Jacket Field Repair

The other day while stomping the short distance to my favorite drooling (drytooling san ice) crag the dreaded broken branch grabbed my Rab Neutrino Endurance Jacket that I had recently declared to be very cut resistant so I knew that this was mountain street justice in action and lost no mojo fretting over this large incision.

Just as I was trained in my Wilderness First Responder medical program, I quickly applied pressure with my hand to staunch the flow of feathers while we finished the approach to the Den. 

Lacking my usual bag of bandages, duct, and athletic tape due to them all being in my "work" repair kits, it was time for a bit of improvisation.  And although personally I've never been a fan of lots of stickers on helmets, cars, etc.; this time a sticker saved the day (and a lot of feathers) as illustrated below.

The incision caused by a broken fir branch along the trail, minimal feather loss at this point.

The crux of this procedure was removing the sticker intact from the stick clip that it was adorning.  Apologies to our sponsor Upslope that we didn't have one of yours on this key piece of cragging equipment.

The most important technique that I will need to film to make clear and to eliminate some liability is the use of a lighter to adhere the sticker to the jacket.  I've used this technique countless times over the year in tent repairs primarily with duct tape as the flame warms the tape adhesive enough to get a long-lasting result.  In this case, the lighter was just as important as the sticker as it wouldn't have adhered otherwise.  Guess it's time to find an Upslope sticker to replace this one!