Alpine climbing stoves 2018

What kind of stove do you use for alpine climbing? I have used a Jetboil Sol in the past which is light and convenient, but performance tends to suffer when the temps drop due to the canister being in the "upright" position(I know that I need to keep my canisters as warm as possible as well).  I have used the MSR Reactor as well and found that it performed better than my Jetboil in cold mountain environments.  

I like the idea of having a canister stove for convenience, and having the canister on a remote line allows the canister to be inverted so that it feeds liquid to the stove rather than vapor which should increase performance in cold weather.  The Windpro II is very light and has a remote canister setup, but I'll need to find a pot for it. The MSR Reactor seems popular.

EDIT: Removed the Windburner Duo as an option, thanks to info from Kevin Do.

I think it really depends on how technical your routes are and how cold it is, Intergrated canister stoves shine in cramped bivvy's and portaledges where you can set them up hanging, the same cant be done with remote canister stoves, but as you said they can be flipped upside down into liquid feed mode allowing for fantastic cold weather performance.

I just found out the hard way that the MSR Reactor has a thermal shutdown switch (Prevents overheating) that is non-repairable.  This meant that I was without a stove halfway thru a camping trip.  I wont depend on an MSR Reactor again.

Jeremy B. wrote:

Ingredients:

• Copper strip, 200 mm x 25 mm x 0.5 mm
• Velcro strap, ~500 mm x 25 mm
• Silicon pad, ~50 mm x 75 mm

Use the pad to protect the velcro strap from the copper (cut slits so you can keep the parts together).  Works at least to around -30 °C, do not use above 0 °C.  Monitor canister temperature with finger, do not allow canister to get too warm to touch.

Jeremy, do you have any photos showing what this looks like? I'm very interested in making something like this to help keep the canister warm, but I can't quite wrap my brain around it.  

I used to use an MSR Reactor, but was always terrified of inadvertently knocking the pot off the burner and spilling boiling water over myself or sending the thing down thousands of feet. Maybe just me being neurotic. I've since switched to using the MSR Windburner cause of the locking pot/stove interface. 

As for keeping the canister pressure high, I bring along a small dish that I fill with water and place the canister in. Take advantage of thermodynamics to maximize canister pressure.

Also, I may be wrong, but I think there's a way to reset the Reactor/Windburner thermal shutoff, but just once per stove. I seem to remember instructions in the manual on how to do it. I'll try to dig up the manual and check on that. 

I'm using an MSR Windburner and it has been excellent.  At 15 ounces for the kit it's not mega-light, but it's compact, fuel efficient, and nearly impervious to wind (unlike a Jetboil).  I did a lot of research and I thought it was the best intersection of weight, package size, and performance.

The Windburner Duo is too big/heavy for me, but it depends on the objective(s) and how much you'll be doing cooking and melting.  Might make sense for a bigger team or a longer expedition.

The Windpro II is weird to me, as I don't see how an open burner design like that can possibly be efficient in wind.  I've never had the need to invert the canister where I climb (just warm it up in your jacket), so when I am looking for a really light solution I use a tiny canister stove like the Snow Peak Gigapower (3 oz!).

MSR Superfly has worked great for us

SinRopa wrote:

Can you give us some more info on this?  I wasn't able to find anything online about it.  How'd the Reactor overheat, did you talk to MSR about it, etc.

Essentially it was my fault.  I was using an ordinary frying pan on it.  I couldnt find anything online either so I called MSR customer service and they explained the deal to me.  The internet probably doesnt have much on this because there are only a few idiots like myself that ran into this.  In any case, a design that can fail in that way is not acceptable to me.

I did notice that on one of their different, newer, designs that they have incorporated a resettable thermal switch, but I dont remember which model.

The windburner is the newer model that is resettable.  I think it only allows for one reset though.  Still better than nothing.  Never had an overheat issue but wondering if anyone else has?

Long story short MSR windburner is the shit.  Copper pipe trick if really really cold but i've never had a problem even in around 0 F conditions.

Matt Zia wrote:

As for keeping the canister pressure high, I bring along a small dish that I fill with water and place the canister in. Take advantage of thermodynamics to maximize canister pressure.

Here's a water bath that I rigged up for use with an MSR Reactor. It also helps stabilize the stove and it can be used in a hanging system. We used it at 17,000' on Mt Logan and it worked pretty well.

SinRopa wrote:

I think I need someone to explain this concept to me...are you using warm water?  Wouldn't cold water cool the canister quicker than cold air, decreasing the pressure?

Cold water is still warmer than a frozen canister! I usually pour a little warm water in the cup after a couple minutes and voila! I've torched my Jetboil koozie many times from the flare up. 

SinRopa wrote:

I think I need someone to explain this concept to me...are you using warm water?  Wouldn't cold water cool the canister quicker than cold air, decreasing the pressure?

Cold water is warm relative to the fuel in the canister, and in winter conditions also warm relatively to the air.  Isobutane boils around -12 °C, so all that matters for your stove to work well is that you keep the fuel 5-6° above that.  As long as your water is liquid, it's well above that and will transfer heat to the fuel.  I would not use a bowl of warm or hot water (dangerous), although adding a spoonful to cold water would be fine.

When you run the stove liquid fuel vaporizes to replace the fuel leaving the canister.  That phase change from liquid to gas requires energy, and so it basically sucks up heat from its surroundings (same reason a can of compressed air gets cold as you use it).  Thus, running a stove in cold weather means that it's being cooled from within and without.

SinRopa wrote:

I think I need someone to explain this concept to me...are you using warm water?  Wouldn't cold water cool the canister quicker than cold air, decreasing the pressure?

The basic idea is to keep the canister warmer than the fuel's boiling point (vaporization point). For isobutane that's about 10°F at sea level (and about -20°F at 20,000'). Liquid water is always warmer than 32°F, regardless of elevation. You'd only use this technique when the air temperature is colder than that.

For a full explanation see https://adventuresinstoving.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-cold-can-i-run-my-gas-stove.html.

Martin le Roux wrote:

Here's a water bath that I rigged up for use with an MSR Reactor. It also helps stabilize the stove and it can be used in a hanging system. We used it at 17,000' on Mt Logan and it worked pretty well.

 

The foam insulation and bungee cords are pretty slick. Going to make that mod tonight.

Martin le Roux wrote:

The basic idea is to keep the canister warmer than the fuel's boiling point (vaporization point). For isobutane that's about 10°F at sea level (and about -20°F at 20,000'). Liquid water is always warmer than 32°F, regardless of elevation. You'd only use this technique when the air temperature is colder than that.

For a full explanation see https://adventuresinstoving.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-cold-can-i-run-my-gas-stove.html.

This is going pretty far down the rabbit hole, but wouldn't it still be more efficient to put the canister in water when the air temp was above 32ºF because of the relative thermal properties of air and water? Because water has a higher specific heat and a greater rate of heat transfer, it will both hold more heat and transfer that heat more efficiently to the canister. The heat transfer rate of water is 0.58 W/m/ºC and the heat transfer rate of air is 0.024 W/m/ºC, so water transfers heat through conduction approximately 20x more readily than air. I'd have to run some numbers, but I think you'd have to have the canister in approximately 20ºC (68ºF) air in order for the canister to maintain the same temperature as if you had it in exactly 0ºC/32ºF water. If you had lukewarm water at say 15ºC/55ºF, you'd have to have air at approximately 300ºC/572ºF in order to have the same thermal balance. Someone want to double check that estimate?

Matt Zia wrote:

This is going pretty far down the rabbit hole, but wouldn't it still be more efficient to put the canister in water when the air temp was above 32ºF because of the relative thermal properties of air and water? ... If you had lukewarm water at say 15ºC/55ºF, you'd have to have air at approximately 300ºC/572ºF in order to have the same thermal balance. Someone want to double check that estimate?

In theory I think you're correct that a water bath could have some benefit even if the air temperature is slightly warmer than the water temperature, but in practice it's usually not worth the hassle (isobutane stoves usually work fine on their own if the air temperature's above freezing). I don't follow your math, though. If you were to put an isobutane canister in a oven heated to 300°C I think the consequences would be a lot different than putting it in a water bath at 15°C.

I like my setup pretty well, this was from a failed attempt at the WPT - inverted canister Windpro which heats water in a pot and keeps it hot, where we set the Reactor canister while it runs to melt snow.  We're probably getting like 99% efficiency from the Reactor canister with this method.  I think temps were in the high teens/low 20s.

Martin le Roux wrote:

In theory I think you're correct that a water bath could have some benefit even if the air temperature is slightly warmer than the water temperature, but in practice it's usually not worth the hassle (isobutane stoves usually work fine on their own if the air temperature's above freezing). I don't follow your math, though. If you were to put an isobutane canister in a oven heated to 300°C I think the consequences would be a lot different than putting it in a water bath at 15°C.

Like I said, way down the rabbit hole. I think you're right that the efficiency gain when the air temp is above freezing is negligible, so the water bath is more of a hassle. So this is in many ways just a thought experiment on my part.

The thinking I had for the 300ºC air temp was based on a 20x multiplication of 15ºC water. Obviously putting a canister in a 300ºC oven isn't a great idea. Wouldn't that be what you had to do in order to achieve the same thermal properties though? Maybe I'm over-thinking it and conflating thermal capacity and rate of heat transfer.