[pct-l] Denatured alcohol...

[Georgi Heitman]

Here in Old Station we try to keep a can or two on hand for topping off purposes.  It's 30 miles to Burney (the town of) to resupply and as you might imagine, it doesn't take too many folks filling all their containers to use up a can.  We always put together a shopping party to town when the need is there, and then the place to look for a gal. can, the only way it comes, as near as I know, is at Hovis Hardware.  Our local, O.S. Resort store carries the best (Yellow?) Heet, and I'm checking on the other two little stores in town.  Napa Auto in Burney (the town of) does not carry the denatured stuff.

Is this a good time to ask folks to really, seriously reconsider these little stoves and the fuel they use?  The stoves are clever, I'm fascinated at how they work and for sure they're lite.  But the problem lies, not really with the stove, it's the fuel.  Alcohol burns with an invisible flame as most of you know...that means that if a lit stove gets knocked over, you could be seriously burned as the first instinct is to reach for the stove and pick it up.  It also means that your clothing could be on fire before you know it.  And it also means that unless you train yourself to look for grass, pine needles, whatever that's flammable that appears to be moving, disappearing in an ever-widening area, you can start a fire and have no realization of having done so.
We've all been talking, writing, reading about the dry Sierra, the dry SoCal, the NOAA weather predicting map that shows SoCal and parts of NoCal (we're talking through Lassen N.P, Old Station and the Hat Creek Rim here, folks) will be as hot and dry or more so than last summer.  While it appears that last summer's fires from the Feather River to Canada, were for the most part, lightening-set, the woods through here are tinderboxes.  If they go, with the strong afternoon winds we get through here, there will be an unthinkable firestorm.  Alcohol seems sooo dangerous...even if it weighs a few ounces less than the next lightest stove with some other type fuel, is it worth the risk, to yourselves, your friends, your trail?  Please...give the possible consequences of an alcohol-started wildfire some very heavy thought before you start up the trail.  You still have time to switch....
Georgi, holding good thoughts, 
Trail Angel. 
Old Station, CA