Alone Season 5 Gear: Every Recorded 10-Item List

Spoiler note: this covers who won season 5 and how the recorded contestants placed.

Season 5, "Redemption," is the only season built entirely from returning players, ten contestants who had each already tapped out or been evacuated on an earlier season and came back to try again. It ran in Mongolia's Khonin Nuga valley, Selenge Province, in the summer of 2018. Of the ten, 9 have at least one gear item on record, but that number needs an immediate caveat: only 3 of those 9 have a full ten-item list. The other 6 have exactly one recorded item each, in most cases just their knife's make and model, with the rest of what they carried never sourced. Dave Nessia, who lasted 36 days, is the only contestant with no gear recorded at all, an odd gap for a two-time returning cast member whose Season 3 run is fully documented.

Sam Larson's winning list

Sam Larson, a wilderness skills instructor from Lincoln, Nebraska, won by lasting 60 days, the longest of the season. He had finished as Season 1 runner-up after tapping out at 55 days, and rebuilt his kit around a much warmer setup the second time around.

Item	What he picked
Axe	Hults Bruk felling axe
Ferro rod	Standard
Multitool	Leatherman (sources differ on Surge vs. Super Tool)
Paracord	~80 meters, assorted colors
Pot	GSI enamel cook pot, 2 quart
Rations	2 lbs flour
Rations	2 lbs trail mix / GORP
Saw	Bob Dustrude 21" Quick Buck folding saw
Sleeping bag	Wiggy's Antarctic, -60°F rated
Snare wire	20 gauge

Notably, Larson skipped a fishing kit and a bow entirely in favor of two ration slots, betting on carried calories over hunted or caught ones. The full writeup on how that gamble held up, including what changed from his Season 1 kit, is at everything Sam Larson carried to win.

The two other complete lists

Runner-up Britt Ahart (56 days, tapped out missing his family) and eighth-place finisher Nicole Apelian (9 days, medically evacuated for a multiple sclerosis attack) are the only other contestants with fully recorded kits. Both took the opposite bet from Larson: Ahart carried a bow and a fishing kit instead of rations, and Apelian carried a fishing kit, a gill net, and trapping wire, essentially building three separate passive food systems into one ten-item list.

What's recorded for the rest

The remaining six contestants have single-item records, mostly knife details picked up from bio interviews rather than full gear breakdowns: Larry Roberts (L.T. Wright "Gen 6," 41 days), Randy Champagne (a "Sacha" puukko-style knife, 35 days), Brooke Whipple (Leatherman Rebar multitool, 28 days), Jesse Bosdell (reported ESEE Junglas-II, unconfirmed, 24 days), Brad Richardson (full-tang puukko-style knife, 7 days), and Carleigh Fairchild (L.T. Wright Genesis, 5 days). None of these should be read as complete kits, they are simply the one detail that survived into a source, and this site would rather show a thin record honestly than fill nine blanks with guesses.

The pattern across what is recorded

Across the 9 recorded contestants, a knife shows up 7 times, a multitool 4 times, and a saw, sleeping bag, pot, ferro rod, and snare wire each appear on 3 of the 9. That skew mostly reflects which details happened to survive into interviews rather than what everyone actually carried, a reminder that this season's gear picture is far patchier than seasons where the full cast was documented. For a season where every list is complete, Alan Kay's Season 1 breakdown is a cleaner comparison, and every champion's kit sits together on the winners page.