give than carbohydrate-like fuels such as alcohol and wood. Fuel tablets have a different composition, but fall into the latter category because they just don’t put out all that much heat.

A relatively small amount of white gas or compressed, liquefied petroleum fuel goes a very long way, so you can have a larger safety margin with only a little more weight or bulk. The average amount of fuel used under good conditions is about 0.2 ounces (6ml) per hiker per day, by weight, which is about the tiniest of tiny amounts.

But again, manufactured stoves just cost more, are heavier and more complicated to set up, and require maintenance. Where have we heard that before?

Alcohol stoves become difficult to light when the temperature drops below 40°F (4.4°C). But not bad. They take a few seconds longer to come up to operating temperature, but since they’re so tiny they warm up really fast anyway, so that doesn’t matter much. And there is absolutely no fiddling, fine tuning, cleaning or repair needed. When in doubt, or if you have really big, clumsy feet, just carry a spare. Crunch your stove and it’s gone, sure, but you can carry another one as insurance without any real weight or space penalty.

Alcohol (or fuel tab) stoves are also a lot smaller (don’t we keep saying this?). And the fuel is much less toxic. That means that you can set one up in a smaller space. Get out of the wind. Hide from the rain. Huddle against the cold. Keep yourself protected from the elements while cooking, and also find a spot for your stove without as much fuss.

Exhaust from alcohol stoves is less dangerous. Not safe, but less dangerous. You still have to be careful about carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide buildup, and unintended things catching on fire. But if you’re under a tarp or in a tent with an open door, sitting inside and cooking with the stove just outside, with the door open, you don’t have to worry about that. You also don’t have to worry about a big flareup that will melt your tent or eat your face.

Cold weather and high altitudes (more cold piled on top of the regular cold) are especially hard for canister stoves. Special fuel blends can help (isobutane mixed with butane is better than butane alone, as is a propane/butane or a propane/butane/isobutane mix). White gas stoves do pretty well all around, but no matter what, they’re expensive, noisy, and burn explosive, toxic fuel.

Wood, of course, is still free and available in infinite supplies wherever trees are found. Where wood-burning is allowed you can carry a one or two-day supply with you, if going above treeline, but gathering wet wood in a rainstorm is just not a fun way to spend your vacation time. And if you do bite the bullet and go out to gather armloads of wet wood, just what do you think you’ll be doing with it anyway?

For the most extreme conditions, such as arctic travel, or expeditions during winter months, take a look at white gas or kerosene stoves. When talking about ultralight backpacking though, we may be talking about individually long days in the context of a long trip, but not so much about severe conditions, so the really bad weather conditions kind of take care of themselves by falling outside the scope of our subject. How cool is that?

Neat coincidence, huh?

Fuel availability stands apart from weather considerations. Fuel availability is more a cultural situation. White gas, also commonly known as Coleman Fuel (or by other names worldwide for similar formulations) may be hard to find outside the United States. Kerosene may be easier to find elsewhere than it is inside the United States. Canisters for canister stoves are mostly brand-specific (you can’t just stick ANY canister onto ANY stove whatsoever), and a specific brand might not be available in every country, or even every state, and certainly not in every store you come to. Ever.

Fuel tablets are definitely a kinky specialty item, available (usually by mail order) only from specific vendors. Not available in every hardware store, or even one as far as I can tell.

That leaves two fuels: alcohol and wood. Both are available worldwide. If you can’t find methanol (wood alcohol), you can find ethanol (grain alcohol), and vice versa. Almost every gas station or convenience store in the United States sells Heet brand fuel line de-icer. The stuff in the yellow plastic bottle is methanol, or mostly methanol, and will keep your stove happy. The stuff in the red bottle is isopropyl alcohol, and will serve in a pinch, but it’s yucky and sooty, and better avoided.

There isn’t much need to talk about wood, is there? Look down at the ground. Check out the nearest tree. Done.

Exercises

1. Write in and tell us about a really bad day you had. Preferably about backpacking, or hiking, or even camping, but as long as it’s a good story, you can write about anything. Email it to wedontcare@nowhere.com. Don’t wait up for an answer. Have a nice day!
2. Go to bed early. Get a good night’s sleep. Wake up early and go for a walk. Get over it, already. We don’t care if today sucks. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life. Go home and wait for it.
3. Relive the ten dumbest things you ever did. This is the most fun if you do it in the middle of the night. In the dark. All alone. You get extra credit for doing this while you’re on the road, in a cheap motel far from home, right after your divorce/breakup/breakdown or whatever, and aided by indigestion. Then realize that you’re not backpacking in the rain, and start feeling good about yourself again, if possible. Remember, the rest of us may still think of you as a loser, but at least you’re not shivering in a cold rain miles and miles and miles from nowhere because your tent just blew away.
4. Try not to inhale anything toxic for an entire week.

Story Break: Good Conditions

Story Break

Good Conditions

Lydia Pudzer

Now I want you to know right off the bat I never went out there and did any of that packbacking stuff. Nor any hiking, neither. Where I’m from they worked on the farm, and they worked hard and that was it. When they wasn’t working they went to church, or sat on the porch and watched the sun go down, and every now and then there would be a funeral or something, or a wedding, at the church, and that would be it.

It don’t make no sense that I can see to go anywhere all alone and act like an animal. I keep saying this but nobody listens to me anymore. I mean it.

Now here we’re talking about going packbacking and how to use a stove to make a little grubby wad of something and try to eat it, on a good day. Most of the time you should be working. You shouldn’t have time to go out somewhere and stumble around and try to sleep under a little piece of cloth and all that.

Who cares how one of those stoves works on a good day. On a good day you’re out plowing, or planting, or harrowing, or you’re cutting hay, or you’re harvesting. On a bad day when you can’t work in the fields then you’re in out of the rain fixing things that got broke, but you never have time to just lay around and think well laa-dee-dah I wonder what I should do today, maybe I should go wander around in the hills for a while and see if I can bump into myself out there or something.

When you’re retired is when you got time to sit around and do nothing, and that’s exactly how much you want to do then, after a good life full of hard work, nothing, because you’re wore out.

You talk about which of those little toy stoves is the best, and how to use them, and which one to take with you, and special things you should remember to do when the weather is nice and other things when it isn’t, and it’s all a waste of time.

If you had to work for a living you would know better. If you were lucky and you even had a day off, and it was a good day, good weather and nothing going on, your responsibilities were all looked after already, then you’d be a real dumbhead if you didn’t just go and have a nice picnic in the park.

Everybody who knows anything at all would do that. If you have friends you could play a little softball, but mostly you relax and eat. That’s about it. Get your family together and your next door neighbors and make up a picnic lunch, and go to the park and sit around all day. No hiking, no sleeping in the dirt, no wearing filthy clothes or any of that, only acting like a normal responsible grown up person.

That’s all I got to say.

Using In Good Conditions

Using In Good Conditions

Good fortune lieth within bad, and bad fortune within good. — Lao-tzu.

Let’s first define a range we can call good conditions. Not much wind. No rain, or only a little drizzle or soft mist now and then. Cool or maybe almost-but-not-quite-cold, though still well above freezing. Warm or really warm but not baking. Lower elevations.

In other words we’re talking about a gentle day in late spring, in summer, or early fall. Not about trips into the Himalayas in January, or into Death Valley in August. These good conditions represent about 90% of the trips that 90% of us make 90% of the time. If not more. What you want from a stove under these conditions can be provided by almost any stove at all.

This is low-stress backpacking. You get up in the morning, sometime before noon let’s say. You stand and scratch, yawn for a while, and bump into things every now and then, in a pleasant and agreeable sort of way. You eventually fire up the stove and make breakfast. You are in no hurry. Life is good. This is what you want it to be like.

Later, you pause along the trail and make lunch, eating it while admiring the scenery and trying to decide just what about the rest of your life is keeping you from doing exactly this sort of thing for the rest of your life. Even later, after comfortably walking for several more hours you drift to a stop in late afternoon and make supper. Nothing has happened that would make a good movie, or a bad one. You have encountered nothing to write home about except the scenery and how good you feel, and you’re done with your chores in a few minutes, without any fuss at all.

In a way these are the most demanding conditions for ultralight backpacking stoves. They easily separate the light side (good) from the dark side (bad). Since you’ve got nothing else to use in discriminating between stoves, you can concentrate on just weight, heat output, cost, and ease of use. Or, all else being equal, only on weight.

This sort of use defines ultralight backpacking stoves. This is where ultralight backpacking stoves shine.

Let’s review what you have to do with a...

Liquid fuel stove: Unpack it. Set it up. Fill the tank or attach the fuel bottle. Pressurize it. Prime it. Light it. Wait for it to warm. Cook, while keeping an eye on the stove, lest it lunge at you like a dragon in heat.

Compressed gas stove: Unpack it. Attach fuel container to stove (for some stoves). Guess how much fuel is left, and whether it’s enough to cook your meal. If not, then unplug the canister and temporarily swap in a new one, if you can with your brand of stove, or otherwise plan on changing them halfway through cooking. Light the stove. Cook, while keeping an eye on it, because you still really never know with these things.

Alcohol stove: Remove it from your pot, where it snuggles conveniently. Fill it with fuel. Light it. Set pot on it, and set wind screen over it. Come back when the fuel burns out.

Wood burning stove: Hunt around for wood. Test each piece to see if it’s solid and crisp or soft and punky. Also test for dryness. Break wood into small pieces, possibly cutting your hands in the process. Unpack stove (a wood-burner will be too big to store inside your cooking pot). Put fuel in place. Light fuel. Set pot on it, and set wind screen around it (optional). Come back when the fuel burns out or when the cooking is done, or when your food begins to smoke and smolder, as appropriate.

Solid fuel tablet stove: Remove it from your pot (should be small enough to store inside your cooking pot). Put fuel in place. Light it. Set pot on it, and set wind screen over it. Come back when the fuel burns out.

What’s the difference?

Operationally not a whole heckuva lot. With canister (compressed gas) stoves it’s hard to tell just how much fuel you have, but other than that they’re pretty easy. Liquid fuel or white gas stoves require a little watching and tending, and may get clogged with soot, but they’re pretty dependable too.

The real differences are that with an alcohol or fuel tablet stove, you just set up, light, and wait. Wood burning stoves require more involvement, but the fuel is free, and you have an infinite amount of it available, more than you can possibly burn unless you are genuinely and unfortunately clumsy.

And these last three types of stove are dead simple, insanely light, and dirt cheap. Nothing to go wrong, no moving parts, no confusion. Operator error will not result in sudden, huge, and surprising accidental incineration. Of you and your companions. Stove weight ranges from one-sixteenth ounce to maybe one-half ounce (1.8 - 14g), with wood-burners coming in at three or four ounces (85 - 113g), and no penalty for the weight of fuel since you carry none.

All (practical) stoves involve open flame, so you have to be at least a little smart, but “think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” (George Carlin)

Exercises

1. Have a nice dream about a day without wind, a day with no rain. A pleasantly cool day, trending toward warmth later on. A day when you are out of doors, hiking, and having the time of your life, a day of low-stress backpacking, without a care in the world, with no decision to make except for which scenic overlook you’ll stop at for lunch, and when. Then get up and go to work.
2. Plan your escape. Get the details tattooed (upside down) on your belly so they’re always with you, and so you can read them without having to stick your head up between your legs while bending over backward and doing a 180-degree twist. Or put it on a piece of paper in your wallet. Whatever.

Story Break: How To Choose A Stove

Story Break

How To Choose A Stove

Reinhold Pudzer

Its up to you. I mean, who the rosy hell am I to tell you what to do? Gotta brain in your head, use it anyway you see fit. I had to do it the hard way and you can too, dont be afraid, it wont hurt too much.

If you want to hear what I did theres nothing wrong with that but think for yourself. I am not God, and never get mistaken for that personage, got no patent on smarts neither, I just do what seems right for me at the time. You can too.

I have used about every kind of stove and fire there is. Kerosene, lamp oil, candles, sterno, gas, you name it. One burner, two burners, hot plates, kitchen stoves, a restaurant stove or two, wood fires, charcoal, everything but ape shit.

As long as its hot it works. Just because it has a label on the side and its made of titanium or kryptonite or something dont mean nothing. Sometimes the crudest oldest simplest way can be the best. Like if your surrounded by a lifetime supply of mosquitoes, all hovering in a big ball with you in the middle, so thick you cant see your tent 10 feet away or hear anything besides that exact whining humming kind of insect sound they make while the drool runs down off their little beaks and they pick out the best part of your hide to poke a hole in. You dont want to pull out a little electric solar powered hot plate with a bunch of wires on it and some spindly legs that can hardly heat a teaspoon of water by next week.

You would die of insanity first, or blood loss.

When the beasts are after you grow some hair and turn into an uglier beast. Go low. Go simple. Be crude. Revert to the old tried and true. Nuke em. Grab some wood and burn it is what I do. Make it smoky. Make them fight you for it. Its your blood after all. Burn some wood and cook on it and stay inside the cloud of smoke.

Theres nothing simpler or cruder or more low tech, old fashioned, knuckle dragging, backward, dumber or better than this. You will go to bed with a full belly, clear of mosquito bites, no itching all night, where your turning over and over scratching and swearing. You will smell nicely of good clean wood smoke and feel like your a part of the woods.

Just be careful and dont burn the whole place down.

Wood aint the best choice all the time like when your in a hurry or the wood is wet or its a bad fire season and the whole world is just waiting to go up in a big WOOF! of flame as soon as you show a match to it. But when your up against the wall and all the snakes in the grass are just waiting for you to turn your back so they can raise up and suck you dry and leave an empty shell to sit on and pick their teeth while they belch and fart and gloat over what they did to you, then theres nothing can beat a messy caveman-type sloppy smoky wood fire.

Got two or three people sharing one pot, cooking together, they want convenience and reliability, you might look to a canister or white gas stove. Weight is less of an issue spread out over two or three or four people as long as your all eating the same dinner together. Just set up. light it, cook and eat. Good for families. If it weighs two pounds thats eight ounces for each hiker in a party of four. Reasonable. No sweat.

I had a Svea 123R a Swedish all-brass single unit stove once. Fuel tank and wind screen all built in. Worked Fine. Fine stove, put out lots of heat, they were made starting about 1880, discontinued in 2006 or thereabouts after more than 100 years in production but heavy these days for one person at 18 ounces, and now it looks being made once again.

Likewise the similar Optimus and other Svea stoves in the same line, the older kerosene and white gas models, single burners, usually brass. Still available up to a few years ago, you can still find them used but for a solo hiker or a pair of hikers each doing their own cooking side by side this style of stove maybe isnt the best choice any more. Technology marches on.

Some newer stoves like the Coleman one-in-all with fold out legs and such all look a little more up to date but unfortunately follow the same old ideas.

Think about it. Think hard. The stores are full of ever more modern versions of these old stoves. One is the remote-burner white gas stoves with the big fuel tank attached on the end of a hose. Have you ever tried to burn a quart of white gas? Did you know that theres as much energy in a gallon of gas as the human body puts out in six weeks of heavy work? Even try burning a pint of gas, its pretty ridiculous.

I used to take my Svea out with a half pint fuel bottle for four, five days, and bring back most of the fuel. Carrying all that weight.

Be smart. Think for yourself, but heres what I think.

If you want as much freedom as you can have and want plenty of fuel and its safe enough out there, take a wood burning stove. Not open fires, but a stove that burns wood in a safe way. Like the deadass simple wood gas stove. You can get one of those electric fan powered stoves or make one yourself, but they are big and complicated you dont really need all that. A wood gas stove burns clean, has no moving parts, you can make one in an afternoon and its foolproof.

Plan B, use alcohol. Especially if your going solo, but if theres two of you, make a bigger one if you want, your still going to be lighter cheaper and simpler.

Make a chart if you cant keep it all in your head. I had some math and science in my day but you dont need that. Mostly I go by feel but write it down if it helps you. Its your ball game.

Cost. Weight. Size. Fuel availability. Convenience, Peace of mind.

Some people get peace of mind knowing that an army of invisible trained worker bees in jumpsuits in a faraway land designed and made something with a bunch of machines so that people could just go out and buy it off a shelf. Simple in a way, you choose from whats on the shelf in your town and forget about it. If it works, OK. If it dont then too bad. You can swear and complain and exchange it for one that works, and your out some money even if it does work.

If it sort of works but not very well then you can adapt to it like you would to wearing a shirt with two left sleeves – not right but maybe you can live with it if you try hard enough.

Some people get peace of mind by thinking things through and designing their own – make their own clothes, build their own houses, etc. Likewise with backpacking stoves. If you have to have liquid petroleum fuels or brand name canister stoves you will have to sell your house to pay for research and development, and get an engineering degree. Short of that be simple and reasonable – alcohol, wood, or maybe charcoal if you really want to be fancy.

Lots of designs available. Even if you buy an alcohol stove made by someone else you still know that you can make your own if you want to. You can find out how its done and get comfortable with the idea, and always in a pinch no matter what, just burn some alcohol in an open cup of some kind. Your in charge at all times.

If you make your own you know exactly how it went together and how it works and that can give you peace of mind. Some people like to trust the great engineer waving his arms behind the curtain and trust in worldwide marketing staffs and all. But some just trust themselves.

Up to you.

My advice if you want it, think about your own needs and take care of them regardless of what designer colors you might have to pass by. If you have not tried one, then go and shake an alcohol stove and at least see what its like.

Thank you very much.

What Is Each Type Good For?

What Is Each Type Good For?

By Other Features

Weight: The lightest stoves are alcohol or chemical fuel tablet burners, followed by all the others, with wood or charcoal burners in the middle. If you need light weight, you can find a commercially made alcohol stove at about three ounces (85g), or make your own, as light as one-sixteenth ounce (less than two grams if you’re a smartypants).

Complexity: The simplest stoves are alcohol or chemical fuel tablet burners, followed by all the others, with wood or charcoal burners in the middle, again.

Yawn.

There is a tie for simplest stove of all: either a plain cup for burning alcohol, or a cross-shaped tablet burner that just holds the tablet a fraction of an inch (bare millimeters) up off the ground.

Mechanical reliability/repairability: The most reliable stoves are the simplest, and again these are alcohol or chemical fuel tablet burners, followed by wood or charcoal burners, then liquid burners, with pressurized stoves at the fussy end. If using an alcohol or tablet stove, you can carry a spare, or if you happen to fall on the damn thing you can probably bend it back into shape and keep using it. No parts to lose, no jets to clean.

Try running over your canister stove with a truck, and then bending it back into shape. Just try.

Heat output: The heavy liquid petroleum burners and wood-burning stoves come out on top here. Kerosene has a huge amount of heat tied up in its molecular structure, but again, wood is free and is just out there, lying on the ground, in infinite supply. Alcohol and solid tablets are relatively weak here, but lightweight backpackers have learned to compensate — they don’t need much. Compressed gas stoves fall in the middle.

Durability: This is a little bit of a puzzler. While commercially made liquid fuel stoves have a safety margin built in so they don’t wear out quickly or result in the fireball of death, and compressed gas stoves even more closely resemble lumps of solid metal (sans the fuel canister) you’d probably have to give the prize to the fuel tablet stoves.

Some of these are made from bent hardware cloth or simple sheets of machined titanium that hook together. Those would be almost impossible to bend, let alone destroy. Alcohol stoves tend to be made from aluminum drink cans, a delicate material at best, but because their designs are so simple they can still take a lot of abuse.

Nimblewill Nomad’s Little Dandy wood-burning stove is a collection of flat steel plates that hook together for use and fold flat again for storage. You could drive over that stove with a tank (several times in succession) and not hurt it.

Fuel availability: The most available fuel is garbage. That’s what wood is. Trees grow and shed dry wood the way humans shed dandruff and armpit hairs. It’s waste to them.

Wood-burning stoves can also burn cardboard, paper, grass, and anything else dry and solid. They win, no contest. Alcohol has to come in second, being available at every hardware store, department store and gas station.

Specially-formulated liquid stove fuels like white gas are common in the summer, sort of. Kerosene — well, when was the last time you tried to buy some? Canister fuels are available just about everywhere that sells anything but the most basic sporting goods. Solid fuel tablets? By mail order.

Stability during use: Some stoves are large. Some are small. Some are light. Some are heavy. Some are made in factories by specially bred and trained machines overseen by geniuses, and some are made in homes and garages by ordinary stumblebums. Each particular stove has its own characteristics, which interact with the terrain and weather where and when they are used. This one is a draw all the way around. It’s mostly up to the yokel using it.

Toxicity/danger: Pressurized liquid fuel stoves and compressed gas stoves are designed by experts and manufactured to close tolerances in modern factories. But these two types of stove are also the most dangerous. In other words, they have to be designed and built by experts. And that is why the factories are all situated well away from delicate living organisms. OK, that’s not strictly true, or even close, but... The connection between a fuel canister and its stove can be faulty, or the hose connecting a fuel bottle to its stove can leak. Either way you can get a blowtorch flaming into the sky, or a river of burning fuel running downhill toward your tent. Not for amateurs.

Liquid petroleum fuels are not good to eat or drink. Their vapors are not good to breathe. The particular fuel you use may have contaminants like benzene, a carcinogen, and none of this stuff is very good, not even a little bit. Compressed gases are probably purer overall, and not necessarily quite so toxic in themselves, but are still not good to breathe.

Wood could hurt you if you poke yourself in the eye, but that’s about it. Wood is made mostly of cellulose, a long-chain sugar. That about says it all. (This is true. Trees are made from sugar, sweetheart.)

Ethanol or grain alcohol is right next to wood on the safety chart, but you’ll probably be using a mixture containing up to 80% methanol (a.k.a. wood alcohol), and you can’t tell by looking at it or by smelling it. You don’t want to drink it. It can make you go blind, and then kill you.

Short of drinking it, you can absorb some through your skin while measuring it out. Aside from absorbing methanol through your skin there really isn’t too much danger. Assuming that you’re smart enough not to try drinking it just to see what really happens. When you go blind, you can’t see anything. Keep this away from children.

Solid fuel tablets, whether hexamine or trioxane, release substances such as formaldehyde, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide and nitrogen oxides when burned. Trioxane, mostly found in military or military-surplus fuel tablets, requires a hand washing after contact with the stuff, even if it’s not burned.

Hexamine appears safer to handle, though it can give off formaldehyde (an irritant and possible carcinogen) just from contact with perspiration. The “Material Safety Data Sheet” for this substance recommends “always wear protective equipment when handling this compound.” Hexamine (Esbit) is advertised as non-toxic. You have to decide if you personally agree with that.

Size: For those doing their gear selection exclusively at outdoor shops, pretty much all stoves are going look about the same. You’ll see liquid fuel stoves from MSR and other major manufacturers and the accompanying fuel bottles (about the size of large soft drink bottles). Canister stoves are smaller because they don’t have to vaporize and mix fuel that’s already in the vaporous state, but their fuel is contained in relatively large canisters you plug them into.

The smallest solid tablet stoves are almost not there at all, and homemade alcohol stoves are close behind, considering the tea candle cup stove at a weight of one-sixteenth ounce (1.8g), height of three-eighths inch (9.5 mm), and diameter of roughly one inch (25 mm).

In the usual vein of perversity, found everywhere that technology meets marketing, you won’t see alcohol, tablet or wood-burning stoves in outdoor shops. The very occasional shop may have a Sierra stove just for the sake of amusement, but that’s it. Considering that (with the exception of the Sierra stove) these three types of backpacking stove are among the smallest, cheapest and most innovative, you’d expect them to be available, but they aren’t.

Tradition, tradition, tradition.

Camping and backpacking stoves began as products that came from factories and were sold through long chains of wholesalers and retailers, and evolved into established features in the landscape of the outdoor world. People got used to them, used them, wrote reviews of them, saw friends and strangers alike using them, and by golly, we all thought that that was that. We just got dumb.

Some scruffy thru-hiker comes along with an alcohol stove he made from a couple of beer cans and what are we going to think? “Not familiar” means “no good”. “Not sold in stores” means “suspect”. Not appearing in glossy ads means nonexistent. “Everyone knows” that you can’t make a stove yourself. Duh.

Cost: Free, if you make it yourself. Look at a pressurized stove using either liquid fuel or compressed gas and you’re in the $40 to $175 range. Other stove types fall in between. Usually the lighter, lower-tech stove will be cheaper.

But you really can make your own stove. Yay!

Exercises

1. Weigh yourself. Calculate how many half-ounce backpacking stoves you could be made into, if you were only made of the right stuff.
2. Decide how complex you would be if you were a stove. Wearing a tinfoil hat may help to get you into the mood.
3. How reliable are you? Do you burst into flame at the touch of a match, first time, every time? We thought not. Write about it.
4. Are you hot? Really? Then try bringing 16 ounces of 40-degree water to a boil in six minutes. Confess. It will be good for you. You aren’t hot after all, are you?
5. Durability. If I ran over you with a tank, could you still make tea? List all reasons for your answer and discuss the advantages of having a handle and/or a spout. Hum along if possible.
6. Are you available, worldwide?
7. What about stability? Can you remain upright in a stiff breeze, on rocky ground, or do you tip over a lot and spill your contents? If you think you’re stable, do you achieve this on account of sheer overall massiveness, of the weight in your lower half, or because of your subtle and artistic design?
8. Are you toxic? If someone licked you, would they make a face like Mr. Yuk? Would they die?
9. What about size then, hmmm?
10. How much? I mean how much do you cost and/or charge? Are you within reach of the working man? Just a plaything for the rich? Pretty reasonable? Reasonable but not that pretty? Free?

Story Break: Commercial vs. Homemade Stoves

Story Break

Commercial vs. Homemade Stoves

Joe “Dirty Maggot” Periwinkle

I’ve, like, made lots of alcohol stoves and I’ve never had one blow up on me. Used lots of commercial stoves too. They didn’t blow up either. We have a draw. Zero to zero. No explosions so far. The struggle for control of the universe is still tied.

Where’s this going?

Look, you ever been out, on the trail, maybe alone especially? And you feel kind of like things are watching you? Or you kind of feel whispering here and there? Not quite hearing it, sort of feeling it, always just beyond the reach of your ears? Me either, but if so, you can try upping your dose, or lowering it. Check to see what it says on the bottle, but don’t call me for advice. I’ve got some issues of my own deal with, and don’t have a license to practice medicine any more.

OK, stoves.

Commercial stoves are big and heavy and bulky, blah-blah. Dayglo colors, patent numbers meticulously registered by bureaucrats. Shiny brushed titanium, shiny brushed steel, shiny brushed aluminum, shiny brushed plastic.

Urban products.

To operate: Light, Heat and Eat.™ As seen on TV. If you order in the next 10 minutes we throw in a pair of space age blue antigravity dustbuster socks, absolutely free! Don’t think about it! Buy now! They never wear out! Or collect dust! Free with every purchase!

Go to the outdoor shop for these. Pay your money, pick up your goods. You’ll end up with a stove, a good stove. Decent. High-pressure tubes, regulators and gages, strain relief, a built-in lighter, an afterburner and a precision-designed logo created by art-school graduates.

Guaranteed to hit Mach 5 right out of the box. You can pound nails with it and simmer lobster bisque to perfection 20 miles from the nearest trace of a road, and then sleep under the stars without a worry, knowing that it’s there by your side to protect you. May be bought with an optional folding wagon for easy transport, and a two-week introductory cooking course.

Buy the right stove, polish it, respect it, and it could outlast you, except for some of the plastic parts.

Homemade stoves, different DNA lineage.

Homemade is one you make. About the only hurt you can give it is crunching it under your foot. Other than that nothing will kill it. Cockroaches won’t get it, not termites, not rust. No one will steal it, they won’t recognize it. They won’t want it.

Miracles are like that, no one recognizes them. Make your stove and it will be there as long as you respect your own work. No moving parts, nothing to go wrong, light as a sunbeam.

You make your own stove, it’s work though. It’s operating without a big brother to hold your hand, no air bag protection against crashes, and it can be scary. No more one-size-fits-all. No easy reach up to the store shelf. No more laying down your cash and going back home and forgetting about it. No safety net in any sense.

First thing is, you need to create an industrial research and design lab (that’s you), to scout terra incognita and return with facts about what you will be facing out there. Then you design a stove to handle it. This is where some imagination is handy, or experience, if you’ve already got imagination.

Refer to life’s first original shop manual, good old tried and true, our dear friend trial and error. Deep down everybody knows how to do this part. It’s how you learned to pull down your pants and poop in that order, and how you learned why it’s the right order. You didn’t know this to start off. You figured it out as you went along, and now you know, because of what worked and what didn’t.

Results will take some time in arriving because you have to make them up. Rev up your brain cells and turn them loose. Let them bang around inside your head like bumper cars until you see a pattern. That’s your design. Design is what you have after the last crash. They don’t teach that in school.

If the last crash leaves one big ugly lump, that’s failure. Failure is cool. Try again. Your head might hurt, on the inside, in the beginning, which can be interesting too. More so if you see nice colors. But it’s worth it, especially if you see colors. Lots of people have been on this for a while so designs are out there. You can pick the one that comes closest to what looks right for you.

Get some aluminum drink cans. Beer works. Soft drinks work. It doesn’t matter what was in the cans, so if you can’t decide what to drink then defer to Mom. Drink what she told you to, and then work from your pile of empties. If you like tiny-cute then skip the big cans and grab some five and a half ouncers and aim for the smallest of small stoves. If Mom isn’t handy, invite a bunch of friends over to drink stuff and rescue each can as it gets emptied. No crushing allowed. Tell them.

Get out the plans, lay out your tools. You are about to set up a factory. Marshal the workers. Direct railway deliveries. Sweep the shop floor. Wave your arms and shout with authority. Toot the noon whistle. Do it with your toes, standing on your head, any way you like, this is your very own factory. You are the boss.

Wash the cans. Measure them, dissect them, and reassemble the parts. Finish with a wrap of shiny metallic tape and your stove can pass for pro work. There will be some of you inside it. Your materials will have a history and carry some of you, especially if you get a nick and leave a drop of blood. (Nothing works as well as gloves: recommended when manhandling razor-sharp bits of metal.)

At the end you have something that came out of your own head and from your own hands. Something that is now your personal stove, with the size and shape you gave it, and that shares a story with you. If the first one has a small pucker to one side there, it’s OK. You get better and so do the stoves as you make more. Trial and error, right?

Carry it a year or two, the stove. Use it. Get a little tarnish on it. Get a scratch here and there. Wash it down, wipe it out, let it dry, it won’t wear at all. Not glamorous, not sexy, not titanium. No racing stripes, no tail fins, no guarantee, but no fuss, no failures, no disappointments either.

It will always have your fingerprints on it, the shape you gave it. Every little mistake, hint of a dent, anything off center, it’s all there. All part of you, your story, in this little thing you made so small you can almost carry it behind your ear, and it will work forever too.

That’s the difference. It’s you versus the anonymous black hole. You and your story and your friends and your whole life all together in a little bit of history that you made and carry around with you that’s all you and no one else. That’s the difference. It’s you.

And never listen to whispering voices when you’re out on the trail, no matter what they say. I don’t. Not anymore.

What Is Each Type Good For?

What Is Each Type Good For?

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea. — Ernest Hemingway

By Fuel Type

Pressurized liquid fuel: These go by names such as “white gas”, “Coleman Fuel”, kerosene, diesel fuel, and similar familiar modern and sexy petroleum compounds. Fuel for these stoves is relatively cheap, relatively easy to find, and has a lot of energy per unit of volume. Current stove types employ reusable fuel bottles which come in different sizes, and you can fill (and refill) and carry as many of them as you can stand to. These stoves are heavy, weighing in the one to two pound range (0.45 - 0.9kg, including an empty fuel bottle), but they can boil water quickly and cook a meal for several people without much fuss.

Pressurized gases: These are some mix of butane, isobutane, and propane.

These stoves use expensive fuel in non-refillable, non-recyclable containers. You may eventually end up with a closet full of almost-empty canisters. These stoves are good for people who can’t or don’t want to fill or prime a stove or perform any maintenance whatsoever. Some of these stoves even light themselves. They rate high on convenience, and are basically as good as the liquid fuel stoves, but their fuel contains less energy so it doesn’t go as far, and the fuel containers are bulky as well.

Weight varies wildly, from less than three ounces (85g) for the stove alone to almost a pound (454g). Fuel containers add more weight — from eight to 12 ounces (227 - 340g) or more per canister above the weight of the stove.

Non-pressurized liquid fuel: Alcohol. That’s about it.

These are some of the smallest and lightest stoves available, and among the simplest. They burn relatively cheap fuel available anywhere paint is sold, or at just about every gas station as gas line deicer. You can make your own stove. These stoves are best for people who cook for one. Heat output is relatively low, but fuel is non-explosive and just about non-toxic (for straight ethanol). These stoves are silent.

Solid fuel: Esbit (hexamine), trioxane.

As with alcohol stoves, these are hard to beat for weight. The lightest commercially made solid fuel stove checks in at 13 grams, or less than half an ounce. Fuel is more expensive than alcohol, at about 50 cents per hexamine tablet (50 cents to heat 16 ounces or a half liter of water).

Hexamine sometimes leaves a gooey residue on pot bottoms and gives off toxic substances in its fumes (despite what the manufacturer claims). But this fuel is stable. A burning tablet can be blown out before it’s all consumed, and relit later. Tablets are best for single hikers who can deal with the shortcomings of this fuel.

Solid fuel: Wood and charcoal.

There is a surprising variety of wood stoves for backpacking out there. All but a couple are homemade, and the most well-known commercial one (the Sierra stove) is large, heavy, and complicated.

These stoves use free fuel that does not need to be carried, but the stoves may be banned at certain elevations, in certain places, or at certain times of the year. The fuel is nonexplosive and can’t be spilled but may give off sparks, and burning it will blacken your cooking pots.

Wood stoves can provide enough heat for any type of cooking. Need more heat? Burn more wood.

Flameless: Solar, chemical.

Flameless stoves belong in the same category as chemical tablet stoves. Though some backpackers habitually and successfully use the chemical tablets, stoves using them are a distinct oddity on the trail. And even more so for stoves that use solar power or flameless chemical substances. These stoves are for the tinkerers who like to experiment and don’t need to have dinner done on time.

Exercises

1. Look up backpacking stove prices in as many printed catalogs and on as many web sites as you can find. Make a list, ordering them by category (fuel type, weight, design, materials) and include the average price for each stove. Convert your results into an informative poster and carry it with you as you run errands. Take every opportunity to stop strangers and educate them about what you have learned. Ask if you can come over to their house for dinner sometime, so you can continue your conversation. If they begin backing away, it’s a sign that you’re getting through to them. Don’t give up. Keep talking. If any of them should turn and run, it’s because you’ve gotten them excited, and they’re about to flip. Every good salesman has seen this behavior and knows what to do next. Chase them down. You’ve almost got a fresh convert at this point, so keep at it, even if physical violence ensues. Good luck with that.
2. Write an essay about what you learned from this experience. Put little smiley faces and hearts in the margins. Remember — you are doing The Good Work.

Story Break: Things You Can Make Stoves From

Story Break

Things You Can Make Stoves From

Citron Ella Schmelling

Prologue

Before you start your homemade stove project there are some things to think about. (If thinking causes gas, headaches, dizziness, marital difficulties, or malfunctions in one more internal organs, then skip this and go on to something else.)

There’s no perfect place to start your thinking, so I’ll pick one for you.

Do you have dependents? Anyone who counts on you? Like children who haven’t made it through school yet, who haven’t yet begun lives of joyous independence? A spouse? Loving pets? If you beat your cat, then ignore this part. Fluffy will be better off without you, if she hasn’t left already. And your cat will, too, in case Fluffy is your wife. Let’s assume that your cat is named Bert.

Cats lean toward independence, in most cases, and Bert does too. Contrary to popular belief cats named Bert aren’t all that good at taking to the woods and fending for themselves. Having been brought up to depend on people for food, shelter, and a clean place to poo, a cat grows to expect these things, plus a little respect if possible, and an occasional pleasant brushing.

That is, most cats. With cats you can really get into trouble if you generalize too much. Any cat, though, will abandon you in a heartbeat if your manners are lacking. So if you find that your cats always seem to move in with the neighbors and only glance at you from time to time through the window glass, then maybe now is a good time to reevaluate that psychotherapy option. Look in the mirror. If someone scary is looking back, then phone for help.

All right, we’ve got some of the preliminaries out of the way. You either do or do not have dependents, and if so, you are thinking about them. Making your own stove can be safe, but life being what it is, it’s better to prepare for the worst.

First, determine that your life insurance policy is up to date. There is a chance, however small, that you are dangerously stupid, but there is no reason that any of your dependents should suffer because of you. Gary is a good case study.

Gary should never try to make a backpacking stove. Gary probably should never try backpacking, unless under close supervision, with physical restraints nearby. As Hurricane Bob approached (a recent, famous storm as such things are reckoned was Bob), Gary went home to wait it out. Gary lived in Connecticut, a state not often appearing in the headlines during hurricanes, so we’ll give Gary some credit for being cautious. Good boy, Gary.

When the hurricane hit and the power went out, Gary was ready. Gary had water. Gary had food. Gary had a kerosene lamp. Best of all, Gary had a trusty old camping stove, a white-gas model that would see him through the worst of it. And it did. When the power went out as he had been warned it might, Gary put the camping stove on top of his kitchen range and cooked supper by lantern light. And then, satisfied, Gary turned off the camping stove, ate supper, cleaned up, and went to bed, well-fed and satisfied. Gary had coped.

Since Gary lived in Connecticut and not Florida, the storm blew over quickly and soon dozens of conscientious workers were out repairing the electric lines. The damage had not been catastrophic. Crews worked busily throughout the dark hours, and restored power to Gary’s place while he lay in bed asleep, with his little eyes closed. A burner on the electric range began heating up. And then camping stove sitting on top of that burner on the range began heating up.

It did this because Gary had tested the electric burner on his range by turning it on, to prove to himself that the power had really gone out, all of it, not just the lights. And because the burner was switched on the way Gary had left it, poor fellow, it heated up when the power came back on. And all too soon the camping stove exploded, destroying Gary’s house, though Gary did survive, his eyes now opened wide.

One of his close relatives may be now living in the apartment below you. Think about it for a while.

Gary wasn’t all that ambitious. You couldn’t call him a real do-it-yourselfer. Unlike Anne and Ralph.

Dear Anne and Ralph.

Anne and Ralph really did play with fire, in the house, and it was fun for a while. They bought a wood-burning stove and installed it themselves. The chimney too. The chimney went through the ceiling and into the attic.

But no farther. Because Anne and Ralph got tired of working and stopped, wanting to spend some quality time in front of a cozy fire. Which they did, for a while. Leaving the chimney running up from the stove into the attic, and stopping there, where it vented inside their house. They did have quality time, but only a little of it. Their quality time ended when the attic caught fire and burned them out. No one had spanked them for playing with fire as children. They got to learn the fun way, the expensive way, as adults.

Potatoes

So you really want to make your own backpacking stove? Start from first principles, then. Once your will is up to date, and you’ve paid the life insurance premium. If it’s just you and Bert your cat, and Bert is sticking by you, you might have a chance. Cats can usually pick winners, unlike most dogs. If your cat gives you a “thumbs up”, you know you have a pretty good chance. Since cats don’t have thumbs they have to really believe in you to pull this one off. So pay close attention to your cat.

Examine what a stove has to do. A stove has to hold fuel and burn it, making heat that goes somewhere useful. But what does a stove have to be made from? Do you really need to be a titanium-certified aerospace machinist to make one? Probably not. Sometimes it pays to experiment. Just for the sake of learning things.

Why can’t backpacking stoves be made from nontraditional materials? Like, say, potatoes? There’s a thought. Potatoes are cheap and plentiful.

Find a likely potato. To save time, buy a bag full of them at a supermarket. You could also grow your own, or walk around until you bumped into one, but generally buying a bag of them will be quicker.

Once you have a friendly-looking potato in your hand, turn it right-side up. Since you’re now in charge of your own destiny, you also get to decide which end is up. We’ll wait while you do it.

Done already? OK, then. Next make sure that the potato can stand on its own. This is an important part of any potato’s life, and the life of your project, so maybe now is a good time to pause and celebrate with a glass of wine. But not too much, and only after your potato is standing proudly erect. You can try sharing some wine with Bert if he’s that kind of cat.

(If you have a pet that isn’t a cat, it might be best to reconsider the whole premise here. Those who have, say, cockroaches or rhinoceroses as house pets may not be suitable for this enterprise. Dog owners should be out cleaning up after their pets.)

Now that you have an erect potato, cut a cup in its top side. It should be deep enough to hold an ounce of alcohol and then some. Planning prevents unpleasant overflow. For those who simply can’t stand potatoes, we can at this point say that it’s perfectly all right to try this with an apple, or perhaps a beet. Maybe even a rutabaga, if rutabaga mutilation is legal in your state. You are the expert here, so let those creative juices flow!

Time For Testing!

If this sounds too “scientific” or “technical”, or just “scary”, then think of it instead as “recess” or “playtime”. Ignore those double quotes around the spooky words you just read. After all, you’ve been working hard so far, and you need a little fun. Maybe even another glass of wine. Couldn’t hurt, could it? What could go wrong anyway? If you do have wine, then call it a day, and come back later, rested, refreshed, and raring to go, as sober as you can get by then.

Ready? Well, then, remember that we’re still in the experimental stages, where failure is as important as success, maybe even more so, so get out there and fire up your potato. Let’s see what happens.

Probably the best place to fire up a potato is away from anything that could unexpectedly burst into flames. Especially big scary flames. Houses come to mind. Expensive vehicles with large fuel tanks. Pets. Friends. Family. Be nice. Feed Bert a big tuna dinner, then park him on a windowsill where he can safely watch you and take notes between naps. Keep your buddy safe indoors. You never know when you might need an objective observer to unravel your experimental results. And you should always work outdoors.

A paved parking lot is a pretty good bet for your first try, in case your potato explodes with little or no warning. Not that it’s likely to, but then again, I don’t know you, or your potato. Maybe you’ve been responsible and cautious up to this point, taking small careful steps and wearing protective clothing. But you have had a couple of glasses of wine you know. Maybe that’s a little much. Even if you did sleep on it. Maybe not, but it can’t hurt to be careful.

Maybe you worried about your chosen vegetable. Maybe you doused your potato (or rutabaga) with some ether you had lying around, to ensure anesthesia. This should have been a big warning signal. Never, ever trust any chemical that is lying, and if possible don’t douse vegetables in lying, explosive chemicals just before you set them alight. Alcohol is bad enough. At least in your condition. You’re an adult, and you don’t want to ruin things for the rest of us adults. Some of us have good reputations.

Skip the afternoon hours, and the hours of darkness. It’s best to try this right after daybreak when no one will be watching. The neighbors will still be abed, with their small piggy eyes shut tight in a close room packed full of snores. They won’t see bright flames leaping up against a dark midnight sky.

Even if your neighbors stay up all night trying to keep an eye on you, they will have given up by dawn. So do this early, say about five a.m. or so, after those busy-bodies have gotten groggy and finally just slid down the insides of their windows and begun snoring on the floor. The idea is to catch them off guard. And have a potato that doesn’t explode. Or rutabaga, whichever.

It Should Work

And you’ll have reached an important stage in your evolution as a stove builder, the stage that tells you that potatoes can be used as backpacking stoves. Except for a few small problems. Maybe Bert can explain some of this if you need more help, but the basics are:

First, you’ll realize that potatoes are just too heavy. As are beets. And rutabagas. Hey, they’re full of water! Like 90 per cent! Whoa, there! What were you thinking? Sure they’ll dry out, but they’ll get all gross with mold and stuff first and you won’t want to touch them.

And since you’re an adult (now) you know that it isn’t all fun all the time any more. You have to clean up after yourself these days, so Mom won’t be touching the gross stuff, you will. Yuk. And then when vegetables do dry out they’ll be all gnarly and weird and stuff, and just make a lot of smoke and maybe catch on fire when you try to cook over them.

This is science. True science. It has been proven. This is how penicillin was invented, and vulcanized rubber, and pay telephones. Sure, sure, aside from penicillin there wasn’t much mold involved (which is a big plus in the notebooks of most inventors), but it was still science. Hard core. Big time. Top drawer. Top notch. First rate, A-Number-One. Until cell phones, maybe, but it’s the idea that counts as much as anything, in these early stages.

Other Fruits & Vegetables

Now that you’ve taken the leap into stove making with unconventional materials, you’re probably feeling a lot more comfortable. Those of you who haven’t been arrested or hospitalized, and that should be almost all of you.

Let’s take a look at some other materials beyond garden vegetables. Doing this will widen our comfort zone and ease us farther into the realm of do-it-yourselfishness, and take us farther from a dependence on industrial facilities run by possibly unreliable strangers in distant lands where the clocks show unusual hours and people are rumored to hang upside down from the earth’s surface by their feet.

Lint

Lint is probably out as a stove-making material. You get it wet and then what? Goes limp right away. Plus it doesn’t hold fuel, especially not liquids. And, yup, it burns. Darn it all to heck.

Paper

Paper is handy for a lot of things. For example, say you’re out backpacking somewhere, it’s just before breakfast, and you get this great idea for a novel. But being a true ultralighter, you didn’t bring a notebook. If your stove is made from paper you can just grab a pine needle from the forest floor, scratch yourself to draw blood, and then use the bloody pine needle to jot down your thoughts on the stove itself. Next thing you know, though, and you’ve lit the stove, which then goes up in smoke. BECAUSE IT’S MADE OF PAPER!

Whipped Cream

So that won’t work then. Or stoves made from rags, wood scraps or plastic. Or stoves made from ice or soft foods like whipped cream. Stoves made from foods other than potatoes or beets (including those made from rutabagas) will generally have the same disadvantages as the tuber stoves. True, some of them are semi-edible, but even if they worked as stoves they would persistently attract undesirable creatures who would forever be dropping in on you at awkward hours for a bite, sometimes of you.

Shiny Stuff

No, hard experience has pretty well proven these days that the best backpacking stoves are made from shiny stuff. We mean here not pretty stones with appealing gemlike fossils delicately embedded within, but the old tried and true metals: brass, aluminum, steel, and titanium.

Unluckily for you, I have no experience whatsoever in machining titanium and cannot pass on any helpful tips at all. Titanium is a very durable and wonderful metal with raw material costs ranging around $100 a pound. Its greatest failing is that no one makes soft drink cans from it.

Cans will be our starting point. Cans represent more than just raw material. Ask Bert. He knows, clever little fellow. Steel cans, aluminum cans. Cans. The fundamental idea is cans. There is even a famous design for backpacking stoves called the “Cat Stove”. Made from cans. From the beginning. From cat food cans, and said to be ever so efficient. See? You should talk to Bert more often.

If you have a can to start from you’ve already gotten someone else to do most of the hard work, the mining, smelting, milling, flat rolling and such. People don’t do that with titanium. They make airplanes from titanium, not cat food cans. Bert already knows this. You should too — it will save you a lot of frustration.

Steel

Steel, now, steel is the king of metals. Steel will do just about anything you want, it’s cheap and available all over, and fully understood. You won’t ever get up in the middle of the night to find that your steel stove has decided to go through a mid-life crisis, facing a dark mountain of doubt and weeping and moaning.

Steel doesn’t drool or throw tantrums either. It never needs psychotherapy, and it always shows up for work on time, right on the dot. Good old steel. What a pal.

Steel is heavy, though, and pretty hard to work as metals go, even starting with steel in can form. Most people don’t know this, but steel is only slightly heavier than titanium, or contrariwise, titanium is only a little lighter than steel. Titanium is like rustproof steel that has gone on a very brief slimming diet. Titanium though lighter by a little is not much lighter, it is prettier however and it costs a lot more. Like $100 a pound, as noted earlier. So screw it.

Once you get into stove building you’ll see cans all over. You’ll find yourself digging into trash bins looking for cans to use. Sometimes people walking by will flip you an occasional quarter, for encouragement. Always be polite and thank them. This is tax-free income. In fact, you can get thousands per year per donor without incurring a tax hit, so always encourage these people.

Aluminum Cans

The real king of the hill in the do-it-yourself stove world is the aluminum can. Cat food comes in these as well as in steel cans. Most aluminum can stoves start out as drink cans though. One of the early innovators was Scott Henderson, who designed the original Pepsi Can Stove, and published plans for all to use. At the time there was something about Pepsi Cola cans that apparently was a little different, and made them more useful, but now all cans seem to be the same. Any 12-ounce aluminum drink can will do.

You can accept this, and stick with Pepsi or Coke cans, or do your own research and find the perfect beer can for your stove. This is the other part of science that we didn’t tell you about earlier. It’s called “pure research”. They call it “pure” because it’s so much fun. As in Pure Fun, with capital letters and all. You can carry it on for years. There are so many kinds of beer out there that you’ll probably never complete your collection, but you can try.

The important thing though is to take notes. All scientists know that it’s not science if it isn’t repeatable, so take notes. Scientists take notes. You should take notes on the kinds of beer you drink, and then you can come back to exactly that same kind of beer later, to verify your earlier results with another round of experiments. The integrity of science demands that you do this at least three or four times before you form any definite conclusions. That keeps you honest and enhances the purity of your work. You can have friends join you too. Then you have both pure research and a party. Scientists call it “collaboration”.

If you don’t have friends then you can still have a lot of fun drinking alone by the window, especially if your cat will join you. If your cat doesn’t drink, he’ll probably at least let you share the windowsill if you don’t get loud or barf on him. Try to avoid the feet. Cats especially dislike humans barfing on their trim and sensitive delicately-furred feet.

During your research years be sure to save all your cans. They will become your raw materials. Don’t be afraid to fill the spare bedroom with them.

Aluminum cans then. Aluminum cans constitute the ideal raw material for making ultralight backpacking stoves. They are very light because aluminum is a low-mass metal, and because there just isn’t much material there. The cans have already been formed into cup-like shapes, which is a good starting point for a stove. Aluminum is strong and tough, and pretty hard, but the walls of the cans are so thin that you can cut the material with a scissors or a utility knife, which makes the metal easy to work.

Your Later Years

Once your doctor tells you that you’ve accumulated enough beer cans, and should switch your research away from substances containing alcohol, you can get started investigating the smaller cans.

Look for things like vegetable and fruit juices packaged in 5.5-ounce (163 ml) aluminum cans. You can make the same kinds of stoves from these as from 12-ounce beer cans, but scaled down. This work may be a bit harder if you’ve spent too many years in research among beer cans and no longer have quite the fine motor skills you once did.

You may even find that you’ve become a professional recycler, living out on the streets in the fresh clean air, and have given up ideas of backpacking altogether. If this happens, you’ll be glad that you learned how to accept donations from passing strangers early on.

Enjoy!