Kinves on a pack trip?

[balzaccom]

OK--not a troll, but a post from my website blog:

I don't get the fascination with big knives for backpacking. For more than twenty years all I have carried is a little 3-inch Buck knife that has two blades. One is pointy and sharp, and does a good job cleaning fish. That's the only time it is ever used. The other blade is more rounded on the tip, and it gets used for everything else, which is usually limited to slicing salami and cheese, and occasionally cutting a piece of line for the tent.

So what's the deal with the JIm Bowie 11-inch machete blade? Or the USMC special Ops drop forged all black bayonet? I really do wonder what people use these knives to do. They certainly aren't backpacking where we go. Track down and hunt a mule deer? Create a bivouac out of a cedar tree? Those things would be illegal in a National Park--and unnecessary just about anywhere else.

Or are these knives for self-defense? Are they expecting to meet rebellious native peoples? Defend themselves from fellow campers? Give you a chance in an encounter with a furious bear? Good luck with that one. The bear will outweigh you by 200 pounds, have nine more knives (claws) than you do, and can rip open the door of a Ford 150 pickup. You take that knife...and run like hell when you see a bear.

Splitting wood? We make small fires from time to time...but I learned a long time ago (back when the only cooking we did was on an open fire) that smaller wood burns better, hotter, and more controllably, than big logs. And there is always more smaller wood on the ground than large logs that need splitting. I mean really--if you need a knife to split your firewood, maybe you are making the wrong kind of fire. Or camping in a group with twenty people, in which case your ex-wife's new boyfriend should carry the ax.

I suspect that these deadly looking blades appeal to the survivalist dreamer...the one who watches Man Vs. Wild and believes those idiotic capers are necessary. He'll spend two days trying to catch 200 calories worth of food. And he'll use his knife to cut up the vegetation to make a rope from lianas. It will take him most of the day. He wouldn't need the damn rope if he just hiked down the other side of the hill. Which would take about 45 mintes.

But then he couldn't justify that really cool looking black steel knife that he has carried for seven years, and never used except to spread peanut butter.

It's all just a bit too "Tom Sawyer" for me--I don't need to pretend there are pirates in the forest to have a good time. Some people do.

[Wickett]

Nice rant. All I carry is a skeletool now, but when I was a kid camping I had to have my Rambo knife. It had the compass, cord saw, matches and some other nifty items. I thought I was the coolest because of the knife.

[SteveH]

agreed it is funny isn't it? In the military we call them "crew served knives" as they are so big it would take two or more to operate them haha. I think you are right on track with the idea that it is the uninformed that have a mistaken vision of camping/backpacking as some sort of survival event so you see them toting this humongous knives. Same reason you see and hear folks clattering down the trail with a "sierra" cup dangling from their pack frames.

[balzaccom]

ha!

Here is what I once wrote about those silly cups:

The Sierra Club Stainless Steel Hiking Cup. Yes, we know this is blasphemy, and that John Muir will strike us dead from above, but these cups are just plain ridiculous. They are the badge of every dyed in the wool Sierra Club member---but I can’t help wondering how many of them actually get out on the trail. They are impossible to use with hot beverages, because they burn your lips. They ping against anything they touch, whether hanging from your pack or on your hip belt. They are heavy compared to any suitable plastic mug. And they are indestructible, so you never have an excuse to toss them out for something more functional. If you still pack with a wood-frame pack, wool blanket bedroll, and an overcoat; by all means take one of these along. Otherwise, take advantage of modern technology and get a good plastic cup that is more functional in every way.

[dan]

Sierra Cups were common in the 1970s when I started backpacking. I may have one piled in my closet somewhere. Now they are obsolete since we have insulated coffee mugs. They were good in their day--the steel wire rims prevented burning your lips (but not completely :-O). They were relatively flat, and you can use it as a small dish. I haven't seen the cups recently in my backpacks. Have you or others seen them in the wild recently?

[Wickett]

I can't resist having one around when I am car camping, it is kind of a novelty, my wife loves them for her hot chocolate. I don't bring them backpacking though.

[AlmostThere]

When I signed up to volunteer with SAR, they gave us a list - on it are the metal cup and a saw to cut wood.

Now, I get that sometimes we will be bushwacking through crazy dense brush and sometimes the saw could be useful.... but there's never been a backpacking trip where (when we actually built fires, doesn't happen all the time) we could not get enough firewood broken into foot long pieces. Whack the branch on a granite boulder or step on it.

The metal cup I put in the SAR pack has some esbit and tin foil in it to make a cup of hot water. Not sure what that will do for me when there's usually a base camp with a generator and a large coffee urn. Maybe I'm supposed to make tea for a subject when I find him?

We'll not even talk about the two quarters on the NASAR gear list. I'd have to hike some extra mileage to make that phone call...

Long story short, some things exist only because somewhere, sometime, someone said "it would have been handy if...." Those big knives made sense to someone - maybe not someone who went out there a whole lot and actually figured out what was useful instead of what appeared to be useful. I've seen them on the trail - when it comes down to it, they appear to be useful only to impress the non-outdoorsy folk they show it to.

Maybe it's like what they say about guys who drive big trucks... compensation. Most of the gals I've hiked with have very reasonable blades that you could do useful things with....

[honsing]

Taking the discussion back to big knives, I laugh when I see these out in National Parks or wilderness areas because I think people carry these for a sense of "security", and truly are not aware of the risk/benefit ratio when carrying such a silly WMD. It is far more likely that the risk of such a large weapon (accidentally slicing of an arm, falling on the thing and destroying your pack or splitting open your belly) far outweighs the potential benefit (fighting off a bear, hand to claw or slicing the head off of that aggressive attacking cougar). We watch too much sensational Hollywood TV and assume that it applies to real-life situations.

[darwin11]

Nice rant. All I carry is a skeletool now, but when I was a kid camping I had to have my Rambo knife. It had the compass, cord saw, matches and some other nifty items. I thought I was the coolest because of the knife.

Me too, i carried rambo knife when i was a kid, but now i carried my push knives.