Are two 4 quart pots big enough for a 7 to 8 person crew? thanks, dave

All depends on the meals you plan to prepare. But I would say yes.

Some crews only take 2 2L pots. It all depends on the cooking method you choose. My crew is planning on rehydrating our food in the foil packets that the food comes in so we plan on taking a couple of 2L pots. If you are doing the all food in one pot for the crew, then you will need at least a 4 qt pot.

Check out Doug Prosser's article
http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/philmont.html

Yes, but a word of caution. A 4 qt pot can be a safety hazard with a liquid fuel or canister stove, due to the amount of heat reflected back down onto the fuel.

Cheers

"Yes, but a word of caution. A 4 qt pot can be a safety hazard with a liquid fuel or canister stove, due to the amount of heat reflected back down onto the fuel."

A typical example of a liquid fuel stove is an MSR-XGK. With it, the liquid fuel bottle sits outside the windscreen, so it is completely immune from any heat around the burner. I've used 4-quart and 6-quart aluminum pots quite a bit with that kind of stove.

However, trying to boil 6 quarts of water in a big pot is not very efficient. The 2-quart and 4-quart pots work a lot better. About the only thing I would use the 6-quart pot for anymore is for snow melting.
--B.G.--

> MSR-XGK. With it, the liquid fuel bottle sits outside the windscreen,

In the case I am thinking off, I don't believe a windscreen was being used.

Cheers

All of those MSR stoves were supplied with a small heat reflector to go underneath the burner, and a much larger windscreen to go around the whole affair. There is a remote liquid fuel bottle that sits outside the wind screen. The screen works for wind, and it also keeps the fuel bottle at a normal temperature. The wire core inside the fuel tube is the only thing that carries a little burner heat backwards into the fuel tube.

Geez, I've been using one or another version of MSR stove since the Carter Administration.
--B.G.--

> Are two 4 quart pots big enough for a 7 to 8 person crew?

Dave, As answered by others it depends on your cooking method
For crews of 9 or less, the amount of water needed
to rehydrate the Philmont dinners is 4 quarts. As Ty mentioned some crews carry two 2L pots and use two stoves
to boil the water faster.

If you use the "Philmont way" cooking method of pouring the
food into the pot of boiling water, then two 4 quart pots will work fine for a crew of 7-8.

I would like to second Roger's warning about big pots (6-8)L
that Philmont issues. My warning is the tipping hazard of having a large pot sitting on a canister stove. Last summer a scout in a site next to ours was badly burned when an 8 quart pot of boiling water got knocked over on him.

Check out Al's food prep technique:

http://www.csm.ornl.gov/~geist/Philmont/Efficient-Philmont-Food-Prep.pdf

This is what our crew is planning on using this year. You do need to be more careful, but with some practice, this method saves a lot of time and cleanup.

Dave, we had 2 crews of 9 in 2008. Each used 2 x 2 qt pots very successfully. We used turkey bag cooking. 4 qts of water was plenty for each dinner. Using two stoves provided faster heating, less fuel use, and a backup in case one failed. We would also heat usually 1 pot of water for clean up after dinner.

We took Qty two 4 qt pots and used the Turkey bag method to cook the dinners. We could have only brought one stove and one 4 qt pot. Our Crew size was 11. We used Windpro stoves. We used 670 g of fuel for our trip. The Meals have changed this year. There are are very few meals that have two entrees that require cooking. Most of the meals only have 1 entree that requires cooking.

Our 626 crew of 12 used 2 4 qt pots and most of the time that was enough water for both cooking and cleaning. We rehydrated right in our bowls after splitting the entrees.

We were going to do turkey bags until our ranger showed us this method. Food didn't rehydrate as well, but when you're hungry it doesn't matter.

Great trip!

We just got back yesterday. Only heated water in one 4 qt pot.
Worked fine.

can someone explain the "Turkey Bag Method"?

Turkey bag cooking is a lot like freezer bag cooking. You just put all the like packages of food in a pot lined with a turkey bag and add water. Stir and let set 10 minutes and stir and serve. You can drop the turkey bag into a cozy or you can put a cozy around the pot to enhance the ability to hold heat, which makes the food rehydrate better. There are also some who put an inch of water in the pot and then the turkey bag and then cook in the bag, I never was to fond of this method. We have always used two pots with cozy's and boiled enough water to have some left after adding to food. A pot with hot water left in a cozy while eating dinner will hold more than enough heat to make dish water after splitting it up between the two pots after removing the used turkey bag. You will have to add cool water to it to make it so you can wash and rinse dish's.
I do like the idea of making a cozy big enough to put the bag in as in the post above. that way you only need one pot to boil water and sterilize dish's in. dave