The most common failure of a zipper in the outdoors is when the zipper parts after closed. If your zipper is a coil zipper–most zippers used for outdoor gear are–then the problem probably lies with the zipper pull. Often the zipper pull becomes deformed and that deformity prevents the coils from meshing, which causes the zipper to split open after you closed it. You can imagine the desire to fix a broken zipper on your tents canopy during bug season in a boreal forest, and you can imagine a run to the boat to grab your emergency duct tape. Before you apply tape, try a quick emergency fix for your broken zipper.

Quick Emergency Zipper Fix

Anna Latz of Heavy Duty Sewing says that the easiest emergency fix for zippers is to attempt to reform the zipper pull using a pliers. Before you attempt any fix, gently slide the zipper pull down to the beginning of the zipper. Then, using the pliers crimp the bottom of the zipper, like shown in the picture. Crimp the other side. After you compress both sides, try the zipper. If the zipper fails, try again. Work gently so you don’t over-compress the zipper pull, or, because the metal weakens with each crimp, break the zipper pull.

If this quick fix works, you won’t have to get the duct tape out. This is a good thing, because duct tape, Latz says, often leads to a more expensive repair. The adhesive in duct tape can ruin the fabric surrounding the zipper which makes the zipper repair more extensive.

A More Permanent Zipper Repair

Once you’re out of the wilderness and back home, take your broken zipper to a local seamstress. The seamstress will be able to replace the zipper pull quickly and inexpensively. If you have time, most outdoor gear and clothing manufacturers offer good, if not lifetime, warranties. These warranties usually cover zipper failures. In the past, I’ve sent in several items for zipper repairs. Turn around time for garments from both Marmot and Sierra Designs–both YKK zippers–was under six weeks. Sometimes, stores carry extra zipper pulls to fix coats and they can complete a repair in under an hour.

Prevent Broken Zippers

As with any mechanical device, zippers wear out the more they’re used, but using them correctly helps extend their lives. The single most important action you can take to extend the life of your zipper is to use the zipper pull to open the zipper. Opening the zipper using the flap of fabric above the zipper pull creates stress on your zipper pull and causes the bottom to part and deform. Also, yanking on the zipper pull when fabric is stuck in it, can cause deformity. It’s best to gently work the fabric out of the zipper pull.

A guest post by Amy Funk of Campgirlz.com

To talk about why I canoe, I have to first address my passion for the natural world. Sometimes tragedy can push you to find comfort. The year I turned six, my brother was killed in a car accident in July. A few months later, one of my Mom’s best friends died of a brain tumor, and the following month, my cousin was killed in a fire started by a Christmas tree. I remember this time as very confusing and scary. I also remember this time as my first glimpse of the healing solitude of the outdoors.

Trying to deal with all the emotions and turmoil, I started to create secret forts around my neighborhood. I had many “hiding” spots in various bushes and trees in my neighborhood. I am not sure if it was the grief or my natural personality, but I spent a lot of time alone in my hiding places. I was happy and peaceful in solitude. I loved to hear the wind, or watch a spider spin a web. I would follow ants around or look for ‘pillbugs’. I routinely would get in trouble because no one knew where I was and I couldn’t hear my Mom calling. I wanted to be outside at all times in all sorts of weather. I had a special affinity for following water. After a rain, I would follow the flow of water down our streets and check out the levels in a creek that ran through town. I would make play boats with leaves and send them off to see what course they would take. Over the years, I kept those hideouts and my fondness for being alone in nature only grew. I never could understand why others could not feel the complete beauty and healing touch of just hanging out in wild places.

My First Experience with Canoeing

My first experience with canoeing was in middle school, through a neighbor named Les. He owned property along a local river, the Mackinaw. While he worked on his property, he would set four of us neighbor girls adrift in canoes down the river. At the end of the day, he would pick us up downstream. I instantly fell in love with canoeing and the flow of the river. The river sights, sounds and smells were all new to me and I felt like I had found another hidden world. In many ways, the river became another secret hiding spot for me. To this day, I am madly in love with rivers. The idea of traveling along waterways captures my passion in a way few things do.

My Yellowstone, the 'Mud Puppy', we did a very small creek, very twisty, lots of gradient, some portages. It was so fun. I love to portage, by the way. I guess I am crazy.

During college, I worked as a camp counselor and naturalist for various Girl Scout camps in Illinois. In all serious, one of the main reasons I accepted an assistantship and went to graduate school was to have some more summers as a naturalist. I know a lot of people can relate to the horrors of giving up on living in the woods! I owe most of what I learned about canoeing to a lady named Linda at a camp along the Mississippi in Northwestern Illinois. She shared her passion and expertise on canoeing with me. I learned to teach girls to canoe and learned some boat control and technique. She was a huge influence on me and one of the reasons that I want to keep reaching out to girls to encourage them to explore. She was the first one who showed me that girls can do this type of thing. Although I always had a dream to take off and explore by canoe, gradually, in my 20s I stopped canoeing. I had only used aluminum tandems and no longer had any partners to go out with. I focused on my other passion, hiking, and exploring the woods by foot.

Rediscovering Paddling

Fast forward to about 2005. I had a health scare that I thought was serious. When the doctor originally talked to me, I thought I was ‘not long for this earth’. As I sat in her office after she told me, my first thought was of my family, especially my kids. But, my second thought surprised me! I actually almost said out loud, “I haven’t canoed enough rivers.” Driving home, I had an almost uncontrollable desire to be back on a river. I had to go through surgery and a biopsy to get the results, which were thankfully benign. While I waited, I joined a few message boards on the internet. I read about lightweight solo canoes, and was ecstatic! I didn’t know anything about all the new materials and options. I also realized there were people out there who loved the outdoors as much as I did. I could hardly read trip reports about Canadian Rivers because I wanted to be there so bad.

A picture of my Mad River Independence, 'Gypsy 42' in the Boundary Waters during a Mom-daughter trip. That is my daughter, Dani, living the life.

I bought a kevlar Mad River Independence. (She is gorgeous). I joined a local canoe club and started canoeing down my beloved Mackinaw again. Over the next couple of years, I bought more canoes and became fully entrenched in my new addiction. I took a couple of white water classes. And, last year, I attained one of my dreams to go on a Canadian River trip. I was able to get in with a group that did the Kopka River. It was so beautiful and serene and remote. My favorite memory is on a duff day or rest day. I took the canoe out by myself near a spectacular waterfall. I sat there for a long time, holding my place in the frothy water, listening to that powerful water and watching the churning of the waters. That really is what life is about for me. I find such serenity and clarity in those moments.

What Paddling Means to Me

Just a few months ago, I started a website to encourage girls to explore nature. Especially today, there can be a lot of pressure on girls to attain all sorts of superficial and meaningless stereotypes. It would be great if every girl had the natural world to fall back on. A ‘secret’ place to be herself and find her truth. Now that I am getting older, I lean towards nature even more. It helps me accept aging and still know my place in the world. I still love to go exploring as much as I did when I was six. To travel by canoe is to follow the path of my heart and soul.

About Campgirlz.com:

Campgirlz.com was created to encourage girls of all ages, from 1-99, to explore nature! It is dedicated to all girls, young and old, who have a passion for the outdoors. Is your passion hiking, bird watching, skiing, canoeing, kayaking, camping, and/or star gazing? Do you like to explore & play in the dirt? Then, you are you a camp girl. Don’t worry if you live in a city- your own backyard or local park can be a wild place to explore.

Over at Kayakquixotica.com, Derrik asks, “I know there are lots of very experienced paddlers out there.  Help me out and share how you got into paddling in the first place…” Taking up his challenge, I posted a comment on his blog. Many more comments followed mine, and I found each comment interesting and enlightening. From the comments, it’s easy to see how appealing the sport is to all types of people.  The more I thought about this, the clearer it became to me that doing a post on Nessmuking about how I got into paddling would be a perfect way for me to expand the topic.

How I Got into Paddling

Growing up, my parents owned a beat up red fiberglass canoe. The hull was built from fiberglass mat or was sprayed into the canoe mold by a fiberglass chopper gun. It weighed a ton, and without a portage yoke, we hauled it around by the ends taking many rests on the way to the dock. Once or twice a summer, the canoe sprouted a hole, so we’d try to repair it using a fiberglass repair kit from the auto parts store–those repairs never seemed to hold.

My siblings, cousins, and I paddled the canoe on the backwaters of the Mississippi River near Savanna, Illinois. My aunt owned a cabin sandwiched between the railroad tracks and the water. A steep wooden stairway lead down to a wooden dock where we launched out into the backwaters. Paddling the shores, we hunted frogs, fished, and explored. We dodged water snakes pretending they were water moccasins. Despite warnings from our parents, we explored beyond the back waters into the main channel.

On one memorable adventure, we wandered the backwaters until we dead-ended in front of a small opening between islands leading to the channel. Water from the main channel poured through the opening creating a small drop from the channel into the backwaters. I didn’t know if we could paddle through current like that, because we’d never tried. We got a run into the current with all our strength, but the current stopped us. Luckily, we stopped near an upstream rock, which we pulled and pushed on to get into the channel. Looking back, it was so shallow that I should have just stepped out of the canoe and walked it out, but the spirit of adventure kept us in the canoe. It was probably that day, pushing our limits, trying to see what we could do, exploring boundaries to see what was around the corner, that helped form my drive to keep pushing myself in outdoor sports.

Where I Went From There

After those early adventures in our fiberglass canoe, I expanded my outdoor sport interests to include backpacking, mountain biking, and climbing. My studies in college and the job I worked to pay for it didn’t leave time to explore the outdoors, but with an excellent mountain biking trail near the university, it seemed like the perfect sport to take up. I spent my free time riding 10 miles to the track, 10 miles around, and then back home. In summers, I worked for the DNR and in the IC Park and Recreation department. I tried to be outside as much as I could and desired to embark on a long paddling trip.

College ended, and I found myself working seasonal outdoor jobs. During winter, a buddy of mine and I talked about paddling a canoe down the Mississippi River. In the end, because of the cost of buying a canoe and a special on PBS that we both watched, we decided to hike the Appalachian Trail instead. Six months later I found myself back in Iowa for the winter and when summer came I discovered climbing.

Both rock and ice climbing consumed my every free minute for years. I climbed all over the country including my two favorite climbs–a winter ascent of Devil’s Tower via the classic Durrance Route and a long ice route in Smuggler’s Notch. On both climbs, my climbing partner and I rappelled down in the night.

At some point during those climbing years, while working for a retail operation, I discovered kayaking. I bought my first touring kayak, a Dagger Magellan, and used it to explore Iowa’s waterways.

Rediscovering Paddling

Those explorations took me on trips down the Maquoketa River, the Iowa, the Upper Iowa, and out onto the Mississippi. It didn’t even occur to me that kayaks were designed to be paddled in open water. I read the magazines filled with worldly adventures, but with all the waterway’s of Iowa, I had no desire to paddle anywhere else.

After a season or two with the kayak, I sold it. Some years later, I bought a solo canoe and started to build a cedar strip tandem canoe in my apartment’s living room. During the years between selling the kayak, my focus and wanderlust that had been quelled by the Appalachian Trail reappeared. New disposable income that allowed for climbing travel also opened up my eyes to the wonders in the paddling world. I had always known about the Boundary Waters, so I decided to go.

In 2001, just days after the September 11th attack, my friend Steve and I journeyed north with two solo canoes. The town of Grand Marais, which I instantly fell in love with, was a ghost town. We put in on a route along the border. Several times a day, fighter jets flew along the border above us. At camp, we tried to catch news about the attack on a radio I brought with me. We had great campfires built with Canadian wood. We paddled on seeing no one until our last night. On the portage to the lake with our campsite, we ran into two guys who were heading out of the BWCA. They hadn’t heard the news, so we didn’t tell them.

After discovering the BWCA, there was no going back. I fell in love with the place, gave up climbing, learned to freestyle my solo canoe, and went on several Boundary Water trips a year, including many solo trips covering 100s of miles. (Links highlight just a few.) I fell so heavily in love with the Boundary Waters that during one solo trip, I knew that my place in life would be to move near it. Somehow I knew I’d have to leave my great job, the security it provided, to move into the unknown.

Back in Iowa, many of my friends were kayakers and rolling looked fun. So, I built a skin-on-frame kayak, got into rolling, built a plywood version of the skin-on-frame and used it to paddle 500+ miles of the Mississippi River. Although just the section between Jacobson, Minnesota and Dubuque, Iowa, it gave me a taste of the adventure I could have had if I had canoed the Mississippi instead of hiked the Appalachian Trail. Paddling became all-consuming. It was no longer a hobby, it was my life.

The Move North

Just after the Mississippi River trip, I moved to Grand Marais to be closer to the paddling in the Boundary Waters. I started Nessmuking.com. I paddled often in the BWCA using one of my two solo canoes or my tandem canoe. I also discovered kayaking again on Lake Superior.

Kayaking on Lake Superior is like kayaking on a freshwater ocean. Waves, open water, and its miles upon miles of shoreline grabbed my attention. Using what I learned from my other kayak builds, I designed a new kayak and used it to explore the lake. During that time, I started guiding kayaking for a resort, and obtained instructor certification from the American Canoe Association. I took kayak trips to places like Georgian Bay, Lake Nipigon, Norway, and many locations on Lake Superior. I built another kayak and designed custom boats for other paddlers.

Eventually, my kayaking cumulated in a failed attempt to paddle around all five Great Lakes. Early in the trip, I developed tendonitis in my elbows, something that has plagued me for years, and just before the trip I had re-injured an old climbing injury. I knew I had to cancel the trip when I wasn’t able to even hold a port-side stern rudder on following two-foot waves. Since the trip, I’ve slowly been able to paddle short distances again, but I continue physical therapy in hopes that the pain will eventually go away and that I’ll be able to attempt a long expedition someday.

And that brings me to today.

What Paddling Means to Me Now

Knowing what paddling means to me is almost impossible to put my finger on. For over 10 years, there hasn’t been a day in my life I didn’t think about paddling. If I wasn’t out paddling, I wished I was. My injury and having to quit my expedition forced me to look elsewhere for outdoor recreation–to look elsewhere to try to redefine myself. It challenged me to discover who I was again. I took up light-duty mountain biking, trained for a bike tour, and road my bike from Duluth to Dubuque, Iowa. But, I just came back to paddling. It’s just who I am. I paddle. Other than Ilena, it’s what makes my life complete.

What’s your story?

Please, share.

A guest post by Scott Schuldt of canoepost.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009 – You Can Tell

I woke up early this morning. It was dark and I was in bed, but I was already in my canoe. Fall is here. It will be unusually warm today, maybe 15 or 20 degrees above normal. The thermometer will say summer. The simplest and easiest measurement will lead one astray, as simple and easy information often does, in all things. It is fall and while at the scientific level there are dozens of measurements that say so, it is the qualitative that tells me so. The light has changed. Gone is the harsh washed out scenery of summer days when my photographs were all about timing and the tricks of nature; early light or dramatic clouds that filter rays and cast shadows. The fall light brings deep rich tones and contrasts. In fall, my photographs are about composition first, and keeping the shots with good light. The air has changed as well. The nights are longer, cooler and damper and day seems to struggle to return summer’s warmth. The longer nights bring unplanned but orchestrated smells and flavors. It’s not of showy flowers, but of the hidden deepness that sustains life. Summer air was tinned spices while fall is fresh cardamom seeds crushed this very second under my rolling pin. Winter will change all that, deadening the spices, but it will bring its own beauty in an even trade. Observations – the lily pads are browning at the edges. They show a summer’s wear with chunks missing and deep tears. A flock of 100 coots has returned to the bay. Cormorants are sitting on the new dirtbergs that have hit the surface in mid-bay. I spot two green backed herons, some great blue herons, wood ducks, and two horned grebes.

About the View from the Canoe Project

‘The View from the Canoe’ is an art project that has followed a two-year long evolution that started with my getting back into canoeing.  Seattle is primarily a sea kayak area, but even after 20 years, I just never connected with kayaks in the way that I do with canoes.  In 2008, I bought a used canoe and a few months later started blogging my 3 to 4 day a week trips in and around Seattle, writing my observations of the natural changes throughout the year and reflections on how people see and use the water, both in the present and in the past.  Recently, I started recording my better writings in my own voice, which lead to adding photographs, which lead to taking video and recording background sound effects.  Still a work in progress, The View from the Canoe may end up being a short documentary film, art video or “book on DVD”.  As often happens with an art project, I am just along for the ride.

On the surface, the project documents and reflects on nature and man’s use and abuse of water.  Underlying that, the work also shows how I have managed to find a sense of wilderness while in the midst of a major urban area.  Most of the writing happens in the canoe, as does the photography, film and sound effect work.

Scott Schuldt’s Bio –

Scott Schuldt is a Seattle based artist working in content- and concept-driven art (non-fiction, detailed and often narrative).  Born and raised in Minnesota and schooled in engineering, Scott dropped the engineering career in 2005 to pursue artwork on a full time basis.  His primary medium is hand-sewn beadwork, but has increasingly moved towards working with whatever medium will get the story across.  ‘The View from the Canoe’ is his first step into writing and film work.

The View from the Canoe Blog is found at- canoepost.blogspot.com

Scott’s website – www.scottschuldt.com