Appreciation post: A broken strap in the Gila Wilderness

I was three days into a solo loop in the Gila Wilderness when my pack's hip belt buckle snapped, leaving me scrambling to hold everything together with paracord. The trail was rocky and I still had 12 miles to go back to the trailhead, so I rigged a makeshift fix by tying the strap to my belt loops and cinching it tight. Anyone else had a piece of gear fail mid-trip and had to MacGyver a repair on the fly?

3 comments

3 Comments

adam_patel7d ago

Man, am I the only one who thinks maybe we overthink these gear failures? A snapped buckle on a hip belt isn't exactly a life-or-death situation. You had paracord, you improvised, you made it work. That's called being prepared, not some heroic MacGyver moment. I've seen people panic over a broken shoelace on a day hike. A strap breaking on a three day trip sounds like a good story, not a crisis. How bad was the fix, really?

the_kim6d ago

Wait, isn't the bigger issue here that we buy gear with plastic buckles that snap on a three day trip in the first place? @adam_patel you make a fair point about not freaking out, but I gotta say, a hip belt buckle failing out of the blue kinda sucks for something that’s supposed to be built for the backcountry. The fix wasn’t hard, I just tied the paracord through the webbing loops and cinched it tight, but it rubbed my hip raw by day two because it wasn’t padded anymore. It held my pack up fine for the rest of the trip, but I spent the whole time shifting the load around to keep it from digging in. So yeah, it wasn’t a crisis, but it was a constant annoyance that could’ve been avoided if the manufacturer used a stronger clip.

casey6827d ago

Wait, are you telling me my paracord belt buckle hack isn't gonna win me a survival award? That's a bummer, I was already working on a speech.