The Zieg
Gold Member
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2002
- Messages
- 4,834
Since the mid 1990s (after my last long-distance and long-stay adventure in Alaska) I ditched the large knife (nevermind that I still have and love them!) for short blades in the puukko fashion. I added a small hatchet or tomahawk and, when car camping, my SOG Paratool. In the backcountry Rockies in the Summer, fires are prohibited so I don't need serious wood cutting tools. In the late Fall some years back I had to cut down a full grown aspen to fashion a lever to help free a truck from an ice-rutted hunting trail. I did this stunt with a Gerber/Fiskars Back Paxe which has resided in my get-home bag ever since. I have since added a folding pruning saw to the kit and might carry it when I next go up to the high country.
On one solo fishing trip in the Rockies, where I know the country well and was less than five (albeit strenuous) miles from the trailhead and my car, I took no knife or saw, just the Gerber hatchet. It's sharp as anything and easily touched up on a smooth river stone. It gutted brook trout, trimmed back some willows, cleared out my sleeping bower where it had grown over during the intervening months, and helped me build a small cooking fire (it was in late Spring, before the ban begins). I could have benefitted from a knife, but it was a nice experiment and really gave me a sense of competence to use what some would consider an awkward tool.
So that's some of my exprience. A lot depends on where you adventure and what you want to accomplish. In the thick willows, a large knife can get hung up. Above treeline the large knife isn't really useful. In the saddle, where I spend most of my time, a large knife is annoying. In the car, getting in and out along rutted roads looking for good river and stream access, a large knife is also a pain. When I was canoeing frequently I stowed an axe because I had the freedom to do so and in the Pacific Northwest had the liberty to take large downed logs and build camp on the shore. That obviated the need for a large knife, though at that time I was hankering for a Sami leuku. Maybe I'll revisit my gear strategies when it is time to test one of those out. And there's this skrama thing that's caught my eye, too!
Zieg
On one solo fishing trip in the Rockies, where I know the country well and was less than five (albeit strenuous) miles from the trailhead and my car, I took no knife or saw, just the Gerber hatchet. It's sharp as anything and easily touched up on a smooth river stone. It gutted brook trout, trimmed back some willows, cleared out my sleeping bower where it had grown over during the intervening months, and helped me build a small cooking fire (it was in late Spring, before the ban begins). I could have benefitted from a knife, but it was a nice experiment and really gave me a sense of competence to use what some would consider an awkward tool.
So that's some of my exprience. A lot depends on where you adventure and what you want to accomplish. In the thick willows, a large knife can get hung up. Above treeline the large knife isn't really useful. In the saddle, where I spend most of my time, a large knife is annoying. In the car, getting in and out along rutted roads looking for good river and stream access, a large knife is also a pain. When I was canoeing frequently I stowed an axe because I had the freedom to do so and in the Pacific Northwest had the liberty to take large downed logs and build camp on the shore. That obviated the need for a large knife, though at that time I was hankering for a Sami leuku. Maybe I'll revisit my gear strategies when it is time to test one of those out. And there's this skrama thing that's caught my eye, too!
Zieg
Last edited:
).
