Originally Posted by
mulveyr
If you're going to be going someplace that might snow ( and presumably will have sub-freezing temps ), canister stoves can be iffy, unless you get one that can be manually pressurized.
There's a persistent belief that alcohol stoves are also inadequate for cold weather operation, but I've never had a problem as long as I provide insulation from the ground and/or snow. I use a white-box alcohol stove (
http://www.whiteboxstoves.com/ ) and it works great, though you can also find a few zillion homemade pepsi-can stoves plans on the net, if you prefer.
I have done extensive winter camping, have tested stoves in the field (on mount rainier in the winter among other places) for MSR, and can authoritatively state that alcohol stoves lack the BTU output for effective snowmelt capacity for winter camping. you spend a lot of time melting snow for water in the winter, and alcohol stoves just don't cut it.
they work in the cold well enough, just don't pump out enough heat to melt the scads of water needed to survive in the winter. for bike camping at campgrounds when there's snow on the ground when you wake up, alcohol stoves should present little to no problem. Middle of canada in february an alcohol stove would be impractical.
as to tent, for a couple of nights out, just go with whatever. i'd go cheap if the OP is uncertain of interest, a large discount retailer has reasonable tents for 50 bucks or so that you can survive in quite comfortably.