Total stove weight 35+ cook days

For that long of a trip with no resupply a canister stove would be the best option where weight is the pimary concern (assuming no wood) but I wouldn't go with a jetboil. You might have to carry more fuel with other stoves but fuel weight will decrease over time where the added weight of the jetboil will always be there. Solid fuel (esbit) might work as well but I've never used that and I'm not sure how much it would weigh over that long of a period.

I would go with a jet boil or other very efficient gas stove, for what you describe. You cant burn wood. Alcohol fuel is heavier than gas to carry even if the stove is lighter.
I have lightened my jetboil to 300 grams. I think for us it becomes worth using the jetboil for anything over 4 days without resupply, compared to a simple gas cooker or alcohol. Solo it will be longer, but you will be way beyond the tipping point at 35-40 days. I assume you will be carrying 500 gram canisters.
You will be carrying out less empty canisters with a jetboil than an ordinary gas cooker.

I'd figure 3 8oz canisters for 40ish days and I think they weigh 13 oz each so around 42oz for a standard canister setup at the start with dropping 13 oz every 15 or so days.

Figure 1 oz per day with alcohol so 40 oz fuel + container + stove. I'd say 45 oz (conservative) for that losing 1 oz per day.

With solid fuel I'd also figure 1 oz per day (estimating since I haven't used this type of system before) so 40 oz fuel + container (bag i guess) + stove. This is probably slightly lighter than alcohol since the stove and container should be lighter.

Going off those estimates maybe alcohol is a contender after all assuming optimal conditions and standard meals.

I didn't include a pot in the weight. Just fuel + stove + fuel container.

For this long of a trip, the jetboil might work ok. You'd be carrying about 2/3 the fuel so 26 oz fuel + 16 oz jetboil system for 42 oz at the start including pot. The downside is you wouldn't be dropping weight as fast and you'd finish with a heavier system.

Thru-Hiker (www.thruhiker.com) has some graphs showing stove + fuel weight for various stoves over 14 days and 28 days (Articles section). I don't see many details on how the data was generated, but this may be of interest to you.

If what chris means by 8 ounce canisters is what I call 220 or 250 gram I think the canister itself weighs about 120-130 gram. If Chris's estimates of your usage are correct the jetboil should use one 450 gram (16 ounce) canister. Canister weight from memory 150 gram. 600 gram for a full canister is 21.4 ounce. 10.7 ounce (300gram) for a cut down jetboil total start weight could be 32 ounce including pot.
with Chris's assumptions for the standard gas stove dropping 13 ounce every 15 days he seems to be assuming there is somewhere moral to discard the empty canisters. If there is the sums may differ.

Derek is correct in my assumption for discarding used canisters. If there's not somewhere you would drop only the fuel weight which is ~1/2 oz per day. All of those estimates are based on 1 liter of water boiled per day.

Just for what it's worth, my experience with esbit says 3/4 ounce a day should be plenty. A full tab is 1/2 ounce and I usually can get 3 boils of ~8-10ounces water out of one. This is with a windscreen (0.25ounce), a doubled alum foil lid, and a wide base pot (sterno can 0.4 ounce).

For a dinner and a tea per day solo I would bring no more than 40 tablets dedicated to cooking at ~20oz. If you boil more water than me your calculations could be different. I use Esbit exclusively during solo 3 season trips and have come to really like it. Plus the trash weight is almost non existent and if you packed the esbits out of their blister packs into an odor proof Aloksak it might be even less with no Esbit smell too.

Canisters are great and I usually take them with a group trip where I am the chef or when sitting around making extra drinks is a good possibility. Also for snow melting duty.

Chris

Here's a formula for alcohol fuel:
=========================

.065 liters per day of alcohol

.065 liters (x) 35 days = 2.275 liters

(rounded down) 2.25 liters

So – – – that works out to (ruffly) 4.9 pounds of fuel on day one, starting at the trail head.

Two plastic soda bottles for storage should weigh in at no more than 3.8 oz.

There are a lot of really good alcohol solo cook systems allowing for high efficiency. So, I'm not to concerned what stove. But, the numbers above are pretty accurate from my experience. You might be able to round down a little bit, but it would make me nervous to shave to much.

The above is for 2x hot drinks per day, and 2x hot meals per day.

Will Rietveld did an excellent two-part article called, Comparative Fuel Efficiency and Carry Weight for Six Lightweight Backpacking Cooking Systems.

Part One:
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/comparative_fuel_efficiency_and_weight_of_stoves_pt1.html

Part Two:
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/comparative_fuel_efficiency_and_weight_of_stoves_pt2.html

For that length of time I would put up with a bit of hassle and bring a small wood stove like the TiTri unless there is no way to find wood scraps. Very little wood is needed to boil a pot of water using a decent stove. I would bring a small number of ebits or alcohol for the times I stop in a particularly wood poor area.

–mark

Heh I agree but he specifically said no wood fires are the rules.

>>Will Rietveld did an excellent two-part article called…

I forgot that I read those those articles previously — for some reason the graphs at Thru-Hiker just stuck in my mind. Will's articles are very good articles with supporting data.

I don't envision doing trips longer than 10 days in the near future, but being able to eliminate fuel resupply makes planning much easier for me…

Hi All,

Thanks heaps for all the feedback.
I have read the articles on lightweight stove efficiency and was v. impressed. What i'm looking into is the possibility of being able to burn locally source fuel (wood!) in SOME locations (i.e. outside of fuel-stove only areas). In which case I could take a combustion stove aka bushbuddy and a lightweight alc stove e.g. soda can, burning wood where possible and alc everywhere else, reducing total fuel carried yet keeping in line with National Parks requirements.

Thanks again for the comments

“Here's a formula for alcohol fuel:
=========================

.065 liters per day of alcohol

.065 liters (x) 35 days = 2.275 liters

(rounded down) 2.25 liters

So – – – that works out to (ruffly) 4.9 pounds of fuel on day one, starting at the trail head.”

Maybe my math is wrong:

From http://www.methanex.com/products/faqs.html methanol (Heet) = 6.63lbs/gal

2.25L=0.59gal so 0.59×6.63= 3.9lbs