i was down at a local historic site,Cold Water Spring,taking photos for the National Park Service.it's part of some volunteer work my Wife and i do.with the record lows in Minneapolis today i thought i would try out my orange box stove to see how it would run at these temps.



i did not do anything except carry the stove in my parka pocket and set it up at the Spring House



well it fired right up using the built in Piezo lighter.



i did move it out of the wind,temp minus 50 something in the wind,to a sheltered spot and boiled up a cup of spring water in about five minutes.



not something i would take on a climb of Mt Washington but dropped in a pocket or pack along with a pot and a cocoa pack i would trust it for a local day hike.

That was a cool experiment!

Nice canoedogs, thanks for the info, DS and I have a couple of similar stoves coming to us this friday, good to know they work so well in such extreme temps

Impressive. I have one of those stoves and it's great in Texas but I never would have thought the canister would run at that temperature. Good to know!
-Blast, still glad he left MN for TX

Hey, 'dogs. Neat experiment.

For clarification, may I ask what the actual air temperature was (not including wind chill factor)? Stoves, vehicles, etc. respond to actual temperature values.

Thanks!
-Doug

EDIT! Well, if I had read the post title, instead of just the post, I might have some idea about what the bleep is going on, dontcha think? Sheesh.

it is the Gaz cart that is the problem at those temps.a insulation pad under it and a windscreen to warm it would be a big help.
part of the test was to see if the valve and gaskets would hold up at 14 below but once the stove is fired up they come to working temp no matter how cold it is.hard core Gaz users have a heavy copper wire they wind around the cart and let the other end heat up in the flame to warm the cart.i have had to pour hot water from the tea boil over a cart that was getting very low to keep the pressure up.



spoon fulls of warm water kept this cart running until the can of stew in the pot of hot water was done.
and of course the survival angle to the post is that a small stove and some Gaz just taken along as a after thought could save your skin.
if anyone who has a orange box wants to try it out under some extremes in their part of the world i would like to see your feedback.

Glad to see you are doing volunteer work for the NPS. I do some of that as well. I hope they have some indoor tasks these days..

Nice experiment. Do you find the compressed fuel has a shorter burn time in the cold?

tyber..i have never used the Gaz for real in the winter so i have no idea.i would think that being warmed up by the cooking they would run ok.
in the winter i use a Primus kero burner or a MRS stove made for cold weather.

I don't have an Orange Box Stove (googled "Orange Box stove" and one of the links was at Amazon), but I have a few that are similar. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on where you sit) the weather on SOCAL is not adequate for duplicating this test Fortunate, definitely fortunate.

Excellent mittens, sir.