Fixing ski gear: the three products that cover almost everything

Three failures, three products

The reason this page is a roundup of three cheap things rather than one kit: these are genuinely different problems, and the product that fixes one does nothing for the others.

The last two rows matter as much as the first three. A strap is what gets you off the hill with broken hardware - and it is nine dollars - and a binding is never a DIY repair, for reasons the bindings page explains.

Who each of these is for, and who should skip it

• Anyone going on a multi-day trip: the tape. A tear on day one of four is otherwise a trip-shaped problem.
• Anyone whose main zipper has started catching: the wax. Seven dollars against a day lost, and it is a pre-season job.
• Anyone with a jacket wetting out at the shoulder seams: the sealant. It carries the skip note because it is a home job, not because it is a bad product.
• Skip all three if the jacket is simply old and wetting out all over. That is a washing-and-re-proofing problem, not a repair one - what to wash a ski jacket with, and what re-proofs it.
• Skip the lot for a rental. Report the damage; do not patch somebody else's gear - what you are actually liable for.

What this page ranks on

• 1. Whether it works away from home. The single most useful property of a repair product on a ski trip, and the thing that separates the tape from the sealant.
• 2. Published form and dimensions. A roll you cut, pre-cut patches, a tube, a stick. It decides how many repairs you get and how well the patch fits the tear.
• 3. What it is published for. Jackets and rain gear, or tents and tarps. Several of these are sold across both and the fabric matters.
• 4. Not durability, because none of it is published. Gear Aid publishes no wash-durability, permanence or cure-time figure we could read on its own site - the pages render client-side. So this page ranks on form and job, states the dimensions the listings give, and does not invent a “lasts N washes” number.

The picks

Gear Aid Tenacious Tape, 3 x 20 in roll

The pick, and the best six dollars in this ledger. Published as a 3 x 20 in roll of nylon fabric repair - peel-and-stick, no sewing, no heat, no iron. You cut the patch to the tear rather than hoping a pre-cut shape covers it.

The case for the roll over the pre-cut patches is simple: a 3 x 20 in roll is a lot of patch. A typical ski jacket tear is an inch or two, so one roll is several repairs across several seasons and several garments - and you get to cut the shape, which means rounded corners and a patch that follows the tear instead of overhanging it.

Where it earns its place is the timing. A tear happens on the hill, and the alternatives at 9pm in a rental condo are duct tape, which fails and leaves residue, or nothing. Two minutes with a roll of this and a pair of scissors is the difference between three more days of skiing in a working jacket and three days in a wet one. Fixing a torn ski jacket without ruining it is the method page this is the shopping half of.

Honest cons. Gear Aid publishes no wash-durability or permanence figure we could read on its own site, so how long a patch survives laundering is not something we can tell you. A cut patch has corners you must round yourself. It is not a seam fix - a leaking seam needs the sealant, and a patch over a seam will lift along the stitch line. And no MSRP is published on Gear Aid's own site.

Gear Aid Zipper Lubricant Wax

The cheapest preventable disaster on this page, and the one almost nobody owns. Published as a wax lubricant in a 2-stick pack for zippers.

Why this matters out of proportion to its price: a main jacket zipper that jams ends a ski day outright. You cannot ski a day with a jacket that will not close, and a zipper that has started to catch in October is a zipper that fails in January. Run the wax down both sides of the teeth before the season and the catching usually stops.

Wax rather than an oil or a spray is the right form here. An oil runs, picks up grit and stains the fabric either side of the zipper; a wax stays where you put it. The 2-stick pack is several seasons of pre-season maintenance for a whole family's outerwear, which is why it belongs on the pre-season slot of the maintenance schedule rather than in a drawer.

Honest cons. It prevents a failure rather than repairing one: a zipper with bent or missing teeth, or a slider that has spread, needs replacing and that is a shop job - the hardware page covers which failures are fixable. No coverage or application-frequency figure is published. And it is easy to forget, which is the whole reason it needs to be on a checklist.

Gear Aid Seam Grip WP, and why it carries the skip

The proper repair for the failure that quietly writes off jackets. Published as a waterproof sealant and adhesive for jackets, tents, tarps and rain gear - a brush-on urethane that seals a seam whose factory tape has started to lift.

That failure mode is worth describing, because people misdiagnose it as the jacket “wearing out”. Waterproof seams are taped on the inside at the factory, and after a few seasons the tape starts peeling at the shoulders - which is where a pack strap rubs and where water runs. The jacket then wets through at the shoulders while the rest of the fabric is fine. Brush sealant along the inside seam and the jacket has several more seasons in it.

It is also both a sealant and an adhesive, which means it does a second job: gluing down a repair patch whose corner has started to lift.

Honest cons, and they are the skip: it needs cure time, so it is a night-before-you-pack job and useless mid-trip. Gear Aid publishes no cure time or coverage figure we could read on its own site. An opened tube has a short life, so buying it speculatively wastes most of it. And if the whole garment is wetting out rather than just the seams, this is the wrong product - wash and re-proof it instead.

What actually goes in the trip bag

A short list, because a repair kit you do not carry is not a repair kit.

• A roll of repair tape and small scissors. Two minutes, any tear.
• Two straps. The boot-cuff, pole and binding-strap emergency - ski straps, and the one length that does the most jobs.
• A spare pair of gloves and socks. Not a repair, but the two items whose failure is wet rather than broken - and the second pair matters more than the first.
• Nothing that needs curing, mixing or heating. Leave the sealant, the seam tape that needs an iron, and anything requiring a workbench at home.
• Not a sewing kit, for outerwear. A needle through a waterproof membrane makes new holes. Sew a pack strap; tape a shell.

What to do before the season instead

Most of what this page fixes is cheaper to prevent in October than to repair in January, and all of it fits in one twenty-minute session.

• Work every zipper, and wax the ones that catch. Jacket, pants, pit zips, pockets, boot bag.
• Hold the jacket up to a light. Look for lifting seam tape at the shoulders and small punctures you did not notice. That is what the sealant and the tape are for, with time to cure.
• Run a tap over the shoulders. If water soaks in rather than beading, the fix is a wash - and not washing it is worse than washing it.
• Check the boot buckles and power straps. The cuff strap is the component most likely to tear mid-season.
• Then do the rest of the list. The season maintenance schedule has all five slots and what is due in each, and the twenty-minute mid-season check is the one that catches what October missed.