I have done the GA section several times so am full of info. Feel free to pick my brain. But I have never done it with boyscouts.

What will the ages be?
How many miles are you planning to do daily?

I personally would go with regular stoves for cooking. Whether it's a jetboil or alcohol stove or something similar. Cooking over a fire is cool but it gets everything filthy . Maybe plan 1 night or 2 nights for campfire cooking. The AT in Georgia is very popular and alot of the areas are pretty picked when it comes to finding firewood. But I am lazy when it comes to looking.

I have to get some sleep now but will think about it at work tomorrow and come back. Shoot me a message if you want.

You know that bear cannisters are now required in the section around Blood Mountain/Neels Gap, right?

I would recommend doing a lot of reading about lightweight backpacking techniques. Read up on whiteblaze.net. My grandson is hiking 100 miles with scouts at Philmont (New Mexico) soon and I can't believe how much stuff they're toting. I gave him a 4200cc backpack that was way too large for me (it fit him) and far more than I'd needed for 1,000 miles on the AT and he said it was dwarfed by what the other guys were packing, and bought a bigger one. These kids need to lighten up.

But we do need practical advice like hobo stoves vs. jetboils vs campfire cooking, all those little things that really add up fast.

Little hobo stoves made out of Pepsi cans are a classic Scout project. They're fun. They work well. They weigh nothing. I can't think of many things I've been more pleased with than my first Pepsi can stove.

They burn denatured alcohol, which you can buy by the quart in hardware stores (no one should carry a quart of it on the trail.... if they have a quart then 4 of them should each carry 8 ounces, or 8 of them, 4 ounces.) You can also buy it by the ounce from many outfitters and hostel owners along the AT. You can also use gasline antifreeze -- "Heet" -- easily available in gas stations and carry-out stores in small towns that have neither hardware stores nor hostels. You can also turn the stove upside down and use it to burn solid fuel like Esbit tablets.

Jetboil is heavy. The pot is heavy, and the fuel cannister is heavy. Of course, it gets progressively lighter with use. The whole assembly, with a full cannister, weighs nearly a pound and a half, compared to 4-8oz of alcohol and a couple grams for a Pepsi stove. You can't always find fuel cannisters in trail towns. Luckily, a cannister lasts a long time (I used 3 of them in 12 weeks on the AT.)

However..... I keep taking my Pepsi-stove and some new pot system or other, always weighing at most an ounce or two, plus a few ounces of fuel..... and next trip out, I'm back to my Jetboil.

Nothing I've tried is as fast or as reliable as the Jetboil.

When I ran out of fuel and couldn't find a cannister in Front Royal, I fished a Pepsi can out of the trash and made a stove sized to fit under the Jetboil windscreen, kept cutting holes in it till it burned well with no pot support (the pot sat right on it), and used that with Heet I found in a hiker box. I used it all the way to Harpers Ferry.

I have sort of a stove-making addiction, keep making new stoves from various kinds of cans (soda, cat food, Heineken beer, V8, Red Bull) using various instructions from the Internet, and I always come back to my heavy old reliable Jetboil workhorse, which goes from blast to simmer with the turn of a knob in any temperature at any altitude.

They make them for individual and group cooking.

Scouts may still benefit from and prefer MacGyvering their own can stoves. There's something very satisfying about fashioning an essential piece of equipment out of trash.