What do you do when you’re in the wild and your gear goes kaput? We spoke to five trampers who used creative fixes when their gear let them down.

When Chris Tuffley, from Palmerston North, found the seam of his shorts failing, he got handy with some dental floss. “I thought they’d be durable, but the material didn’t seem to be holding up that well,” he says. “I had some dental floss and I borrowed a needle from another party at the hut to stitch it up. I was pretty proud of the repair job.” 

The repair lasted a few more trips before Tuffley retired the shorts for good: “Dental floss is pretty tough stuff, but I didn’t want to push my luck.”

Andrea, from Mount Egmont Alpine Club, carries cable ties on any tramp. When her microspikes (traction device) broke on a tramp, she fixed them without any tools. “The chain broke on rough ground and we were on a mission,” she says. “I whipped out my cable ties, joined the broken links together and carried on. Normally you need a spanner and a pair of pliers but I don’t carry tools like that in my pack. It’s an easy repair, and cable ties are lightweight to carry.”

Andrea also used cable ties to repair her pack at the start of a multi-day tramp. “The strap stitching was coming loose and I knew the weight of my pack with seven days of food might tear it.” 

Her solution – of pulling a cable tie through the strap and the buckle – has lasted for years now. “I never got it repaired, so it’s still there and has done many miles since.”

Amy Gillespie, from Christ-church, was on a day tramp in Porters Pass when the soles of her boots started disintegrating. “I’d been wanting to get into tramping and had bought a pair from an op-shop about a year before,” she says. “They looked fine, but after a couple of hours I noticed the soles were crumbling.”

With no duct tape, Gillespie came up with a novel fix that got her to the nearest exit point. “I remembered I had a pair of socks in my pack, so I decided to wrap my socks over my boots. I thought at least it’ll contain the shoe itself.” 

With no grip, it was a slow walk down. “I had to laugh because it looked so silly,” says Gillespie, “but it did the job.” 

Fellow Cantabrian Emma Edgecombe was also in the missing sole club on a 10-day Stewart Island tramp. “I bought some second-hand boots – probably a foolish thing to do before a big tramp,” she says. “I got partway in and the soles decided to depart from my boots. I tried the classic duct tape fix, but Stewart Island is famous for water and mud and nothing was sticking.” 

Edgecombe happened to come across a pair of thick rubber gloves that she presumed had fallen off a fishing boat. “I’ve never been so grateful to find trash in my life,” she says. “I cut off the wrist sections and used the gloves like giant elastic bands over the toe of each boot.”

Edgecombe cut her trip short because she didn’t want to get stuck. “The fix lasted a few days, and I couldn’t believe the durability. I think the mud helped, because I wasn’t walking on stones or scree, and the boots were actually still fine when I got back.”

Martin ‘Rocky’ Walker, from outdoor retailer Further Faster, advises people always to carry repair kit items. “Gaffer tape and a couple of metres of cord are a must,” he says. “They’ll pretty much fix anything.”