Going Stove-free?

[Cork]

I'm 32 and have been hiking and backpacking since I could walk. I've hiked a few sections of the AT but I'm currently planning my first thru-hike. To keep weight down I'm considering leaving the stove at home. I'll enjoy hot meals in towns and do without on the trail. Any honest thoughts on this? Or what about a little wood cooking if I just brought a pot and didn't have to worry about fuel. I've done this before...but not sure how feasible it would be on the AT. Thanks for all the advice guys! See you out there!

[QiWiz]

I'm 32 and have been hiking and backpacking since I could walk. I've hiked a few sections of the AT but I'm currently planning my first thru-hike. To keep weight down I'm considering leaving the stove at home. I'll enjoy hot meals in towns and do without on the trail. Any honest thoughts on this? Or what about a little wood cooking if I just brought a pot and didn't have to worry about fuel. I've done this before...but not sure how feasible it would be on the AT. Thanks for all the advice guys! See you out there!

Thru hikes have certainly been done without a stove. I guess it depends on what it takes to make you happy. Personally, a hot meal at the end of the day and a hot breakfast when it's cold are things I really appreciate. You can bring and eat out of a pot that is less than 4 oz, cook over a stove that is less than an ounce, and carry fuel that is less than an ounce a day. So for an average carry weight of a half pound or less, you can have hot meals. For me, this is worth the weight. Camel up at water sources and carry a cup less of water, and there you go.

[G-FOURce]

Thru hikes have certainly been done without a stove. I guess it depends on what it takes to make you happy. Personally, a hot meal at the end of the day and a hot breakfast when it's cold are things I really appreciate. You can bring and eat out of a pot that is less than 4 oz, cook over a stove that is less than an ounce, and carry fuel that is less than an ounce a day. So for an average carry weight of a half pound or less, you can have hot meals. For me, this is worth the weight. Camel up at water sources and carry a cup less of water, and there you go.

ditto that!

[Feral Bill]

If you find it isn't working for you, buy a stove then.

[yellowsirocco]

It is not an 'exclusive or' situation. A warm meal at the end of the day is nice in the cooler weather. A hot meal in the middle of summer is not very appealing. So carry the stove in the spring and fall, but send it home for the summer. Or you can carry a minimalist alcohol setup in the summer to give you some flexibility for when you have longer sections and don't want to carry as much fresh food.

[Miner]

I did 2 months on the AT without a stove and didn't mind it. It helps to know what kinds of food you won't mind eating that way. When the weather is colder though, a hot meal at the end of the day is a morale boaster.

[Slo-go'en]

Non-cook food tends to be a heavier than cooked food (typically pasta), so the weight savings might not be as significant as you think. There are other reasons to go no-cook, like saving the time and hassle of cooking. But yes, going stove and pot less can and has been done by many.

[leaftye]

I wouldn't rely on wood cooking on a thru hike without refining the practice on shorter trips first.

At least you're going to bring a pot. That's a good idea, especially when it's harder to find liquid water because the streams are covered with snow. I don't cook and as such, I don't hike with a pot. That was a mistake once when I was above the snow line and couldn't find liquid water. I ended up melting snow in ziplock bags and plastic bottles next to a few. It took a very long time to get enough water to quench my thirst and carry enough water to make it to the next reliable water source.

[MuddyWaters]

I'm 32 and have been hiking and backpacking since I could walk. I've hiked a few sections of the AT but I'm currently planning my first thru-hike. To keep weight down I'm considering leaving the stove at home. I'll enjoy hot meals in towns and do without on the trail. Any honest thoughts on this? Or what about a little wood cooking if I just brought a pot and didn't have to worry about fuel. I've done this before...but not sure how feasible it would be on the AT. Thanks for all the advice guys! See you out there!

Hot food is like fire. Its something we crave for comfort.
As pointed out, in cold weather, its beneficial to warming you up.
My stove/pot/windscreen weighs 2oz. fuel bottle weighs 1oz, and fuel for a week of dinners weighs about 4-5oz.

So, average wt for me would be 5.5oz carried for fuel and stove/pot.
Worth going without? Not really. Maybe in really hot weather when I wouldnt want hot food.

[prain4u]

Can it be done? Yes! I have done some "stove-free" hiking myself--but on shorter hikes than a thru hike.

The real question is "Why go cookless"? (Especially on a thru hike). The savings in weight would be minimal (if at any). You already indicated that you would carry a small pot to cook on over a wood fire---"just in case". That means you PROBABLY would also need to carry something to clean the inside or outside of that soot-streaked pot (or something to carry it in--so the soot on the pot doesn't get on everything in your pack). If you are going that far, what have you saved? Only, 4-8 ounces AT BEST--over carrying a simple alcohol stove and a minimal amount of fuel.

In exchange for carrying a few more ounces, you get the option of some hot meals/beverages and a way to boil/purify water if that rare need ever arises. You also increase your meal and beverage choices.

Unless you really go "all in" with cookless meals and become "radical" about it---you may actually end up carrying MORE weight by going "cookless. (Depending upon how we choose to count any water that is collected and used at camp--and probably not ever carried in your pack).

Cookless foods can sometimes be heavier foods. (Sausage, cheese, nuts, raisins, tortillas, power bars, tuna--to name just a few). Compare that (in weight) to something that is more dehydrated (and TYPICALLY cooked) like Ramen, Mac & Cheese, oatmeal, rice, couscous etc.

"Stove-free" will only save "significant" weight--if you do "radical" things such as leave the cooking pot at home and eat dehydrated food dry or prepared with cold water. I can do that for a few weeks--but not for a few months.

Frankly, if you are already taking the pot with you--what's the big deal about carrying a few ounces more for a small alcohol stove and a few ounces of fuel?

[swjohnsey]

Met several thru-hikers who cooked exclusively with wood.

[SCRUB HIKER]

I'm one of the people (along with garlic08) who often pipe up when someone asks about stoveless hiking. I hiked 5 months on the AT in 2011 (not a complete thru-hike, but very close) without a stove. It was my first time hiking stoveless, and I'd say it was a positive experience. Someone PMed me a few weeks ago asking for my thoughts on the issue, and I ended up writing quite a lot before I even knew it. Here is a copy-paste of that:

<<Long story short, it worked out fine, but I'm not sure I would do it again.

Long story long: I did it because I liked the idea of not having to fuss over anything, and being able to eat in my tent in bad weather or as soon as I got up in the morning or whatnot. I figured that, as it stood, I only cooked one meal a day (dinner) while hiking normally, so it wouldn't be very hard to find no-cook things to eat for dinner. Those anticipated benefits turned out to be pretty much correct. I don't know what hiking you've done, but for me, being in your tent when it's raining, morning or evening, is a really nice feeling, and thinking about leaving your cozy zone and getting even a little wet is a really miserable feeling. So it's really great to make breakfast or dinner in bed while the weather rages outside, and if it's breakfast, be essentially packed up, fueled up and ready to go by the time you step out--just take the shelter down and be on your way.

It's also very nice not to have to worry about the problems attendant to traditional canister stoves, namely them malfunctioning and running out of fuel (and then having to find a place to resupply it in town). On every backpacking trip I'd taken before the AT, something went wrong with the stove at some point, and someone had to troubleshoot it, and it wasn't going to be me because I'm a ****ty mechanic. I did not want to worry about that on the AT. What I hadn't considered is that some new-model stoves like the Jetboil are incredibly reliable, and simple alcohol stoves are almost completely foolproof, and easy to resupply for fuel. I will probably use an alcohol stove on future long-distance hikes.

Some people who have never tried stoveless hiking list cons that I don't think apply. One, they say there's a psychological boost from hot food. I disagree--I've had hot soup on hikes where I'm unpleasantly cold, and I'm always still unpleasantly cold afterwards. At any rate, depending on when you start, there won't be too many times on the AT where cold is a psychological issue. Other people say that they can't live without hot coffee in the morning, which isn't a problem for me because I've never done that on a regular basis. And other people say that going stoveless weighs more because of the water weight in your food and the imprecision of resupplying when you don't have concrete meals in mind. I think that's actually true, but I don't tend to see it as a con most of the time because I'm not a gram weenie, although I'm getting there.

The big con with stoveless hiking for me is that it's hard to consistently (like for 5 months) get no-cook food that I'm happy about eating it if it's not maildropped from home. Maildropping wasn't going to happen for me on the AT because it would have been coming from Oregon, and that's way too expensive. I am a fairly mechanical eater with low standards in general, but there was still a little too much repetition in my trail diet to really satisfy me. Breakfast was a problem because I think PopTarts are gross, I can't handle granola/Clif/power/Big Colossal bars for more than about two days in a row, and reconstituted milk gives me acid reflux (although regular milk doesn't, go figure). That left me with cereal or muesli soaked in cold water for breakfast, which I'm happy with--but a lot of the time the more granola-y cereals I could find in the trail-town grocery stores were overpriced and not really that calorie-dense, all told. Most of my future hiking will be out West and I will be shipping myself my own muesli for breakfasts, which I can eat indefinitely and really fuels you for the first few hours of hiking.

Lunch food and snack food is easy to find anywhere. Chocolate bars, cheese, sausage/pepperoni, Snyder's flavored pretzel bits, jerky, Nutella, peanut butter, mustard, sometimes a bread medium like bagel-thins or tortillas--you can get them everywhere and I can personally eat all these things indefinitely and not get tired of them. You might have other foods in mind, but that's what worked for me. I ate a lot of these for dinner too. A couple of items that I specifically ate for dinners were instant mashed potatoes and instant hummus, both reconstituted with cold water. Some people can't handle the cold potatoes, and I agree that they taste better hot, but they're alright with cold water too (but just alright--after awhile I could tolerate them but not honestly look forward to them no matter how hungry I was). The powdered hummus I could only get shipped from home--good luck finding it in the grocery stores along the trail. I tried reconstituted refried beans once too, and that was good, but again, not available in trail towns.

If you're doing maildrops or if you have very low standards for what you like to eat, going stoveless can be perfect. If you're not sure how you're going to handle stovelessness, I would suggest bringing a super-cheap-and-easy alcohol stove like a Super Cat and enough alcohol for a night or two of cooking. That won't weigh more than 5oz total and it gives you the flexibility to eat a cooked meal every now and then. Now that I'm familiar with what I like to eat while long-distance hiking, I think in the future I'm going to ship myself my own breakfasts (cold) and possibly dinners (for cooking ... might get a dehydrator this winter) and leave the lunch and snack food up to the vagaries of each town stop.>>

[keep moving]

SCRUB HIKER, as soon as I saw this thread I was going to copy and paste that exact same message.

Here is the link to Garlics trail journal. He thru hiked with Pickles in 2007 and they went stoveless. In prep posts 4 and 5 he talks about the decision. http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=213035

[Mags]

Why go without a stove? Because it is simple, easy and straight forward.

No worries about fuel. At the end of the day, you just eat and while other's are outside fidgeting with a stove in the rain, you just eat too.

Out West, alchy stoves were banned in many areas this past year FWIW.

On a hot day, eating a cold mean of cous cous and a chicken packet tastes darn good. (One of my favorite meals for summer backpacking, actually)

Is going stoveless for all situations and all people? No.

But on higher mile solo hikes it can be a good option.

Just another tool to have in the kit and make use of.

[JAK]

Some of you apparently lack that genetic mutation that separates us from lower life forms - pyromania.

[Don H]

Non-cook food tends to be a heavier than cooked food (typically pasta), so the weight savings might not be as significant as you think. There are other reasons to go no-cook, like saving the time and hassle of cooking. But yes, going stove and pot less can and has been done by many.

I looked at this a few months ago and started a thread on it. After the discussion and looking at the foods I thought would replace my cooked food (only dinner) I found that the weight saving, if any was not worth it.

One of the things that was suggested to me was soaking pasta a few hours prior to eating. So now you're carrying a Nalgene bottle full of water and pasta half a day. Where's the weight savings in that?

Of course HYOH but maybe you could give it a try for a weekend or two before you hit the trail.

[Hikes in Rain]

Three words: no hot coffee!

[daddytwosticks]

Three words: no hot coffee!

Ding ding ding ding! Winner!

[JAK]

Zactly.

Where is the fun in getting lost in the woods if you can't stop and make a hot cup of tea or coffee?

[MuddyWaters]

Just because you have a stove, doesnt mean you have to use it ALL the time.
Keep it small, light, compact and it wont bother you.
If you dont, get rid of it. If you do, keep it.