Backpacking knives are essential for survival in remote wilderness. They can help with anything from food preparation and tent repair to cleaning game and starting fires. But what distinguishes a ...

For many hikers, backpacking knives are mostly used for slicing cheddar and chopping onions. But like the rest of your emergency gear, from a survival blanket to a gear patch kit, when you need a ...

Over the years, ultralight backpacking has garnered an unfortunate reputation: obsessive, elitist, unsafe, prohibitively expensive. While we could debate the first three (obsessive is the only one I’d ...

I first encountered the ideas of ultralight backpacking in 1994, in an article in now-defunct (and much-missed) Backpacker magazine. It was titled “Less is More,” by Mark Jenkins. (I still have a PDF ...

The biggest question for any backpacker in search of a new blade is choosing between folding knives--made with moving parts to open and close the blade from the handle--and fixed blade ...