Burncycle:

Find a depression in a rock that holds water.

Put stones in fire to make them hot.

Take stones out of fire and place in depression that has water.

Keep repeating fire and dunking routine until water boils and continue until you feel safe with results.

If small enough pick up rock with water in it and drink, if rock too big or unwieldy, you can suck water up or dunk cloth into water and suck water out of cloth.

<img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />For posturing purposes in case someone of upper class or British heritage finds you, always have pinkie pointing out and up from hand when drinking water. <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Bountyhunter <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

I'm working on a crippled computer and can't open the link <img src="/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> Firstly, remember magazines survive by commercial advertising. I won't name names, it's pandemic to the media. But I dare say 'Stabbing times' knife mag will be biased in this essay, and further biased by advertisors. The parent company of Camillus submits more freebie units for review than some custom knifesmith. Are you really going to objectively critique a sleeping bag when they just bought a full page ad? As to the contest: I hate these exercises. There is no absolute correct answer, unless it's the 10 essentials at minimum. What if we are on a subarctic biosphere on this mountain? There are ranges that exhibit literally every clime on earth depending on altitude. A fuel rich level MIGHT indicate fire as our priority. Go a few hundred feet up and a sleeping bag on a freezing, windswept outcrop takes over. On the mountain approach maybe a compass can get us back if we took carefull notes of our inbound course. Some of the compasses have small magnifying surfaces on the baseplate, so we can make fire with that. See how the limits and capabilities can be stretched and fudged? We could very well find ourselves in the mountains with only a knife or the other items. The danger is in giving priority to only one. Eventually some ultralight ( in gear and thinking) hiker is going to take off with only a knife or lighter- and lose it under the same misfortune I'd lose 9 out of 10 essentials <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

UncleSteve,

Attention to detail is not my strong suit. <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

I see your reasoning. Good job at assessing the "situation".

I have to agree with Chris. I know that most of us can come up with many ways to use any of the listed items.

btw, I chose the knife too. You can make a dish from tree bark to boil water, as long as you do not get the flames above the water line.

I thought you Americans were all in favour of capitalism.

No, it doesn't come as a great shock that magazines survive by advertising, and sometimes that influences the content of their stories. The same can be said of newspapers - if your readership is primarily PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER., and you start running editorials that are seen as pro-PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER., you're going to lose business. Lose enough business and you go out of business. Sometimes this is the price of being true to your principles.

That being said, at least Backpacker acknowledges from time to time that the wilderness is a dangerous place for the unprepared (or, as we prefer to think of them, the terminally clueless). I haven't looked at many other outdoor magazines but I suspect many of them avoid any mention of the words "survival" or "stranded" lest it scare away potential customers. (Not the climbing magazines, because mountain climbers thrive on the notion that they're risking death with each step.)

Yeah, they've had some stupid advice from time to time. They also had a reasonably good (IMO) article by a female editor who took a survival course with Cody Lundin.

This contest is rather silly - if anybody rates a compass or water filter as being more important than either a knife or a lighter, then I'd have to say they're either being deliberately "creative" in order to win the contest, or they're - well, terminally clueless <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

But - and I think this is important - the exercise of coming up with a "winning answer" may just prompt some people to think twice about going for a day hike without ALL OF those six items. Remember, this contest is not necessarily aimed only at us die-hard mountain men and women, but at the Jo tourists who set off up the Matterhorn in a bathrobe and carpet slippers.

Ah crud, I knew that day would come back to haunt me. I didn't think anyone else was watching. I thought I was all alone! Gotta admit those fuzzy bunny slippers are cute though... right? <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

Brian:

For a long time I have suspected the reason for the lack of "loco weed" on the Texas roadsides was the result of DEA intervention, but now I see that yo'all have just been getting up earlier in the morning to chew on the stuff. <img src="/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Bountyhunter <img src="/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />