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You are here: Home / Skills & Techniques / Tips & Tricks / Can I Cook in my Tent?

Can I Cook in my Tent?

by Roger Caffin on November 11, 2014 Tips & Tricks

Introduction

 - 1
Pouring with rain outside, warm and dry inside, and dinner being served.

A recurrent question on many internet chat groups (including BPL) is “Can I cook in my tent?” Such a question always gets a horde of replies that to do so risks death and disaster, and the tent police. Worse, many comments add that you are forbidden to do so by stove manufacturers. Well, I will invoke Caffin’s Law here: “There is no limit to the stupidity available on the Internet”. What follows is very definitely my own personal biased opinion.

The sources of all these warnings can be divided into three categories: ignorance, stupidity, and company lawyers. Let us deal with the company lawyers first. Their concern is solely to protect their companies from liability claims from customers (it’s called CYA); they have zero concern for the survival of the customers. That is understandable – especially considering how some customers are able to misuse gear to an extreme. In many cases one can only sigh and mutter “Darwin Award”. (That’s a well-known “award” given to people who contribute the most to the evolution of humanity by removing their genes from the gene pool. There is even a web site for it.)

The second category is stupidity. Many people, lacking any decent knowledge of how a stove works, simply parrot what they have heard from other equally ignorant or stupid people. They don’t bother to check their “facts” or their “knowledge”, and apparently don’t want to think. (“Most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so” – Bertrand Russell) I despair of dealing with stupidity, so we will pass on from here as well.

The third category is ignorance. Here we have some hope of improvement, by taking a decent look at what is involved, and making this (technical) information available to those who would like to know more. That’s what this article is about. And no, the answers are not simple. It all depends…

What are the Hazards?

It is undeniable that there are hazards – but let us look at them objectively. We could even try comparing them against the hazards of being killed while driving a car, or being killed by someone with a firearm, or being injured or killed by industrial pollution. Statistically, using a stove is much safer! Anyhow, the hazards with stoves fall in three main areas: getting burnt, losing gear (which might be vital to survival), and poisoning from the fumes. The last includes the obvious hazard of carbon monoxide (CO), but some fuels can also give off toxic fumes.

 - 2
A blow torch inside the house? Shock horror, we will all die!

While talking about hazards, let’s have a reality check. Some stove companies ‘ban’ the use of your stove inside any enclosed space, such as a tent or building. See for example the Danger section in the MSR User manual for the XGK-EX. I wonder how those lawyers handle the fact that (say) half of the houses in America are equipped with … gas stoves in their kitchens? Places like Home Depot sell a vast range of kerosene heaters for indoor use. Chefs in restaurants use canister-powered blow-torches to make crème brûlée. Oh Dearie Me – we are all going to die! (Which is true, but that’s another matter.)

But yes, there are some hazards, despite the ridicule. So get to know what those hazards are and how to deal with them. Basically, you need to be careful with the fuel, the flames, and the combustion products. But we do that every day at home.

Many of the hazards can be dealt with by being careful, using some common sense, and by having adequate ventilation. A family died in their family camping tent one night when they left their charcoal BBQ running inside their tent overnight – which they had sealed up to keep the warmth in. CO poisoning all around. Unfortunate, but lacking any common sense. In an incredible experiment, some “researchers” put some volunteers inside a sealed tent in the snow with a running stove, and measured how long it took for the volunteers to go unconscious from CO build-up. The ethics of that one leaves me boggled.

 - 3
Fine and sunny, or howling bad weather? Only 12 hours apart.

What the lawyers and pseudo-experts ignore in all of this are the hazards from banning the use of a stove inside the tent. If it is a fine quiet sunny afternoon at 200 m altitude, there are no problems to cooking outside. The same might apply at 2,000 m in the snow at 2 pm in bright sunshine: it’s quite nice outside. OK. But what if you are at 2,000 m in the snow at 7 pm and there is a 100 kph snow storm howling past outside the tent? What are your chances of ever getting the stove alight outside, let alone getting some hot food? Worse still, suppose you are at 6,000 m on a narrow ridge in the Himalayas in the evening? Without a stove, you can’t even get any water to drink, and you are definitely dehydrated. I asked staff at a major USA gear manufacturer about this, and they refused to answer the question. They just repeated what their lawyers had told them to say.

 - 4
Never mind the wind: you must cook outside…or so they tell me.

The above does not cover the risks to the cook of sitting outside in pouring rain, howling snowstorm or -15 C temperatures. You might freeze to death before you have made dinner! Unfortunately you can’t see the horizontal snow in the left hand picture – it is just visible in the full-sized original. In the right hand picture my poncho was flapping like mad: it was a posed photo for amusement during some bad weather. Contrast this with being inside a good tent in warm dry clothing on a nice airmat, watching dinner happen (see the first photo). No argument!

So let’s look at the different sorts of stoves or cooking arrangements we might consider using in a tent in some detail. Many of them are in fact quite unsuitable.

Wood Fires of all sorts

The hazard with wood fires is that they are somewhat uncontrolled. They can, and do, shoot sparks into the air above the stove, and they can make lots of eye-stinging smoke. Yes, I am including both open fires and “tin can wood stoves” here. Without any further ado, I suggest you do not use any wood fires near a tent – inside or outside.

Solid Fuel

 - 5
Think you will ever get any hot water from these in a storm?

There are several forms of solid fuel available, in the hexamine and candle wax classes. They can make a fair bit of smoke at times, and they certainly can give off toxic fumes under many conditions. The fumes are often due to incomplete combustion, so that intermediate combustion by-products are released. Small candles may be “safe”, but have you ever tried boiling water over one? Can you image even getting hot water from such a flame (let alone melting much snow) when outside in bad weather?

If you must use such fuels in bad weather, you may be in for a long wait for food or water even if you are inside a tent, and you will need to have a lot of ventilation. Personally, I would try very hard to avoid being in this situation.

Alcohol

Methyl alcohol is basically toxic to humans, so unburnt vapors won’t do you any good. Propyl alcohol gives off toxic by-products at times which won’t do you any good either. Used outside in an ‘alky’ stove, you can usually stay upwind and get away with it fairly safely. Ethyl alcohol is what you find in wine and spirits, and is (relatively) safe for humans – although drinking an excess can kill.

The problem with ethyl alcohol is that one cannot normally buy pure ethyl alcohol: one buys something vaguely called “methylated spirits” or other terms such as HEET [actually methyl alcohol]. The name [‘metho’] means that other substances have been added to the ethyl alcohol to make it undrinkable, thereby avoiding the revenuers. Unfortunately, there are no regulations in America covering just what can be added – and some very toxic chemicals have been and still are used by some companies. The vendors have not allowed for the use of the alcohol as a fuel, so breathing the fumes in can be dangerous. (In Australia regulations very severely limit what can be added, so that all methylated spirits is safe for burning.)

 - 6
Invisible flames on alcohol stoves – except where dangerous.

Apart from the fumes, there are some other hazards with alcohol stoves. The flame can be almost invisible, meaning you may or may not know when the stove is still burning. There are horrible stories of people trying to refill an alky before the flames went out completely. The left and middle photos here both have lit stoves in them: can you see the flames? (Sketti, by MiniBull Designs and White Box by White Box)

The fuel is easy to spill but hard to see, and will catch alight fairly easily. Spilt fuel is a fairly well-known risk with alky stoves in fact. You may find your stove sitting in a spreading ring of fire if you are not careful. For obvious reasons the stove in the right hand photo was not alight: I am not (too) stupid. One might say that spilt fuel could be the most dangerous aspect of alky stoves when used in a tent – or on a wood bench in a hut – to both you and to your gear.

Yes, you can use an alky inside your tent – but there are risks and you need to be aware of them. Given the slow rate of heating from most alky stoves, you may have to wait a bit for your dinner, and use a good windshield. But, it is possible.

White Gas

 - 7
Old white gas stoves: Handy Camper, Optimus 8R, and MSR Whisperlite.

This is an old favorite – and I do mean old. There is a myth that white gas stoves are more powerful than canister stoves, but this myth derives from comparisons against the old “Bleuet” canister stove. For very good technical reasons to do with the large amount of oxygen needed for complete combustion, white gas stoves are now generally lower in power than modern screw-thread canister stoves. However, white gas stoves have been very popular for decades, the fuel is quite cheap, and they still have a loyal following despite their high weight and high cost – and their hassles. (Sorry, I don’t have a good photo of a Svea.)

 - 8
MSR XGK being primed, photo by Kevin Babione.

The problems or hazards with white gas stoves include priming, CO emission, fuel weight and controllability (or lack of). The latter two are not relevant here, but priming is. Typically, users prime their white gas stoves using the MSR “fireball” technique. That is, you slosh fuel around the stove and light it, creating a small to large fireball engulfing the stove for a while. To quote the MSR instructions for their XGK stove: “A brief soccer ball size flame is normal”. Priming fireballs are not the only hazard with white gas: if the stove splutters at all you can also have a column of flame above your stove, as shown here. It is not hard for that to reach to the tent fabric above. You do not want that inside your tent! And, of course, some stoves generate a lot of CO, but to me that seems a smaller hazard than flames.

Many years ago a pair of climbers in the Himalayas found this out the hard way. They had trouble with wet matches, and did not realize how much white gas they had spilt. When they did get a flame the spilt fuel went “whoomp”, and all they had left were the tent poles. Sorry – I can no longer find the source for this story.

 - 9
A melted tent from an exploding white gas stove (photo author name withheld).

A further hazard with white gas stoves comes with the use of very large pots. The sheer size of the overhead reflector can mean that too much heat can be reflected down on the pressurized fuel tank. The pressure in the tank can rise to alarming heights. The photo here shows a melted tent after an “incident”. There were two MSR white gas stoves (Whisperlites from memory) running side by side, both with large pots, but well outside the tent. The fuel tanks overheated and exploded, and burning fuel splashed the tent from the outside. Two people nearby suffered severe burns as well, requiring urgent air evac and quite extensive plastic surgery.

If you wish to use a white gas stove in your tent, can I suggest that you first prime it just outside the tent? Stay inside yourself and just stick the stove outside, in the lee of the vestibule. Then bring the stove into the vestibule region, but maybe not too far in. Try to arrange it that there is no tent fabric above the stove. Then use a windshield around the stove to keep the flame under control – out of direct wind. That way you will also have enough ventilation that CO emission should not be a problem. And do not use a pot more than about 1.5 L.

Kerosene

 - 10
My Coleman Peak Apex II much used kero stove, showing signs of several rebuilds.

Ah, kerosene – the original fuel for ‘portable’ stoves, aka Primus. I used it for many years, first with an MSR Whisperlite, then with a Coleman Peak Apex II, even though it stank. Why use kero? Because it does not go ”whoomp” the way white gas does, and in the early days the screw-thread canister was not yet available. In fact, a common fire brigade demo was (and still is) to pour kero (or diesel) into a metal dish and to throw a lit match onto it. The match goes out. Then they do it with petrol or gasoline – from a distance. But my wife who was normally up the back of the tent severely disliked the whole kero stove thing because of the smell which bottled up at the back of the tent.

Kerosene and so some extent white gas, or petrol car fuel, have the advantage that you can often buy them in strange places like Nepal or the middle of Africa. And you can often arrange to buy a few jerry cans of the stuff too. Trekking in Nepal often sees one unlucky porter carrying the kero drum. It usually leaks – on his clothing.

 - 11
An early MSR G/K stove: the ‘K’ means it also burns kero.

As a historical side note, the 1979 instructions (in another image I have) for the MSR G/K stove, a predecessor of the XGK, say rather more realistically: “We do recommend against cooking in a tent. But when you have no other choice, use kerosene in a model G/K stove for relative safety because kerosene is far less volatile than gasoline.” That was before the lawyers took over.

The problems with kero are similar to those with white gas: priming is harder, CO emission can be significant, and so on. I was able to prime my kero stoves without fireballs by using a very small amount of methylated spirits as a priming fuel – as suggested in the above photo. It took practice, but I was sufficiently confident after a year or two that I could light my kero stove sort-of inside the vestibule of my tent. But starting the stove safely always took full concentration – which can be difficult if you are really tired.

Personally, I think kero stoves are even more dinosaur than white gas stoves, but if you learn to prime them properly with the right method you can use them in an open tent vestibule. Make sure you have plenty of ventilation – to get oxygen in and CO away. You just have to put up with the smell.

Canister Fuel – Propane and Butane

 - 12
Greg Child’s tent after the Bleuet accident on Shivling, photo author unknown.

No, I am not going to proclaim that canister stoves are perfectly safe when used inside a tent. You have fuel and a flame, and if you screw up things will go “whoomp”. In this case the climbers were using the old Bleuet canisters. My guess is that in the cold the butane would not come out of the first can, so one climber disconnected the can and attached a new one. Then he lit it. But the discarded can still had gas in it, plus a large hole, and it was venting. Despite the tent being opened to let the gas out, it had filled with butane vapor which predictably went “whoomp”. It is interesting to note however that the tent melted: it did not burn.

Let’s deal with the old Bleuet can first. I strongly recommend you do not use this can or the stove any more. There have been so many accidents with the “seal” that there are now official moves in Europe towards disqualifying the design. To put it bluntly, the Marseilles Regional Trauma Burn Centre is fed up with the number of cases they (and other burn centers) get from this system. The number of accidents is just too high – when they could be replaced with the far safer canister with a Lindal safety valve. I have to agree, after having one of the Bleuet stoves leak inside my pack.

 - 13
Basic hydrocarbon chain – butane in this case (green = carbon, red = hydrogen, thin rods are bonds).

Kerosene, white gas, propane and butane are all long-chain hydrocarbons with similar burning characteristics. However, propane and butane are far more volatile than white gas or kerosene, so they can vaporize at normal ambient temperatures. This means that under non-winter conditions upright canister stoves do not need priming. You screw the stove onto the canister, sit the lot upright, and gently open the valve while holding a flame next to the burner. It is perfectly possible to light up an upright canister stove inside your tent to have a flame no more than 10 mm high. No “whoomps”, no meter-high flames, just a small highly controllable little flame.

 - 14
A base plate (e.g. 3 ply) makes a stove so much more stable.

Now, let me hasten to add here, that if you are clumsy and tip your stove (plus pot) over, there will be trouble. A flare-up is most likely, and you will lose your dinner too. If you do this right inside your tent, on the groundsheet, you will have wet gear and a hole in the groundsheet. A nice hard base plate is considered by many to be essential for stability: I use a small square of light 3-ply.

In winter things are a bit more complicated, as it is likely you will be using a remote canister stove with a liquid feed. These do take a tiny bit of priming to get the stove hot enough (like >10 C) so the liquid fuel will vaporize. Yes, +10 C is quite enough: a far cry from the red heat needed for white gas and kero stoves. Users of the Coleman Xtreme stove as shown above (or my winter stove) often don’t really bother with a full priming cycle: they just start with the valve turned really low. So just a little more care is required – that’s all.

 - 15
Cooking INSIDE, from When Things Go Wrong: you really did not want to be outside!

What about field experience? Well, in my experience, most of the hoorah comes from people who do not know much about canister stoves – or maybe bad weather. Experienced winter campers, snow-shoers and XC ski tourers just retire to their tents and cook dinner, ignoring all the waffle. In the photo here the wind outside was clocking around 100 kph: even standing up was tricky. If this stamps all over your biases, my apologies about your hurt feelings, but I see no need to change what I have said. I have far too many years of safely cooking in my tent. But of course you may do as you wish.

But what about Fine Weather?

Well, OK you might say, but that does not mean you should cook in your tent in fine weather when so many vendors warn against doing so. Sigh – we have been through the vendor thing already. Strictly CYA.

But let us look a little more closely at the rest of the idea here. Maybe it is safer to cook inside your tent when the weather is really (really) bad, but not otherwise? That is a bit of an odd idea: isn’t that just when you are most at risk and when you are most stressed? Wouldn’t you be even safer when you are relaxed and not highly stressed? Ah, too many people just follow the mob. Find me some hard published statistics if you want to convince me.

 - 16
Cooking outside in fine weather.

Oh, OK, sometimes it is fine to sit and cook outside. Yes, I did have a windscreen around the stove here, but I removed it for the photo. It was a nice day, and it was lunch time.

Tent Fabric

Since one major aspect of the problem is the tent rather than the stove, a few words are in order about the flammability of the fabric. Yes, I have photos of some melted tents above. But notice that in most cases the tent melted in places but did not burn down. That is because most tent fabrics, when arranged as a tent, won’t support continued combustion. Look at the tents in the photos to see. My experiences with silnylon – like performing burn tests according to the Standards, indicate that silnylon at least can barely support a flame without having a candle underneath it. Of course, if it is pouring rain or a howling snow storm outside, the fabric is even less likely to melt.

It is an interesting exercise to search for “melted tent” on Google. None of the picture hits or text hits actually showed a melted tent. But then finding real hits among the Google guano can be difficult. There was one mention of a fire in a tent – but it was clear that the fire was driven by other materials.

Some States in America require that any tent be constructed out of fabric which has been treated with a flame retardant. I have several problems with this. First, the chemicals used are highly toxic to humans. That is well documented. Second the single bit of research done on the retardants has been grossly misused by the manufacturers of the retardant, to the extent that the researcher involved has disavowed the whole matter. Third, the level of retardant commonly used on commercial fabric is but a small fraction of the level which had to be used in the research to get an effect. Finally, the whole thing was driven right from the start by two groups. The first were the manufacturers of the chemicals, who stood to make huge profits. The second was Big Tobacco, who were seeking to divert attention away from the idea of a “fire-safe cigarette” which could be safely dropped on a fabric lounge cover without starting a fire. The whole thing has been well documented by The Chicago Tribune, amongst others. There has been no independent research to justify the use of flame retardants in the real world: it has all been political posturing with pictures of little girls in flannel pajamas in front of open fires and straight out fraudulent testimony. (And yes, I have references for all of this.)

Bottom line here: you may melt a hole in your tent with an ember from a fire or splashes of burning liquid fuel, but you are very unlikely to burn it down with a small carefully managed canister stove.


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  • Nov 11, 2014 at 11:42 am #1322619
    Stephanie Jordan
    Spectator

    @maia

    Locale: Rocky Mountains

    Companion forum thread to:

    Can I Cook in my Tent?

    Nov 11, 2014 at 12:11 pm #2148373
    Ralph Burgess
    BPL Member

    @ralphbge

    Is this related to
    "Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after the operation?"

    Nov 11, 2014 at 12:42 pm #2148386
    Roger Caffin
    Moderator

    @rcaffin

    Locale: Wollemi & Kosciusko NPs, Europe

    > Is this related to
    > "Doctor, will I be able to play the piano after the operation?"
    I have no idea.

    Cheers

    Nov 11, 2014 at 6:20 pm #2148490
    Nick Gatel
    BPL Member

    @ngatel

    Locale: Southern California

    Thanks, Roger. I enjoyed this one.

    Nov 11, 2014 at 8:39 pm #2148542
    Luke Schmidt
    BPL Member

    @cameron

    Locale: Alaska

    Very nice Roger, I enjoyed it. I never cooked in my tent or under my tarp for a completely different reason. Any shelter I use could end up being the shelter I take to grizzly country. I know the odds are in my favor with bears but I do sleep better at night knowing the dominant smell in my tent is hiker funk not meatballs and spaghetti!

    Of course we could do an experiment… Roger could give 25 BPL members a free sample of his tent. The only catch is they have to take it too Alaska and cook inside it for a week. Whoever survives the bears could keep his/her tent. Roger could monitor from a safe distance and record the results for an awesome article on stoves, tents and bear safety. Wait maybe the lawyers might have something to say about that.

    In all seriousness though glad to know I could safely cook in a tent if I wanted too.

    Nov 11, 2014 at 9:08 pm #2148549
    Robert Blean
    BPL Member

    @blean

    Locale: San Jose -- too far from Sierras

    Good article, Roger, and I agree.

    I used to do a lot of eastern winter mountaineering and it never occurred to us to cook anywhere other than in out tents. Typically, by the time we got tents pitched for the night, it was dark or at least close — daylight hours were for traveling. We saw no point in being outside, inactive, while cooking in the snow with the temperatures usually -10F to -20F, and often substantial wind. Seemed a lot better to get into our warm sleeping bags and then cook from there. I get bemused by reading about the elaborate snow kitchens some seem to think important these days.

    We were more worried about steam from the cooking making things damp than we were about any stove hazards. We commonly used Primus 71L stoves (Svea 123 was OK, but too small a fuel tank, and Optimus 111B was too heavy) and then MSR stoves as they became available. We used 2 quart pots (cooking for 4), and melted a lot of snow as well as cooking food. I never saw any priming artifact that was large enough to be a concern — we were just careful to use minimal priming fluid (crack the stove to get a small amount of gas, close the valve, and light the *small* amount of gas we had just let out.

    Warm weather was a different story — more daylight and more pleasant outside conditions. We generally cooked outside (unless it was raining), not because if any safety concerns, but because it was more pleasant.

    –MV

    Nov 11, 2014 at 10:29 pm #2148558
    Billy Ray
    Spectator

    @rosyfinch

    Locale: the mountains

    I never cook in my tent.

    Even though you may not burn to death in your tent, it will surely ruin your day (or entire trip) if you melt you tent.

    Also… there is the smell. Don't want my gear to smell like food. Or attract bears.

    If the weather is too bad to cook, I just eat something cold.

    Billy

    Nov 12, 2014 at 12:37 am #2148566
    Roger Caffin
    Moderator

    @rcaffin

    Locale: Wollemi & Kosciusko NPs, Europe

    Hi Billy

    > it will surely ruin your day (or entire trip) if you melt you tent.
    True, true … IF!
    Given how many meals I and others have cooked in our tents, the statistics seem to be on our side.

    > Also… there is the smell. Don't want my gear to smell like food. Or attract bears.
    Ah, there you have me. We have Koala Bears and Drop Bears, but no black bears or grizzly bears. A few grizzly walkers sometimes, but they don't count.
    I will add that our silnylon tents do not smell as a result of cooking anyhow.

    >If the weather is too bad to cook, I just eat something cold.
    Hehehe
    Try doing that for four nights in a row at 0 F in the snow at 3,000 m – bearing in mind that you won't have any drinking water all this time. Could be a problem there somehow.

    Cheers

    Nov 12, 2014 at 1:40 am #2148571
    Robert Blean
    BPL Member

    @blean

    Locale: San Jose -- too far from Sierras

    It seems to me that the bears question is seasonal. Not so much problem with bears in the mountains in the winter, so I do not worry about cooking in the tent. I guess I have been assuming that any cooking odors are long gone by next summer — during the summer I'd just as soon cook somewhere other than anywhere in my campsite, let alone the tent.

    Eating cold food — I doubt that is practical with winter food. I'm not much into uncooked oatmeal flakes, pasta or rice. And Roger's point is critical — in the situations I have talked about there is no such thing as liquid water. I question the practicality of eating enough snow to supply your liquid needs for several days. OTOH as long as your only concern is the bears I guess you'd be willing to melt snow — I cannot imagine that attracting bears.

    –MV

    Nov 12, 2014 at 5:54 am #2148582
    Ken Thompson
    BPL Member

    @here

    Locale: Right there

    I've always cooked in a tent. There's an issue?

    Nov 12, 2014 at 7:27 am #2148596
    Bob Bankhead
    BPL Member

    @wandering_bob

    Locale: Oregon, USA

    Every human is born with a brain. Unfortunately, common sense and experience have to be acquired later.

    Proper use of all three greatly improves (but does not guarantee) your odds of survival.

    Nov 12, 2014 at 8:12 am #2148603
    David Ure
    Member

    @familyguy

    I have never cooked in a tent but I backpack in black bear and grizzly territory. I always cook at least 75 meters from where I sleep. Yes, a small cooking tarp comes in handy.

    Nov 12, 2014 at 9:32 am #2148627
    Bob .
    BPL Member

    @bcbob

    Locale: Vancouver Island

    "….I will add that our silnylon tents do not smell as a result of cooking anyhow…."

    That suggests I can keep my food in my tent. I carry it in a 5L dry bag. It doesn't smell of food either….. to me.

    Of course a bear can smell it just fine. I would never cook in a tent. The tent and everything in it would carry a food smell for far longer than I'm aware of it.

    Nov 12, 2014 at 10:45 am #2148652
    John
    BPL Member

    @johnnyh88

    Locale: The SouthWest

    Cooking for me involves boiling water and then pouring the boiling water in a bag to rehydrate my dinner. Eating involves removing the food from the bag with a spoon and then into my mouth. I cannot imagine this imparts much "food smell" to my tent. Especially since the conditions that warrant cooking in a tent (rain, wind, rough weather) will probably blow away a majority of the smell.

    My clothes probably already have a slight food smell to them from the odor from cooking. And my whole pack probably has a slight food smell to it from carrying food in it and in my hipbelt pockets.

    I will agree that with bears it is best to cook away from your tent when possible. And that a cooking tarp is great (I bring one group trips). But I think people may underestimate how much food smell is already on them and their gear. I think hanging your food away from your tent is the most important thing.

    Nov 12, 2014 at 11:07 am #2148656
    Mike Cecot-Scherer
    BPL Member

    @mikescherer

    Thanks Roger, absolutely spot on.

    Thank you so much for saying what those of us in the industry cannot – correction – dare not say.

    As an addendum, Here's an intersting link regarding the fire retardancy chemicals used by the vast majority of manufacturers in the US:
    http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/tent-camping-america-one-big-toxic-experience?src=newsletter1014909&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

    -Mike

    Nov 12, 2014 at 11:56 am #2148673
    Mitchell Ebbott
    Spectator

    @mebbott-2

    Locale: SoCal

    Not the most irenic introduction, but good article nonetheless.

    Nov 12, 2014 at 12:07 pm #2148675
    Billy Ray
    Spectator

    @rosyfinch

    Locale: the mountains

    >If the weather is too bad to cook, I just eat something cold.
    Hehehe
    Try doing that for four nights in a row at 0 F in the snow at 3,000 m – bearing in mind that you won't have any drinking water all this time. Could be a problem there somehow."

    WEll.. I did manage a 3 week climb of Mt McKinley though storms without cooking once inside my tent. We hit -40F on that climb :)

    Regarding your claim that your silnylon does not smell from cooking… well smell is a funny thing… some people's sense of smell is better than others… and bears can smell lots of things that you can't. If you're in bear country, best to cook away from your tent… and certainly NOT in it.

    billy

    Nov 12, 2014 at 1:55 pm #2148696
    Roger Caffin
    Moderator

    @rcaffin

    Locale: Wollemi & Kosciusko NPs, Europe

    Hi Mike

    Thanks. And the alternet URL was very good.

    The only things worse than corrupt businessmen are corrupt politicians and corrupt preachers.

    Cheers

    Nov 12, 2014 at 2:32 pm #2148709
    Theron Rohr
    BPL Member

    @theronr

    Locale: Los Angeles, California

    I'm going to go out on a limb and call bogus on the bear issue. I hate it when concern about food smells is used as a reason to shut down a discussion because a lot of people don't camp near bears and can't respond to the argument. (For the record I camp in California and they do have black bears – I know, not Grizzlies but I still get to participate in the discussion :)

    Yes we all know that you shouldn't store food in your tent and that bears have an amazing sense of smell. But if you think about it part of their amazing sense of smell is to be able to tell the difference between a tent that has a pot of spaghetti sauce in it and one that used to have a pot of spaghetti sauce in it earlier or last week. If a bear is crossing a mile of territory just to investigate a tent that had a pot of spaghetti in it last week then that bear just wasted a lot of energy for no payoff. I call bogus.

    Nov 12, 2014 at 2:40 pm #2148711
    Bob Gross
    BPL Member

    @b-g-2-2

    Locale: Silicon Valley

    "corrupt politicians"

    I think that you are repeating yourself.

    –B.G.–

    Nov 12, 2014 at 3:39 pm #2148731
    Billy Ray
    Spectator

    @rosyfinch

    Locale: the mountains

    Here's the visitor you risk if you cook in your tent in bear country:

    https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=bear+candy+bar+tent&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz35

    not good.

    billy

    Nov 12, 2014 at 3:54 pm #2148734
    Hikin’ Jim
    BPL Member

    @hikin_jim

    Locale: Orange County, CA, USA

    Excellent article.

    I do note that the article seems to be implying that HEET contains ethyl alcohol.

    The problem with ethyl alcohol is that one cannot normally buy pure ethyl alcohol: one buys something vaguely called “methylated spirits” or other terms such as HEET.

    HEET, unless the formulation has radically changed recently, is 99% methyl alcohol. See MSDS for HEET. Perhaps a clarification is in order?

    To quote the MSR instructions for their XGK stove: “A brief soccer ball size flame is normal”.

    Well, yes, but with a bit of finesse, one can get that priming flame much smaller, particularly on stoves that have an at-the-burner valve like the Dragonfly, Nova, and Omnifuel. Better still is to use alcohol for priming as you alluded to in your article. Not that I'm advocating the use of white gas stove in a tent!

    “We do recommend against cooking in a tent. But when you have no other choice, use kerosene in a model G/K stove for relative safety because kerosene is far less volatile than gasoline.”

    My old XGK's instructions say exactly that, but someone has lined them out with a marker. It looks like someone ordered the instructions modified until new instructions could be printed. Larry Penberthy, the founder of MSR, was himself a climber. I believe (but don't know for sure) that the instructions remained as quoted above until the company was sold and Penberthy was no longer in charge. My memory says the sale occurred in the early 1980's. The sale was to REI. Cascade Designs currently owns MSR.

    HJ
    Adventures In Stoving
    Hikin' Jim's Blog

    Nov 12, 2014 at 3:56 pm #2148736
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    "The only things worse than corrupt businessmen are corrupt politicians and corrupt preachers."

    In the final analysis, they're all businessmen.

    Nov 12, 2014 at 3:58 pm #2148737
    Bob .
    BPL Member

    @bcbob

    Locale: Vancouver Island

    "….But if you think about it part of their amazing sense of smell is to be able to tell the difference between a tent that has a pot of spaghetti sauce in it and one that used to have a pot of spaghetti sauce in it earlier or last week…."

    That doesn't mean they won't be interested/curious enough to give it a go.

    A bear like this that comes into camp (for whatever reason) and attacks as this one did is likely reacting to a food smell in the tent or has been trained by other campers to associate tents with food.

    If that bear comes into MY camp, would I rather be sleeping in the tent that smells like food or the one that doesn't? I think I know the answer (hint: I like both my ears).

    Nov 12, 2014 at 3:58 pm #2148738
    Neil Williams
    Member

    @njwilliams449

    One technique for the snow not illustrated in the article is to dig a hole about 1 foot deep and 2 feet wide in the vestibule, which gives an extra foot of space between the stove and the tent if there is a flare-up, more storage space in the vestibule, somewhere to put your feet while taking your boots off and on and an easier entrance under a low vestibule. Bears are not a problem – koalas are herbivores and don't like spag bol.

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