db wrote on Sep 5^th, 2009 at 7:02am:

I'll stick a bottle of gas or two in with my clothes ...

Maybe its because I started in a backpacking tradition where everything has to go into one pack, but I've always been resistant to having fuel in close proximity to anything else.  Of course, it has to be close to SOMETHING, but I've always tried to place it in such a way that if I had a fuel bottle leak, it would have minimal impact on everything else.  Consequently, I started putting the fuel bottles in an exterior pocket or an exterior "lash on" pocket.  Since I now use a day pack for my cooking kit (everything needed for cooking is in this pack and it gets dropped in the cooking area when I arrive at camp and stays there until I depart ... of course food is in a separate food pack) I've had to resort to using the smallish exterior side pockets.  Even though the fuel bottles are relative slim (I use MSR fuel bottles), there is still a potential that they could pop out of these small pockets.  So to make sure the bottles don't pop out on a portage, I use a 'biner to attached it to the side compression straps of the pack.

This year, the strategy finally paid off on my Quetico trip.  I'd selected one of my older MSR bottles and had neglected to re-check the O-ring seal.  Over the years, it had developed a few hair-line cracks.  This resulted in a slightly detectable odor of fuel.  Luckily the cracks were small, so the odor was minimal and I don't believe I lost any fuel.  However, I did have the "luxury" of knowing that the only thing that would ultimately be impacted with a major leak was the cook pack and nothing else.

So, check those O-rings!  (I now have spares to put in to my "repair" kit.)

dd