UKC

There's 10 of us destined for a glacier in Asia. Approx altitude of 3700m for 25 days.

Will probably be bringing a combination of gas canisters and petrol fuel. Hopefully we will be beside a glacial stream but let's assume we're melting snow the whole time.

Petrol/white gas calcs are easy and there's plenty of examples. But if we had no petrol how many gas canisters would this require? I'm curious to see how similar my gas calcs are to other people.

There will be a mystery prize for the correct answer.

In reply to tistimetogo:

I've done quite a lot of this over the years, so have kept records to make estimating easier. My average would suggest you'll need about 45-50 regular sized (i.e. 190-220g) cylinders. This is for medium altitude use with no melting of snow. If you're melting snow for everything you'll be close to doubling that requirement, but that seems unlikely at 3700m in summer.

Other factors to take into account include how sheltered from the wind your cooking set-up will be, what kind of food you are cooking, the temperature of the water you're starting with, etc. Using a few black Ortlieb water storage bags placed in the sun to boost the water temperature during the day can make a big difference to cooking/boiling times. The figure above is for using a well windshielded stove in the porch of a tent and eating a mix of freeze dried and more regular food (e.g. tins of stew and tatties, pasta and sauce).

John

In reply to Andes:

Many thanks for that. The only gas we've been able to source so far is 50% butane which is less than ideal. Hopefully we can get a better mix arranged before we go.

We'll be inside a large tent for the gas cooking so very sheltered. I'm now thinking a nearby glacial stream is going to be a very important for our basecamp location.

45ish canisters was the value I was thinking but I wanted to check that I wasn't being stupid. I'm afraid your mystery prize is the satisfaction of being correct.

Personally my preference is for petrol.