I've twice hiked the 2650-mile Pacific Crest Trail. The only knife I carried was the 0.9oz Classic both times (this was before I was a knife knut). As jackknife says, it does 95% of what you need to do.
Another well known person who hiked the Pacific Creast trail with a classic as his knife was the author of many well regarded backpacking books, Colin Fletcher. This is the some man who hiked/backpacked the length of the Grand Canyon, ( The Man Who Walked Through Time) as well as many other long trials. The late Mr. Fletcher was a vetern of the Britiish Marines durring WW2, and became the author of the book "The Complete Walker" which has undergone several reprintings and updating as backpacking equiptment evolved.
After years of carrying a Victorinox tinker, he downsized to a classic because as he put it, he wasn't really using the tools on the tinker, and the classic cut open foil food packs as well as a bigger knife. It was interesting to note, as Mr. Fletcher gained more years of backpacking and hiking long distances, he went from a 6 inch sheath knife, to the sak tinker, then down to the classic.
A thousand mile backpacking trip is a heck of a long way to go with a classic as your edc. It worked for Mr. Fletcher.
I have to wonder if we boil it all down and look at whats left in the bottom of the pot, if we as knife knuts carry way more than we really need because of the knife knut obsession gene that we have. But we only account for a small minority of people who buy a pocket knife. Aside from us, there are people who are smart enough to know they need a small cutting tool because it's a handy thing to have, but don't want to bothered by having much knife to weigh down their pocket, so they buy a keychain size knife. I read an article in Knife World magazine a few years back that Victorinox makes about 35 million knives and multitools a year. Of that, 9 million are classics. Every year. No matter how you look at it, somebodys buying a heck of alot of keychain size classics to carry.
If we were not knife knuts, and if not for the sheer love of them, carrying, admiring, even fondling them, how many of us who are not living a life like Jack Baur, really need much more than a inch or two pen knife as we go about our mostly suburban lives?
Now when off camping or hunting, is a whole different story. Then we have hunting knives, fishing knives, and a whole new area for collecting and fondling.
