Poles repair

[Leo L.]

During our hike in Greenland (Arctic Circle Trail) I did a stupid move and broke one pole of my Exped Venus II.
It happened that at setup in the evening the tent was wet from the night before, I tensioned the fly to the max and during the night a warm wind dried the fabric, by this the tension increased.
In the morning I hurried to get out of the tent and stumbled against the pole, which broke with a hard cracking noise.

Groenland_08-2023 (156).jpg

Luckily, Exped provided a repair sleeve which allowed me to perform a quick field repair.

Groenland_08-2023 (156b).JPG

Back home, I contacted the dealer to ask for a replacement pole.
Exped asked back for some serial number, purchase date and color of the tent, which I gave them.
A few weeks later I received a package of 2 pole segments and 2 repair sleeves - just for free!

Well thats some kind of good service, I think. Thank you, Exped!

[RockDoc]

You haven't hiked much if you haven't broken a pole. The problem is that they fail when you need them most, like crossing a raging river. Some use solid steel ski poles instead of the techie alloy poles for this reason.

Your pole is likely greatly weakened. You can't just put a bandaid sleeve on them and expect them to support your bodyweight in an emergency.

[gpburdelljr]

You haven't hiked much if you haven't broken a pole. The problem is that they fail when you need them most, like crossing a raging river. Some use solid steel ski poles instead of the techie alloy poles for this reason.

Your pole is likely greatly weakened. You can't just put a bandaid sleeve on them and expect them to support your bodyweight in an emergency.

He broke a tent pole, not a hiking pole.

[Leo L.]

@RockDoc:
The repair sleeve provided by the manufacturer (and which I luckily carried on this hike) is a piece of aluminium tube.
The bandaid is applied to just hold the aluminium tube in place.

[Patrickjd9]

I have a similar request in to Big Agnes right now. I went to restring the shock cord in the poles of my Copper Spur UL2 tent and saw that the female end of one of the poles was damaged.

[Leo L.]

Yeah, this seem to happen more often when the elastic cord becomes less elastic or even lose over time, that the joints won't slip together completely, thus damaging the sleeve eventually.
I had this happen at my MSR tent, where the shock cord happened to be of poor quality, ending up with two damaged sleeves.
I solved the issue with the MSR by producing a tight-fitting steel sleeve, slipping it over the broken female joint.

Getting a new pole segment would be the far better solution.
Good luck!

[Patrickjd9]

I completed this restringing job about a week ago. The key is that you cut the cord at only about 80% of the total length of the pole section you're stringing. This wasn't in their instruction video, and I looked it up independently. I did the work in the garage to have room to stretch the poles out.

Big Agnes sold me the replacement pole for $7.00 plus shipping. They have changed the colors on the tent in the meantime, so I now have one gold pole in a line of dark gray ones.

Think I can live with that.

[Leo L.]

When I got the replacement cord for restringing, they told me to cut it to a legth "one pole segment shorter than total". It comes down to about 80%, like you said.
When doing this job the first time, I used a vise-grip wrenche to keep the tensioned cord in place.
Of course, I didn't carry such a tool on our Greenland hike, so I just put my knee on the tensioned cord to keep it from slipping back, which just worked the same.
And yes, I now have one dark-grey segment within the golden poles, and easily would live with that.

[Patrickjd9]

When doing this job the first time, I used a vise-grip wrenche to keep the tensioned cord in place.
Of course, I didn't carry such a tool on our Greenland hike, so I just put my knee on the tensioned cord to keep it from slipping back, which just worked the same.

I don't have a good grip due to arthritis in my hands and used a spring clamp to hold the cord. Don't think I would have been able to tension the shock cord enough to have been able to hold it with my knee.

Also, the package of cord that Big Agnes sold wouldn't have been long enough to do all the poles if it was cut full-length.