The pole snapped on the third day, eight miles from the trailhead at Big Sandy, on a steep descent off the shoulder of Mitchell Peak.
Tomas Lendvai heard it before he felt it, a dry crack that did not register as his pole until he put his weight on it and the lower section folded under him.
He went down hard onto his right knee. The pack, twenty-two kilograms with a wet tent and four days of food still in it, drove him another foot down the slope before he caught himself with his remaining pole.
He sat down on a rock and looked at the wreckage. The carbon shaft had split lengthwise just below the lower locking mechanism, peeling open in two clean strips like green wood. The aluminium tip was still attached. The handle and upper section were intact.
He was eight miles from his car. He had two days of food. He was alone. He needed the pole.
Lendvai has tested trekking poles for outdoor magazines since 2003. He has broken twenty-seven of them in the field. He has a working catalogue of repair techniques.
The first decision is whether to repair at all. A pole with a damaged handle but a sound shaft can usually be finished with the bare shaft. A pole with a snapped shaft is harder. A pole with a split shaft, as he had now, is the worst of the three because the split will keep propagating under load.
He took inventory. Repair tape from the bottom of his pack: about four feet of duct tape wrapped around a Bic lighter, the standard backcountry carry. One spare tent stake, a Y-stake of aluminium, twenty centimetres long. A strip of Tyvek from his groundsheet, which he had brought as a pack-cover patch.
The principle of a field pole repair is internal splinting. The carbon shaft is hollow. The repair material goes inside, along the line of the break, and is then wrapped externally to keep the splint in place and the split from spreading.
He pushed the tent stake down into the lower section of the shaft, hammering it gently with a stone until it seated past the split. The Y-shape of the stake was a problem. It would not slide in cleanly. He bent the wings flatter against a flat rock, working slowly because aluminium will crack if you push it too far in cold weather, and tried again.
Second time the stake went in to about fifteen centimetres past the break.
Then the Tyvek. He cut a strip about ten centimetres wide and twenty long, rolled it into a tight cylinder, and forced it into the upper section of the shaft above the break, packing it down with a second stick. The Tyvek expanded slightly inside the shaft, giving the repair a snug interior fit.
Then the wrap. Duct tape on a cold carbon shaft does not adhere well. He warmed each piece between his palms for ten seconds before applying it, starting fifteen centimetres above the break and spiralling down past it by the same distance.
Two layers. Tight. He used almost all his tape.
The pole was now half an inch fatter at the break than at either end. The locking mechanism still slid. The grip felt different in his hand, slightly off-balance from the added mass at the lower third.
He stood up, put light weight on it, increased the load. It held.
It held for the next two days, including a creek crossing on the morning of day four where he leaned almost his full body weight on it to stay upright in moving water.
When he reached the car at Big Sandy, the duct tape had begun to delaminate at one edge. The internal splint was still in place. The shaft had not split further.
He retired the pole when he got home and kept it on a peg in his garage workshop as a teaching object.
The lesson, he tells his students at the alpine training courses in the Stubai, is not the specific repair. The lesson is that a pack should carry, by default, the things that turn a small disaster into an inconvenience.
Four feet of duct tape weighs nothing. A spare tent stake is multi-purpose. A strip of groundsheet patch material is six grams. None of these items will save your life. All of them can save your day.
