Cooking Systems

[George Geist]

> What do you do on normal trips where you don't have any
> Philmont pouches? Just use the Tupperware method?

Hi Michael,
We haven't had a Troop backpacking trip since we got back
from Philmont. August outing was canoeing, September will be
cycling. It will be interesting to see if the boys decide to
use any of these three cooking methods for future Troop backpacking outings. All backpack trips before Philmont were Philmont training and involved the boys practicing one of the three methods so they would know all three.

Quart ziplock bags can be used in place of Philmont pouches
to carry single serving dehydrated food, and used to cook, and eat from on their future backpacking trips if the boys want to use the lightweight method.

[Michael Ray]

Al,
Quart freezer bags is the way I have intended to go on our trips. The boys may decide otherwise. Our first BP is Oct.

It will be interesting to hear what your's decide for future trips (including car camping, camporees, etc) now that they've seen (and felt) the "light".

Are those homemade 2-man tents what your crew used? How did they hold up? I didn't realize those space blankets were that tough.

[George Geist]

> Are those homemade 2-man tents what your crew used?
> How did they hold up? I didn't realize those
> space blankets were that tough.

Hi Michael,

As seen in the picture at http://www.csm.ornl.gov/~geist/Philmont
We only took one of the MYOG tents. The boys used more traditional shelters such as Sierra Design Lightening.
A couple crew members talked about making light tents like mine for our Philmont trek, but they didn't get them finished before we had to leave. The 18 oz tent held up just fine. No problems or signs of wear and tear.

To learn more, go to the URL above. I just uploaded a new long article about the tent construction, the innovations that make it strong and tough (hint the Space Blanket does not carry the loads), and discussion of the different materials I considered in building it (from Cuben to polyethylene).

[Roger Tate]

I've been reading Al Geist's cooking system details and I had an idea that I'd like to get reactions to from the experienced folks on this forum.

I can get a liter of water to boil on a canister stove (MSR Pocket Rocket) in about a minute. From Al's notes it looks like you need about 1/2 L of boiling water per person. What do you think of using two canister stoves (I like the redundancy of two stoves) and two 1L pots for a crew and using them kind of like instantaneous water heaters (i.e. heat water as you go).

In theory, you only need three minutes of stove time to get the 6 liters needed for the group, and if you are measuring water out in individual servings I think you can heat water faster than you can use it with this scheme.

Whachathink?

[Bob Gross]

Roger, I think you ought to confirm those boil times for the Pocket Rocket. It isn't that quick. I know. I have one.

–B.G.–

[Ty Wagner]

Under perfect conditions MSR says it's 3 min per liter. I just ran a test over the weekend using a snow Peak giga power stove using a MSR base 2 2.5L pot with 2L with 60F water. It took about 09.25 minutes to bring the water to full boil inside the house with no wind. Now I wasn't running the stove at full power, probably only 1/3 to 1/2. This was more of a fuel burn test so I could calculate the fuel needed for boiling 43 liters of water (10 meals for 10 people). I suspect the efficiency to go down by up to 50% if outside. This means I will need 3.8 canisters if the boil times take 50% more outside.

Temp grams liters min gr/liter eff Tot L fuel Cans
60 26 2 9.75 13.00 100% 43.18 561.3 2.551389054 inside-no wind 70F
16.25 125% 43.18 701.6 3.189236317
19.5 150% 43.18 842.0 3.827083581
22.75 175% 43.18 982.3 4.464930844
26 200% 43.18 1122.6 5.102778107

[Roger Tate]

Gang,

I didn't intend for my query to turn into a discussion of the merits of the MSR stove or exactly how fast water can be raised to a boil. The number I cited was an optimal result (indoors, full blast, barely to a boil)just intended to get the idea across.

The crux of my question is whether there is a true advantage in taking larger pots with longer boiling times per pot versus small pots that can be cycled faster. This question assumes that you are using a minimal cook water/negligible wash water approach like Al Geist's. I suspect wind and YMMV issues could impact large pots more than small pots because the heat output of a typical canister stove is better matched to a small pot.

What do the Philmont veterans think?

[George Geist]

> The crux of my question is whether there is a true
> advantage in taking larger pots with longer boiling times
> per pot versus small pots that can be cycled faster. This
> question assumes that you are using a minimal cook
> water/negligible wash water approach like Al Geist's

Hi Roger,

The choice of using 1L or 3L pots on two stoves to boil 6L of water comes down to fuel efficiency and timing of serving the food. If you run a test at home, you will find that two 3L pots are significantly more efficient. I'm not positive, but I suspect that the fuel weight savings over the 10 days would be greater than the difference in weight between the 1L and 3L pots. (2L pots if your crew is 9 or less)

Timing-wise Philmont wants you to say grace as a group before meals. Having all the water available about the same time helps with this.

[Walter Underwood]

A pair of 2 liter pots seems really small. We had a 6l pot and two 4l pots for our crew of ten (crew 624-X, itinerary 4). We filled them up several times, especially when cooking extra food from swap boxes. One night, the crew cooked dinner for 18 and ate it all.

You will cook Philmont style (in the pot) with your ranger, so you'll probably end up carrying a big pot that you get from Philmont services.

Our crew cooked Philmont-style all the time. That allowed us to add freeze-dried corn from the swap boxes, fresh garlic, and other spices. They even added refried beans to the mac and cheese — not bad at all.

Dr. Bronners' is a poor choice for Philmont. It is a powerful smellable and will be forbidden after 6pm, due to bear protocol. Also, Dr. Bronner's turns into a gel at low temps. Leave it at home and use the Philmont-provided Biosuds instead.

You also want a multi-tool with pliers to help dunk bowls and cups in the sterilizing wash.

[Gregg Martell]

We went planning on using turkey bags, using 2 4L pots. Our ranger had no issue with this, but he wanted to show us the "cook in your bowl" method. The boys loved it. Less work overall, but we did have a few meals that were a bit crunchy compared to turkey bag cooking.

We did make one turkey bag desert when the boys found 6 packages of apple cobbler in one of the swap boxes. Very good.

BTW, Philmont now uses Mountain House dehydrated for dinner. An improvement over the Phil food we bought last year to practice cooking,

[Roger Caffin]

> a liter of water to boil on a canister stove (MSR Pocket Rocket) in about a minute.

Ahhh … really ????????

Perhaps you got it as far as a few bubbles and thought that it was about to boil? But bubbles can happen as low as 80 C.

Cheers

[Chad Harston]

Regarding Walter's experience:
"You will cook Philmont style (in the pot) with your ranger, so you'll probably end up carrying a big pot that you get from Philmont services."

I'm preparing now for a Philmont trek in 2011. I'm curious if any other crews were required by their ranger to take a large Philmont issued pot as Walter reports?

I would prefer to get by with a couple of 2 – 3 L lightweight pots for heating water and then rehydrate meals in our GSI FairShare mugs or maybe inside the plastic meal envelopes propped up inside the mugs to keep the mugs clean. Thanks,
Chad

[tkkn c]

We took our own pots in June 2010. We had no issues. Sometimes it depends on the "Ranger" that you get.

[Jim Colten]

Regarding Walter's experience:
"You will cook Philmont style (in the pot) with your ranger, so you'll probably end up carrying a big pot that you get from Philmont services."

I'm preparing now for a Philmont trek in 2011. I'm curious if any other crews were required by their ranger to take a large Philmont issued pot as Walter reports

There IS variation among the rangers. The other crew in our 2010 contingent had a tough one (to the point of not allowing them to pick up a rock to use as a stake hammer!) but he did let them use their own pots. Apparently at least one has been even tougher!

Our own ranger insisted in showing us the "Philmont way" of cooking the first night. After that there was no objection to us using whatever method we wanted to use.

The key needs for cook pots are to be able to submerge your cooking and eating utensils in boiling water (not all at the same time) and to be able to heat enough water to rehydrate your meals.

We've had good success getting approval of things that might be questioned by contacting Philmont well in advance of their busy season (as in early January) with very specific questions. Example: we wanted to use a Golite Shangri-la 4+ tent with a separate MYOG bathtub floor. Our ranger was unsure if it would be OK but that was cleared up quickly by showing her a printed email exchange we had with Mark Anderson (the final arbitrator of all such things) OK-ing exactly what we brought.

I wouldn't expect to get such an appeal heard at that level of responsibility on the fly while they are busy checking in you and 29 other crews all on the same afternoon!

[Greg Bohm]

Our trek didn't even check out a pot from the commissary.

We just boiled water with our MSR Reactor stove (highly recommend this stove for altitude) and added the water to the bag holding the food.

Each crewmember had a bowl/spoon and a pair of crewmates would split the contents of the rehydrated food.

So only cleanup was licking the bowl and spoon off followed by sterlizing with boiling water.

Regards,
Greg

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