I am curious too -- I recall reading something, a couple of years ago, that said that Philmont provided two choices for fuel: white gas or Coleman PowerMax canisters. Now that the PowerMax is kind of outdated, I wonder if Philmont has changed the policy.

Guy

Here is what is posted on the Philmont Website:

You must bring your own stoves. Philmont trading posts carry white gas, max fuel, stoves, and spare parts. If your crew uses butane, plan to carry the empty cartridges with you since they create a hazardous disposal problem in the backcountry.

I didn't even think of checking until now, but the Tooth of Time Traders (Philmont Trading Post) has a listing of fuel canisters on its website: http://www.toothoftimetraders.com/philmont/dept.asp?s_id=0&dept_name=Fuel+Canister&dept_id=70 16

On that same page, they mention that fuel canisters can be purchased at a few backcountry camps (Ponil, Baldy Town, Ute Gulch and Phillips Junction).

The past 4 Philmont treks, we've taken our white gas, pump-em-up stoves.
They're a pain to wash and ship if you are flying to Philmont since you can't take them on the plane, but less expensive to run and durable. If you include the extra shipping costs, they might be more expensive than canisters for Philmont.

If I needed to purchase backpacking stoves, I think I'd go with the MSR SimmerLite, WhisperLite, DragonFly kind that use white gas and hook right up to the fuel bottle. Easier to ship, weigh very little, and less expensive fuel.

http://ScoutChallenge.com

For a full crew of 12, we took a two Jetboils, an extra pot, pot support, fuel can stabilizer to be used when the pot was placed on the pot support on one of the Jetboils and a jetboil group system not the GCS, but the $149 retail one. We all carried one can of fuel each. With all of that we still weighed in less than our 3 MSR Whisperlite Internationals with appropriate fuel to run each.
On our return we found we'd carried 45% too much fuel and could have left 4-5 canisters behind.
We made a sharpie slash on the bottom of any can we used on it's initial use and continued slashing with each successive use. When empty we drew a box on the bottom and then punctured the can to relieve any remaining pressure and then crushed and carried them out.
We had no fuel spills in packs or on the ground and it seemed like a much safer way to go without the priming hassles of the other systems.
We are retaining the MSR systems for freezing weather but had no problems with the Jet boils at 37 degrees and 11000 feet of altitude. Keys are to put the canister in your sleeping bag overnight but this was only a factor on our one coldest night.

Helios system and the 1.5 liter pot used with the pot supports and a regular Jetboil PCS were the two unspecified items I listed before.