@Jace: Good suggestions regarding raiding the swap boxes and thickening with extra calories. I hadn't thought of that.
We did 1-pot (6-liter) cooking at our 55-mile Boundary Waters trip this year (8-man crews). Each person "gut-sumped" their own bowl/plate, and we had a nightly volunteer to gut-sump the one cook pot (some nights found volunteers faster than others). But that was over a larger single-burner Coleman white gas stove. It worked ok, but it had it's drawbacks… It was slow, we didn't have stove redundancy, and that big pot would sometimes end up with some pretty nasty stuff burnt to the bottom. We did bring an extra canister stove per crew, but that wouldn't handle cooking for 8 at once (used mostly for coffee and sides). With 13 people, I think we'd need at least an 8 liter pot for 1-pot cooking. I don't know of a stove on the market that would handle 15 pounds of food and water up top, so we definitely need to split to at least two pots, regardless of whether we cook in them or just boil water.
@Roger: I'm thinking along the same lines. If using the can-top stoves we already have, go with three sets with 2.5 liter pots to give just a little wiggele room. If we go with remote canister stoves (would require new purchases), we could go with two stoves and 3 or 3.5 liter pots. Still on the fence on cooking in them vs cooking in pouches or turkey bags. We have quite a while to flesh that out.
@John: I hadn't thought of the stove's legs digging in. Looking back, I occasionally had that problem with my whisperlights, but I was pretty careful to put them on solid rock when cooking (and I never cooked for 12). If we end up with remote canister stoves, I suppose it wouldn't be hard at all to fashion a light aluminum ring to prevent sinking.
Alcohol stoves at Philmont have a few things working against them… Philmont encourages cooking and eating as a crew (same menu for all). That would require a good number of alcohol burners (4 to 6). Many of the activities are time-sensitive, so we want to get done cooking, cleaned up, and off to the next activity as soon after hitting camp as possible. I'm also keen on not having to worry about spilled fuel or metering it out before every meal. Finally, I'd heard that alcohol stoves weren't allowed (haven't confirmed if that's still an active ban). Any way you cut it, I just don't think alcohol stoves are for us.
One other thing that popped into my mind… Remote canisters are probably a little better on fuel since you can almost certainly construct a better windscreen. With my can-top models, I never made a wind-screen for fear it would direct too much hear back to the can. I suppose with the can-tops, I could still make a little heat shield to wrap around the stove neck under the burner.
Merry Christmas all!
Fat Boy
