My backpack strap buckle snapped 12 miles in on the Appalachian Trail near Damascus

I was on day three of a solo trip, just past the Virginia-Tennessee border. The right shoulder strap buckle on my Osprey pack just gave out with a loud crack. No warning. I had to use a carabiner and some paracord from my emergency kit to rig it back together. Got me through the rest of the trip but my shoulder was killing me. Anyone else had a major piece of gear fail mid-hike and have to MacGyver a fix?

2 comments

2 Comments

faithf773d ago

Your backpack strap buckle snapped 12 miles in" - man, that's rough. I had a tent pole snap clean in half on the second night of a trip in the Smokies, had to tape it together with duct tape and a trekking pole. It's funny how gear fails always happen right when you're farthest from a road, like the universe is testing your ability to patch things together on the fly. Makes you wonder if we rely too much on fancy gear instead of just learning to fix stuff with whatever's in our pockets, kind of like how everyone panics when their phone dies instead of remembering how to use a paper map.

walker.andrew3d ago

Man, that duct tape and trekking pole fix sounds like something I'd end up doing too. @faithf77, I've got a similar story with a water filter clogging up halfway through a five day loop in the Rockies - just ended up boiling everything and drinking out of streams with a bandana over my bottle. It's wild how much we lean on all this high tech stuff until it gives out, then you're back to caveman ingenuity real quick.