A good repair kit deals with both freak disasters — a fire in a tent, an avalanche, a broken backpack frame — and damages that occur on every expedition, like rips that need a sturdy sewing job. You can’t carry a garageful of tools into the field but you need to be able to repair almost everything. Achieving this in a light, compact kit is the challenge.

A repair kit changes with place and style of travel: Sea kayaking needs different tools and materials than mountaineering or pulling a sled across Antarctica. But many common items figure on almost every wilderness deep-dive.

Below, we consider some of the tools and products in an all-purpose repair kit. Rather than a complete list, it offers ideas. This is, in the main, a summer inventory, though some items are all-season. We’ll cover a kit specifically for winter in a future post.

Duct tape wound around a liquid fuel gas bottle. The tape also serves to make the fuel bottle less conspicuous to cautious customs officers in airports or at borders. Snoopy loops, which are made from old car tyre inner tubes, are secured around it for spares and are useful for securing a rolled-up tent. Photo by Matthew Traver

Copious amounts of seam grip were layered onto this inflatable mattress to seal up a cluster of micro-holes. Finding the punctures required putting it into a pool of water and looking for bubbles. Photo by Matthew Traver

Once cured, Sugru holds up to 2kg. Photo by Sugru

A cold shoe camera mount molded to the top of a trekking pole with Sugru. This field modification turns the trekking pole into a camera monopod and GoPro selfie stick. Photo by Matthew Traver

After a voracious pig in Chongqing, China, munched through the adjustment webbing on a waist belt, two lengths of black 25mm webbing were sewn in place. Photo by Matthew Traver.

An intimate look at the author’s grubby synthetic belay jacket patched with spinnaker tape. Extra long lengths of 3mm cord were added to the zipper tabs for easier operation with gloves. Photo by Matthew Traver.

A LOWA Desert Elite boot showing a fabric panel above the midsole that was hand stitched and seam gripped in the Central Asian steppe. The toe was also filled in with seam grip on location after it began to tear away from the rand allowing grit to rub away the glue attaching the sole. Photo by Matthew Traver

Matthew Traver Creating adventure, travel, and culture-related written and visual content | https://www.matthewtraver.com