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I'm looking for a good backpacking group stove(s) for a group of 4 people for a 20 day trip. Typically it'll be used at around 8k feet and in temps down in the high 20's and it's only purpose will be to boil water.

I was thinking perhaps two stoves might be better but it would be nice to be able to just use one. If it could boil 2L of water at one time then one stove would work easy I'd think.

Right now I'm looking at the MSR Reactor stove with the 2.5L pot. MSR says the weight with that setup is 20.6oz.

Thoughts or suggestions?

For a 20 day trip, I'd be looking at a white gas stove rather than a canister. That is unless you will have wood to burn, then something like a custom size one of these would be my choice:

Ed, Why white gas over a canister stove? A lot of the canister stove perform pretty well down to around 20 deg don't they?

We thought of using a wood burning stove but the extra time and hassle isn't something we want to deal with. As far as weight goes it would be lighter for sure though.

Nuke,

Effecienty of canister stoves is fine, especially at those temps (some of the regulated stoves will easilly go much lower,) but for a trip of that duration you will be carrying a lot of weight of canisters and especially empty canisters. A white gas stove would be more effecient weight wise.

As far as the wood burners go, the cone stove in the picture will boil 28 oz in about 7 minutes at a total stove weight of 4 ounces. You really wouldn't need a lot of wood to boil 4 liters. I'd look at using one of the Open Country 4 liter pots for that size group. Four liters should give you enough for meals, drinks and clean-up in a single boil.

+1

For a long duration trip, white gas stoves are the way to go. I agree with Ed_T when he says that you would be carrying a bunch of empty canisters if you used a canister stove.

I respectfully disagree with Ed_T regarding wood burning stoves. I am not an advocate of wood burning stoves. I know some people still use them, but there are a lot of draw backs associated with them; soot on your pots, dealing with smoke, impact on the environment, gathering firewood, constantly attending to a fire made of small twigs to keep it going. If you use a wood burner inside your tent you have to give up some room inside the tent. You can avoid all of those disadvantages with a white gas stove.

The MSR Whisperlite is probably the 30-06 of white gas stoves.
http://cascadedesigns.com/MSR/Stoves/Fast-And-Light-Stoves/WhisperLite/product

You know on a 20 day trip with four people, you're gonna want to have two stoves. You can prepare dinner twice as fast with two stoves vs one stove and you will want to have a backup in case one stove craps out on you.

KC

I'd say there is as much impact on the environment with white gas as with wood.

With wood you don't need a back up and your stuff won't smell of gas.

The white gas would be my choice only if wood were not available.

The time it takes to gather enough wood to fire a cone stove is next to nothing.

I agree with Ed on the environmental inpack. I'm going to run some numbers and see what the weight cost is between the stoves based on my usage estimates. I completely left the liquid stoves off my list from the get go. That's why I ask questions here.

As for the WhisperLite, they are updating it for next year so it'll have fuel specific jets and will also take IsoPro (upright or inverted) with an adapter. They call it the MSR WhisperLite Universal Stove.

Ed, I ran some numbers based on the efficency numbers quoted on MSRs page (liters boiled per oz of fuel) and based on that the Reactor is the lighter option over the WhisperLite. I assumed I would need to boil 170L total during the trip which is about 4L for breakfast and lunch plus a little extra for cleanup.

The biggest asset is it will boil 2.8L/oz instead of 1.5 and the WL can't recover that in the bottle weight.

I realize those numbers will change with temp and alt but the weight difference I calculated was 2 lbs 11 oz. That seems like a lot to makeup.

Thoughts?

Nuke,

I guess thats why some of the local guys I know used Reactor's on Aconcagua last year. Surprises me but canister stoves have made huge strides lately.

You might want to re-run the numbers with an XGK vs the Reactor, but I'm guessing the Reactor will still come out on top.

Ed, I used the numbers for the WL jetted specifically for white gas and those are the same values MSR gives for the XGK. So on paper the results would be the same.

I see the limitations of this type of analysis but it's really all I have to go on.

Boiling that much volume I'd seriously consider a heat exchanger if you go with white gas--it'd easily pay for its 6 oz. Cascade Designs says up to 25% efficiency increase though I'd err toward 15-20% if you run the numbers. If you've got the time you could make your own. With an exchanger it's a closer race though I bet it still goes to the Reactor.

Good Idea SnowyMountaineer. I was looking at that last night but never thought to run the numbers. Adding 25% to the efficiency brings them a bit closer but it still leaves a 1 lb 10 oz difference.

That's close to what I came up with too--have you added up the dead canister weights yet? If I was home I'd weigh one and do it myself.

This is pretty interesting. Thanks for sharing the numbers.

Maybe it has been suggested already but if 4 guys are going on a backpack hunting trip in the mountains for 20 days someone should be carrying a Kifaru or ti goat stove and tent combo. Can boil water some of the time and dry clothes/boots and "recharge" the mind and body with a little heat.

The dead canisters numbers I have are 7.55oz for a 16oz Primus fuel can and 4.65 for an 8 oz MSR can or 9.3 oz/16oz of fuel to show the difference. That's based off a small sample size so take that into consideration. I probably need to get better numbers on those.

Anyway, the numbers I ran say I'd need 3.8lbs of canned fuel so that means rounding up to four full 16 oz cans. So the dead canister weight would be about 30.2oz when using all 16oz cans or 37.2oz using 8 oz cans. I bet you loose some efficency using the larger cans also but the extra .2 lbs of fuel might make up for that?

For the white gas stove I get 113 oz of fuel needed so I assumed 4x30oz fuel cans to get 29.2oz of dead can weight. That's better then using 20 oz cans. You could also put exactly the amount of fuel you needed in there instead of having to take a full can so that a plus.

Using the heat exchanger and assuming the best case 25% increase I get that I'd need 90 oz of fuel. That widens the gap more becuase it drops a whole can so you'd have 22 oz of empty cans at the end.

Comparing best cases of each you'd get about an 8 oz difference. In my previous post I had a smaller liquid fuel canister in the mix that wasn't needed when I gave the 1 lb 10 oz initial weight difference so it should've read 1 lb 8 oz. So with the canister gas you'd save 1.5 lbs up front or you could save 1/2 lb at the end with the liquid stove. I'd probably want to save the weight up front when I have a pack full of food.

I got the Reactor stove with the 2.5L pot a few days back so I decided to test it out. I had a half empty 8oz fuel can so I hooked it up and ran the stove for about 8 minutes to cook off any oil and to just make sure everything worked well. I let it sit for about an hour and loaded it up with 2L of iced water. It came to a heavy boil in 5 min 34 seconds. The outside temp was close to 80 and we're at about 300 feet above sea level but that's still pretty impressive I think.

+1, I'd go with two Bushbuddies. Unless you are going to be above timberline gathering wood is a non-issue. You just "harvest" it in the afternoon as you walk. A Bushbuddy will boil a pint with literally a handful of twigs.