Primary Gear: What Actually Matters

Primary gear is the equipment you rely on every day.

It’s not backup equipment. It’s not specialized.
It’s the gear that works so consistently you stop thinking about it.

Primary gear should be:

Reliable
Simple
Durable

If your Primary gear fails, everything else becomes harder.

That’s why Primary equipment should be selected based on function, not trends or aesthetics.

Typical examples of Primary gear include:

Everyday carry tools
Clothing and footwear you depend on daily
Basic navigation or illumination tools

The goal of Primary gear is not to solve every problem.
The goal is to work every time under normal conditions.

When building a system, you start here.

You can see our current Primary gear recommendations here:
👉 Primary Gear Recommendations

In future articles, we’ll cover how Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency gear build on this foundation — without overcomplicating it.