My tent zipper broke in a downpour on Mount Hood

I was up near Timberline Lodge last October when a surprise storm rolled in. The main door zipper on my 3-person tent just gave out halfway through the night, letting in a cold spray of rain. I spent the next two hours holding the flap shut with one hand and trying to sleep sitting up. The next morning, everything in the vestibule was soaked. Has anyone else had a tent fail like that, and what did you do to fix it on the spot?

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3 Comments

dylanjohnson6mo ago

Been there, duct tape saved my bacon in a similar downpour last spring.

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elliotjenkins6mo ago

Honestly, that's rough, but a tent's vestibule isn't really meant to be waterproof anyway.

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elliotjenkins5mo ago

Notice how we expect everything to do double duty these days, even a tent's vestibule. We want it to store gear, keep out rain, maybe even double as a mudroom. Sometimes the simplest tools work best when we stop asking them to be something they are not.

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