Strange as it may seem, I suspect there are certain cases where good equipment CAN make up for a lack of skill. An excellent example would be an unskilled hiker who is incapable of starting a fire with anything but bone-dry wood vs. a highly skilled hiker who can coax a fire out of a pile of wet rocks (caution: hyperbole at work ).

The skilled hiker is going to make a fire and stay warm in adverse weather conditions, even having very cheap and mediocre clothing, and a sleeping bag made of two blankets pinned together with safety pins. However, if some unscrupulous salesperson convinced the newbie to buy $1000 worth of high end clothing, an overkill-rated down sleeping bag and an R-5 pad, plus a bombproof tent with color-coded, glow-in-the-dark poles, then even the unskilled newbie will stay warm and dry - with no skill to speak of other than a high credit card limit.

Note: This scenario does require the newbie to have enough skill to set up the tent and to dress himself.