At around freezing, the old Bluet stoves became nearly useless using American fuel.

Apparently, a continuing mythology has developed around this unfortunate fact.

These Bluets were standard U.S. canister stoves for nearly 20 years ending in mid-to -late 1980s, and distributed at the end, by Wonder Corp. of Norwalk, Conn.

For whatever reason, I've not found in recent years, using canister stoves with standard MSR or Coleman fuel, is terribly difficult at around zero degrees, though warming canister is a good and very simple caveat.

But clearly others with much more experience than I, have accumulated vast amount of useful information.


In past decade or so, climbers of extreme routes in the Alaska Range, who optimally operate in May, as well as those of similar ambition in Asia and virtually anywhere else, today limit their use of non-canister stoves to base-camp.

This is simple and highly factual information.

I am, after about 40 years, far less experienced than many others in the use of benzine/petroleum/gasoline and canister-type stoves in various conditions around the world.

I guess I have lots to say that says, simply, that I don't find very much to say about this topic

"A continuing mythology"? Are you kidding? It isn't mythology. The only myth being perpetrated is yours that there are no issues using canisters at zero F. For someone so interested in science and facts, you are missing the boat here. If you don't believe me, do the experiment yourself. After all, replicability is a hallmark of science. Here is the experiment, leave your canister out overnight while the temp is between 0 and 5 degrees F. Try lighting your stove. Now try to warm it up a bit with the "flick of a bic" and then try it again. If you happen to get it lit, try to boil some water on it. No issues, my foot.

This has been my repeated experience as well and is one of the main reasons I now take a white gas stove with me on my few cold weather trips.

I spent six months "camping out" in Antarctica. A lot of people working there prefer to use kerosine stoves; I quickly developed a preference for white gas. The hassle factor with white gas was less primarily because alcohol priming was not needed. Moreover, kerosine seems to migrate somehow to add odor to sleeping gear and add a piquant tang to one's food. And, we used white gas stoves in tents. We would get them going outside and then move them into the tent for cooking and snow melting. If the weather was such that outside start-ups were not feasible then we would fire them up inside very carefully.

After a few experiences, first with the old Bluet "puncture" canisters, and more recently with the modern canisters and their gas mixes, I decided the hassle of using canister stoves in cold weather was better left to those with more patience than I have.

For purely practical reasons, today's stove of choice for mountaineers in very bad conditions in Alaska Range, Asia, and elsewhere, is the canister style. It just isn't an issue any more

Please see:

http://www.promountainsports.com/blog/2010/08/10/tent-cooking-recommendations/

Examine also the nearly endless similar advice elsewhere.

Many older amateurs, understandably, may hew to the outdated material they read years ago. They may encounter false confirmation of outdated prejudices while staying in very large base-camp circumstances arranged by professional guides and/or travel companies preparing food for relatively large number of clients.

Much more relevant is current forecast for 04/22/12 for Allegeny Mountains of N.W. Pennsylvania: 15 inches of snow and low temperatures of about 30 degrees.

God bless the backpackers out there this Saturday night, and let's hope they've all got canister stoves for their tents!

Yeah I camped at -20F., ONCE, about thirty years ago; fortunately I didn't bring my old French stove.

The old Primus certainly worked poorly enough. I was only able to light it by begging matches (which I'd depleted from smoking tobacco) off a post-sundown caravan of snowmobilers!

MSR-type canisters have given me no real problems on a couple of dozen weekends around zero in more recent years.

If ya'll remind me next winter I can do a study.

I have a white gas stove and a international stove - maybe someone can lend me a canister stove and I'll buy the canisters.

It regularly gets to -30F here... I don't know anyone here, mountain climber or otherwise who camps with a canister stove in winter - but I mostly know dog mushers. I'm willing to give the ol' research try, though.

We do try to keep a... pleasant positive tone in these forums, which I know I appreciate (not to any one individual.)

Steve House, Colin Haley, Jim Nelson; all very high-profile, extremely accomplished winter climbers who, as is typical among their rarefied peers, use canisters.

If others here believe they have better information or technique or style than these guys, then so be it.

Thanks for valuable insight!

It seems to me the "missing link" between the two sides of this argument is Sandia is talking about hikers who are using their stove at elevation. It is well known that canister stoves become usable to lower temperatures at higher elevation.

Sandia is your position that using a canister stove is no longer an issue in the winter or is it that it is no longer an issue for the hikers you know at the temperatures they hike in?

Honestly, most of my benzine/gasoline/petro stove use in zeroish temps was with an old primus, without pump. This was very slightly problematic and, I find, vaguely comparable to my experience using modern canister stoves in similar conditions.

The ONLY time I've used a stove at a particularly high altitude was at 15,000 feet, when I nearly burned down the rat-infested hut on solo trip to Orizaba in brief and minor mishap with an MSR gasoline stove. The hut temperature was perhaps around freezing mark

I can say that otherwise, stove worked great, although in retrospect a Trangia alcohol stove would have been a far better choice for several reasons I won't go into.

The pumps perfected by MSR 20-30 years ago, obviously overcome most of these problems in low temperatures. Except that extra fiddling with gasoline stove with bare hands in extreme cold remains very painful.


Larger difficulty is that priming and using benzine stove inside a very cramped tent while avoiding total catastrophe, requires, in the best of circumstances, a finely tuned finesse that becomes increasingly hard and unpleasant as conditions deteriorate.

The choice is practical. Cooking outside is impossible and operating a gasoline stove in very cramped tent is without appeal given available modern alternative.

(Oddly though, I recall photo from 1964 Nat'l Geographic of Robert F. Kennedy in snow cave with Jim Whittaker in Canadian coastal range, with several French canister stoves firing away, probably in mild conditions near sea level.)

Correct me if I am wrong, but I recall a 1981 N. Geo photo of Messner melting snow on canister stove in account of solo Everest climb.