Zippers, buckles and clips: the parts that fail in the cold

The zipper that splits behind the slider

This is the single most common hardware failure in ski clothing and it is misdiagnosed almost every time. You do the zip up, it looks closed, and then it opens again from the bottom as you move.

The teeth are usually fine. What has happened is that the slider - the moving part you pull - has worn slightly wider inside, so it no longer squeezes the two rows of teeth close enough to lock them together. It is a wear part, and it is the part that gets replaced.

1. Check the teeth first. Run a finger along both sides. A missing or bent tooth is a different problem and needs a specialist.
2. Try crimping the slider. With the zip closed, take pliers and squeeze the sides of the slider very gently - a fraction of a millimeter at a time, testing after each squeeze. Too much and the zip will not move at all.
3. If crimping does not hold, replace the slider. Replacement sliders are sold by size and type, and swapping one is a ten-minute job that does not require removing the zip from the garment.

Keeping zips alive

Zips fail from grit, salt and neglect rather than from use. Three habits, all of them cheap.

• Rinse and brush the teeth at the end of the season. An old toothbrush and warm water. Salt from a car park and grit from a chairlift are what grind a zip.
• Lubricate once a year. A zip lubricant stick, or paraffin wax, or a graphite pencil rubbed along the closed teeth. Not oil, which attracts dirt and stains fabric.
• Do not force a stuck zip. Forcing is what bends teeth, and bent teeth are a specialist repair. Free the fabric caught in it first, then work the slider gently back.

The main jacket zip is worth this attention because it is the one failure that makes a garment unwearable rather than merely worse. A broken pocket zip is an inconvenience; a broken front zip is a jacket you cannot use.

Pulls, tabs and the small stuff

The cord loop on a zip is the most-broken part of any jacket and the easiest thing on this site to fix. Thread a loop of cord or a cable tie through the hole in the slider and you have a pull that is better than the original, because it is bigger and works in gloves.

That is worth doing preventively on the pockets you use with gloves on, which is the detail that makes a jacket usable on a cold day rather than a thing you take a glove off for.

Ski boot buckles: replaceable and cheap

A ski boot buckle snapping is alarming and it is not the end of the boot. Buckles, the toothed ladders they clip into, and the rivets that hold them are all standard replaceable parts, and shops keep them.

The fourth row is the one to notice, because it is a safety item rather than a convenience. The toe and heel of a ski boot are what the binding grips, so a badly worn sole changes release behavior. The bindings page explains why sole length and shape matter, and a shop will check it as part of a binding test.

And a frayed power strap is worth replacing for a reason people do not expect: tightening the power strap firmly effectively stiffens the boot, so a strap that no longer holds tension has quietly softened your boot. The flex page covers that.

The rest of the hardware

• Snap fasteners on a jacket. Replaceable with a cheap tool kit, and worth doing on a storm flap, which is the seal over the main zip.
• Elastic drawcords that have gone slack. Replaceable by threading new cord through with a safety pin. Ten minutes and it restores the hem seal.
• Velcro that no longer sticks. Usually clogged rather than worn - pick the lint out of the hook side with a stiff brush or a seam ripper and it comes back.
• Goggle strap clips. Rarely replaceable and rarely repairable; this is usually a goggle-life issue rather than a fix. The goggle care page.
• Snowboard binding screws. Not a failure, a maintenance item: they back out with vibration and should be checked. That is on the stance page.

Why this all happens in the cold

Plastic gets brittle at low temperature, which is why a buckle that survived a hundred days snaps on a January morning at the car. Metal contracts slightly, making a worn slider fit worse. And lubricant thickens, so a zip that was stiff at home is genuinely stuck at the top of a lift.

Two practical consequences. Do the annual clean and lubricate in autumn rather than discovering the problem on the first cold day. And be gentler with everything at low temperatures than you would be indoors: the force that would have freed a stuck zip in a warm room is the force that breaks it at 10F.

When to take it in

Bent or missing zip teeth, a zip that has to come out of the garment, and anything involving seam tape are all specialist work. So is a boot shell that needs punching out for a pressure point, which is routine for a bootfitter and impossible at home.

Everything else on this page is a two to ten-minute job with a pair of pliers and a replacement part, which is worth knowing because hardware failure is one of the more common reasons people replace gear that had years left in it. The lifespan page puts that in context, and the fabric repair page covers the other half of keeping a jacket alive.