Stoves
When you’re choosing a stove to take to Philmont, remember that Philmont is a Crew activity. Don’t plan on cooking by tent partners or individually. Philmont’s meals are designed to be cooked as a crew. When you are looking for a stove, you want to make sure you have a backpacking stove with a large, sturdy base.
Personal sized, iso-butane propane stoves do not work well at Philmont. Stoves like the Pocket Rocket are great for boiling 1 quart for an individual; when you put a cooking pot with 6-8 quarts of water on it and cank up the heat, you will have a great chance of bending the prongs that support the pot. Another great personal stove or coffee stove is the JetBoil. They will boil water fast, but not fast enough to feed the entire crew hot food.
Crew stoves need a wide sturdy base. Most of them operate off of liquid white gas which is available at every Commissary. A common stove to see on the trails at Philmont is the MSR WhilperLite. In over 30 years, the stove has remained almost identical, because of it’s simple design you can solve almost any issue encountered while you are on the trail. The MSR DragonFly allows you to have more control over the flame coming out of the stove. There are a lot of stoves that will work well for crews on the trail.
A lot of crews like using canister stoves because they feel canister stoves are safer, and to a point they are. Canister stoves are easy to use, virtually maintenance free and will never spill. Unfortunately, canister stoves are not too efficient and are usually designed for personal use. Crew stoves typically have a windscreen or heat reflector to boost performance, but if you tried to do that with a canister stove you would reflect enough heat back into the canister to make the gas expand and the canister to explode! As soon as you turn the valve on your canister stove you are always losing pressure inside which relates to better performance. If you like canister stoves, fear not! MSR has developed new technology for canister stoves in their MSR WindPro II and MSR WhisperLite Universal. These stoves place the canister away from the base of the stove, just as liquid gas stoves do. This allows you to have the same benefit that liquid gas stoves get by using a windscreen/heat reflector, but provides you with more safety and virtually no need to clean your stove. These stoves will allow you to invert the canister to burn all of the fuel. We could explain all of the voodoo, and how it happens, but we feel that the guys from MSR say it better.
Great Crew Stoves:
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Great Personal Stoves:
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