I've never tried to light a stove anywhere near that cold, but I imagine you would need to hold a match or lighter next to a wet wick long enough to get some vapor coming off and ignite. Stoves have been used on Arctic and Antarctic expeditions and surely those have seen weather that cold.
My MSR stoves are easily lit just under zero F, I have even used once a couple kero stoves snow camping, I just keep them running while packing up in the morning so I can warm my hands. Duane
Interesting thought Ken. Bring a flame to fuel, however cold, and there’l be some vapourisation and ignition surely as a result of the heat if the flame. Chicken and egg situation, will the cold prevent ignition of the heat source? I guess that whenever it’s cold enough for fuel to freeze solid, that’ll be the decisive point.
There's a post "Gear Review: Using Camp Stoves on Polar Expeditions" on the current usage of stoves at -40C (-40F) on this website: Gear Review: Using Camp Stoves on Polar Expeditions » Explorersweb
There are plenty of excerpts in the reference library of accounts of the early days of Arctic and Antarctic exploration when 2-pint Primus stoves were literally the life or death of the teams of explorers, at times in use at -50F and below. There is one account, which I can't find now, possibly Scott's 'The voyage of the Discovery', which mentions the effort involved in getting the priming meths to light in these conditions, comparing the ease of which it usually ignites to the need for match after match in the extreme cold. To tweak the alleged English C17th quote 'Trust in God and keep your matches dry'!
Along those same lines Secrets of Polar Gear, Part 6: Cooking Setups » Explorersweb https://polarguides.org/uploads/gen...A-Stove-Safety-Management-Recommendations.pdf
Haven't checked the links but the old trick for a Trangia alcohol burner is to use a lit match and hold the end of the match in the alcohol, thereby creating a wick, allowing the match to stay lit and the heat from the match to encourage local vaporisation and spread slowly across the burner. I presume the same trick would work for priming fuels, although the additional trick up the Trangia's sleeve is to keep the burner and fuel in your jacket pocket first. The freezing point of ethanol is -114C and methanol is -96C, so this should work down to that point (!). White gas and kerosene can freeze at -40C by comparison, so that is a definite problem. AFAIK matches don't have a realistic temperature below which they won't work (unless they got wet etc at some point of course), as the rely on friction. If you only have a source of sparks, then soaking some paper / tissue / bark etc in alcohol to catch them would be the go... but I can't vouch for having tried it myself at those temperatures. I would like to go somewhere where I would have that problem - these endless blue skies, sun and open, white sandy beaches in Western Australia can get boring after about 50 years or so...
Curiously though I've never come across accounts of paraffin freezing in accounts of polar exploration, I doubt they had any additives to prevent this either?
I regularly read about kerosene trouble among swedish cold weather campers. Mostly about sub par fuel suffering partial solidification which clogs filters in pressure stoves. Typically remote bottle stoves. I think I remember reading about the eastern front and diesel fuel behaving in a similar way. White gas stops vaporizing at some point and becomes harder to light when temperature drops. Before that point, it will become even more explosive, since slow-not-stopped vaporization provides optimal air-fuel mix as opposed to normal temperatures where oftentimes the mix becomes too rich. Never have I heard about alcohol as a priming fuel not working, or lighting. Blackdogs wicking trick is key for lighting alcohol in the cold though.
Mushers in Alaska use alcohol stoves. But they're not the typical Trangia type burner, more like an empty gallon paint can with some holes punched in the side and some rockwool batting thrown in the bottom.
I’m doing some work again for the Australian Antarctic Division. I’ll ask the Field Training Officers what gear they use in the deep field. I might get some pics and a field guide, if possible. Tony
