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="" />