Field repairs start at home, with a repair kit small enough to live permanently in your tent bag. The essentials are a strip of adhesive tent repair tape, a needle and strong thread, a short length of seam sealer, a pole repair sleeve (a short metal tube that slides over a broken pole section), and a few spare zipper sliders. Add a couple of safety pins, a small length of cord, and a patch of matching fabric, and you can handle nearly every common tent failure.

Keep the kit somewhere you can find it in the dark and rain, not buried at the bottom of your pack. Many hikers tape the repair sleeve to a pole section or stash the kit in the tent stuff sack itself. Check the kit once a season: adhesive tape loses its stickiness with age and heat, and seam sealer tubes dry out. A repair kit you have never opened is fine, as long as you know what is in it before you need it.

Small tears in a tent fly or inner tent are the easiest field repair. Clean the area as best you can, dry it if possible, and apply adhesive repair tape to both sides of the tear if you can reach both sides. Press firmly and smooth out air bubbles, since a well-applied patch can last the rest of a trip and often much longer. For a tear along a seam or under tension, stitch it first with a simple running stitch, then tape over the stitching to seal it.

Larger tears need a fabric patch and stitching. Cut a patch that overlaps the tear by a couple of centimetres on every side, stitch around its edge, and seal the stitches with seam sealer once you are back in dry conditions. In a storm, a quick tape patch is better than a perfect repair attempted in the rain: stop the water getting in first, and do the neat job later when conditions allow. Always patch from the outside for rain protection, and from the inside as well if the tear is large.

A snapped or bent pole section is alarming but very fixable. Slide the metal repair sleeve over the broken section, centring it on the break, and tape it firmly in place so it cannot slide off. If you do not have a sleeve, a sturdy tent stake, a thick stick, or even a rolled-up piece of cardboard splinted alongside the break and taped tightly can hold the pole straight enough to pitch the tent for the night.

If the pole is bent rather than broken, try to straighten it gently by hand, bending it back a little at a time rather than forcing it all at once, since aluminium poles can snap if bent sharply. A pole that is creased or kinked is weaker than before, so treat that tent section gently, avoid over-tensioning the guy lines on that side, and replace the section when you get home. Never try to pitch a tent with a broken pole unrepaired: the uneven stress can tear the fabric or snap neighbouring sections.

Zippers fail more often than fabric, usually because dirt, grit, or a snagged piece of fabric jams the slider. First, check for fabric caught in the teeth and gently work it free, pulling the slider back slightly rather than forcing it forward. Brush dirt out of the teeth with a soft brush or cloth, and if the zipper still sticks, a tiny amount of soap, lip balm, or candle wax rubbed along the teeth often frees it.

If the slider itself is worn and no longer closes the teeth properly, replace it with a spare slider of the same size, which is a five-minute job once you have done it at home. In an emergency, a safety pin can hold a door closed overnight, and a strip of tape can seal a gap temporarily. Keep tent zippers clean on every trip by brushing them before packing up, and never force a jammed zipper: a torn zipper track is much harder to fix than a stuck slider.

Some damage is beyond field repair, like a large shredded fly or a pole set broken in several places. In that case, improvise shelter: pitch the tent as a windbreak, use a tarp or emergency bivvy if you carry one, or move to a more sheltered spot and wait out the weather. Knowing when to stop repairing and start improvising is part of backcountry skill. Most tent problems, though, are small, and a calm ten minutes with tape and a sleeve will get you back to a dry, comfortable night.