UKC

4 men, 7 full days on a glacier, melting snow, some dehydrated meals but also porridge, noodles etc.:

How much canister gas and / or unleaded petrol will we need?

Also, is there anything special I need to do when taking the stove as checked luggage- have the lid off the fuel bottle etc.?

Many thanks,

John

In reply to JohnV:

I would go with liquid fuel personally although even unleaded petrol is dirty. depending on where you are going try to get hold of Aspen 4t or similar, typically used in rural areas for chainsaws etc.

the main advantage of liquid fuels is that it is easier to guage how much you have left/are using and full power right down to the last drop.

Personally I would do some testing, weigh the fuel then melt some ice cubes mixed with water to simulate snow (closest thing I can think of to snow balls, if you have a liquidiser you could make some slush puppies to melt) and weigh again to see how much you actually used, allow a bit extra to compensate for higher air temperature.

I once spent a month sea kayaking in Norway, we did loads of testing first and took all our fuel with us and were pretty well spot on with consumption.

Your stove and fuel bottle will have to be absolutely spotless or you might have issues at the airport, I have heard that soaking in coke will do the job, never tried it myself.

In reply to JohnV:

I too would go with liquid fuel, coleman fuel or aspen if you can get it, unless you like cleaning. For a tent of two I normally budget 0.2l per day, 0.3l if it's really cold (below -20). This is usually fairly generous but assumes good efficient stove use (minimising priming, starting snow melt with water from bottles/flasks, etc). For four of you I would say 0.4-0.5l per day will allow plenty of tea drinking if the weather's rubbish for some of the days.

Make sure the stove's clean and it'll be fine. Fuel bottles can be more problematic so: Empty them, burn the last of the fuel out using a lighter at the bottle mouth (mind your eyebrows!), then a good couple of swills out with hot soapy water and pack it in hold baggage with the lid off and separate.

Hope this helps.

In reply to JohnV:

Depends exactly where the glacier is (wet snow v dry snow), whether you use one stove or two, and how much you're active i.e. how much you drink, but as a general rule with white-gas (Coleman fuel etc) I'd allow 200ml per person per day. You may well use 150ml pppd but this gives a margin.

So 5.5 - 6 litres of white-gas for your trip. Not sure how that converts to unleaded petrol, which I almost never use.

I have used canisters on my Primus quite a bit, in Nepal, but not doing a lot of snow melting for water, and at around 4000-5000m only. I really can't remember exactly but a canister a day for two sounds roughly right? If you're all in the same tent then it would probably last a day for three. But for a week in your situation you might need more than 10 canisters? Quite a bit.

In reply to JohnV:

If you search old posts there is a lot of information about flying with liquid fuel stoves. I had an official document somewhere.

The short version make sure it is clean, leave it outside for fuel to evaporate. Rinse the bottle with cooking oil to remove any last residue. Pack the bottle with the top off. Pack the stove separate to the bottle.

http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=317401&v=1#x4689893

In reply to JohnV:

Found it

In reply to JohnV:

If you are going down the using liquid fuel then I recommend getting the expensive high octane Petrol from the Petrol Station.

In reply to Aigen:
We used 1.5l of Primus fuel for 2 people for 5 days meting snow at 3500m a few years ago, including cooking dinner etc using an Omniful as our main stove. Temperature was negative most days and the coldest night was -18 according to my pals sunnto watch thermometer (so could be way off!). So 150ml per person per day.

If I did it again, I would get a pot with a heat exchanger or one of the msr clip on copper exchangers for their steel pots.