Use a stove for your hiking trip
Backpacking stoves are tricky little gadgets once you have mastered one, but the road to mastery can be frustrating. On the other hand, cooking over an open fire is a challenging throwback to self-reliant woodsmanship. It can also be a lot more dif ficult than dealing with a backpacking stove.
The case against campfire cooking
Fires are often prohibited because:
● They leave an ugly mess.
● Wood is removed that would otherwise enrich the soil.
● There may be a fire hazard.
● They encourage irresponsible wood gathering.
Even if you may build fires you must deal with:
● Smoke
● Ashes
● Blackened pots
● Sparks
● Finding suitable (dry & hard) wood
In general it’s more difficult and slower to cook over hot coals than a stove.
The case for campfires
● Fires are fun.
● No uncooperative backpacking stove to kick and curse.
● Cooking successfully over a good bed of coals is a genuine challenge and builds character.
● It makes you feel like you’re Home, Home on the Range!
Backpacking stoves Stoves are categorized by the type of fuel they burn. Which is best? The one that works! They’re all designed to fold and fit compactly in a backpack. If you’re a tinkering type, you’ll love these gadgets.
White gas
Hot flame, easy fuel to find, can be difficult to start.
Kerosene
Hot flame, even harder to start, easy fuel to find.Awful, smelly stuff.
Multi-fuel
Can burn two or more petroleum based liquid fuels (white gas, gasoline, kerosene)
Canister
Uses pressurized butane or propane gas. Easy to use, not as hot as white gas, but adjustable to simmer. May not work below freezing (blended fuels work in temperatures down in the teens). More expensive. May work better at lower temperatures in high altitudes. Used canisters must be packed out.
Alcohol stoves
Uncommon outside of Scandinavia. Flame not as hot as other fuels.
Like a car
Buy a stove. It’s the sure-fire way to guarantee hot food and drink outdoors.
Buy a stove that you know how to work easily. Do not leave the store until you’re 100% certain you do.
Practice lighting it at home.At the end of a day’s hike you want to produce a hot blue flame almost at will. It’s like a car.You want to turn the key and go!
Cooking over a campfire
You don’t cook over flames.The best heat emanates from coals.A fire must be built and allowed to burn down to a bed of red hot coals.The better the wood (hard and dry, not rotten or wet) the better the coals. The bigger the fire, the more coals you’ll have. Not that you need all that much — at it’s peak, the flames should come up to your knees. No bonfires!
You can start a fire with firestarter or fuel from your stove, but the real scout starts a fire with one match. Find a handful of dry, brittle twigs and build a tepee in the fire ring. Determine which way the wind is blowing and add slightly larger pieces of wood on the opposite side of the tepee (you want the flame blowing into the wood).The trick is to use very thin twigs and sticks at this point.The right kind snap crisply when you bend them. Gather ever larger pieces of wood and have them ready to add as the fire grows.
Get down close. Light the match and stick the flame underneath and inside your little tepee. If the wind doesn’t decide to play tricks, your dry, brittle twigs will catch immediately and spread to the larger stuff.After that it’s just a matter of adding bigger sticks to the fire until bingo! you’ve got a full fire. Let the flames subside until all that remains are glowing coals. It may take around 45 minutes.
Rest the pot or pan directly on a flat, stable area of the coals if you can. Otherwise you can make a setting area with rocks.The trick is to cook over red hot coals without burning yourself or tipping over the pot or pan. If you’re simply boiling water, heating something or preparing a quick-cook item (like trout or a potato patty made from an instant mix) this isn’t too difficult. It may take 10–15 minutes to boil water.
Cooking over a fire is not a bad thing to know if that fancy stove doesn’t work. But for reasons already listed, campfires are difficult to cook over and environmentally unsound. It’s not recommended.
Molotov Cocktail
I have one of those backpacking stoves that must be primed just so before you can see that all-important blue flame.You pump it up, turn the dial until some white gas fills up a teeny dish underneath the burner, turn the dial off and then you light the dish. Whoosh! it goes and then you let the flame die down. Just before it does, you turn the dial back on and if the stars are in your favor, a steady, strong blue flame appears and you’re on your way to outdoor cooking glory.
It’s the Whoosh! part that stymies some chefs and concerns firefighters everywhere. Sometimes the gas overflows the dish and the start-up flame burns a hole in the ground.When I practiced with it at home I left three charred craters in my back yard. Since you’re sticking your face down there when you light it, eyebrows tend to disappear.The thought that you might be completely blown away crosses your mind when you see the two-foot flame engulf the attached fuel bottle. The explosive nature of the “priming” process has prompted one backpacking friend to call these stoves the camper’s molotov cocktail.
Parting words
● Buy or rent a name brand backpacking stove that you know how to work.
● Give yourself plenty of daylight to fiddle. Make camp well before dark.
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