I suppose I should keep a tally but I don’t.
The Top 10 Bad Things That Happen To Gear, in no particular order. Outside of normal wear and tear, more or less…
1. Melting (backed into the stove, embers, dryers, heaters…)
2. Ultralight gear breaking from being ultralight.
3. Dog or other animal ate it.
4. Tore a hole in it. (tree branches #1 cause).
5. Saggy pants splitting at the crotch (wear a belt, dude)
6. Straps pulling out of seams (mostly poor construction, more on this later).
7. Zipper sliders getting squashed.
8. Zippers breaking from dirt and general wear.
9. Zippers breaking from not being threaded correctly at the bottom.
10. Lack of care: salt and dirt degradation of fabric
Now, for normal wear and tear –
- Worn down zipper sliders.
- Worn plastic on male pin at the bottom of a zipper.
- Worn out Velcro.
- Worn out elastic.
- Aged fabric – worn through, UV degraded, weakened
- PUĀ and other treatments/coatings flaking off
Zippers, Velcro and elastic are all fixable, more or less. The rest? Not so much.