Twelve Things to Retire This Year (and Five You'd Be Mad to Bin)

Another twelve months of peat bog, gritstone and horizontal drizzle has a way of sorting the good kit from the stuff that merely looked good in the shop. If your gear cupboard currently resembles a crime scene of dead zips, muddy rucksacks and one sock that has given up entirely, welcome. Pull up a crate.

The 2026 kit reset is not about buying a whole new wardrobe. It is about being honest with yourself and spending money where it genuinely changes how a day on the hill feels. Below is the audit we run on our own kit every autumn, the five classics that deserve a repair rather than a bin bag, and the UK repair and resale routes that are actually worth your postage.

Run the three-question test first

Before you open a single product page, put every item through this:

1. Is it failing at its job, or does it just look tired? A stain is cosmetic. A jacket that soaks through in twenty minutes is a safety problem.
2. Can it be fixed for less than 40% of the price of a replacement? If yes, fix it. Almost always.
3. Have I used it more than six times this year? If not, the problem might be your calendar rather than your kit.

Twelve things worth replacing in 2026

1. The hardshell that wets out from the inside. Bead the water, wait, then check. If it soaks through but the fabric looks sound, it needs a wash and a reproof, not replacing. If the membrane is bubbling, crinkling or leaving damp patches on the inside, it has delaminated. That one is done.

2. Waterproof trousers with perished seam tape. Dead elastic hems and tape peeling like old wallpaper are not fixable at a sensible price. Cheap ones are false economy in a Scottish November.

3. Trail shoes with flattened lugs. Grip is safety equipment. If you can run a thumb across the outsole and feel nothing, they are now gardening shoes.

4. Approach shoes with a worn rand. Once the rubber has gone through to the leather on the toe, water gets in and the shoe starts to peel apart.

5. Sleeping mats with a slow leak. Two patches, a baffle that has collapsed or a mat you have to top up at 2am means it is time. Also check the R-value: a summer mat from 2015 is not a three-season mat in 2026.

6. Down bags that smell and clump. Here is the twist: wash it first. Most 'dead' bags are just dirty, and grease kills loft faster than age. If it is still flat after a proper wash and a tumble dry with balls, replace it.

7. Hydration bladders and soft flasks. Black mould in the tube is not a personality trait. They are cheap, they are disposable, and the bite valves go eventually anyway.

8. Micro-USB headtorches. USB-C is now the standard, the beams are better, and the batteries last longer. Keep the old one as a car spare, then move on.

9. Power banks that have quietly lost capacity. If a swollen power bank turns up in your drawer, stop using it immediately and take it to a household recycling centre. Do not put it in the general waste.

10. Base layers that have gone translucent. Merino that has been through 200 washes and now has armpit holes is not keeping you warm any more, it is just holding memories.

11. The daypack with a dying zip and no hip belt. A 20-litre sack that cannot comfortably carry 5kg is not a hill pack. Zips can be replaced, but if the harness is shot too, let it go.

12. Trekking poles with seized sections. Aluminium corrodes, ferrules stick and nobody has ever successfully un-seized a pole with WD-40 and hope. If a soapy twist and a warm room will not free it, retire it.

Five you should never throw away

1. A hardshell that only needs reproofing. A wash, a tumble and a decent DWR spray will buy you another two or three seasons for the price of a round of drinks. Peeling seam tape can be re-taped by a specialist for far less than new.

2. Leather boots built to be resoled. If your boots are stitched or welted rather than glued, a cobbler can put new rubber on them. That is a £70-ish job versus £200-plus for new boots, and they will fit your feet like they always did.

3. Simple aluminium or carbon poles. Most brands stock spare sections, locks and tips. Five minutes on a spares page and a pair you were about to bin is back in service.

4. A sleeping bag with a broken zip, a small tear or a snapped cord. Zips, baffles and shell fabric are all repairable, and a repair costs a fraction of a new bag.

5. A framed rucksack from a brand that stocks spares. Buckles, sternum straps, hip belt pockets and frames are replaceable on most decent packs. Check the warranty first: a few brands will fix or replace packs for free, years down the line.

UK repair routes that are actually worth it

• Scottish Mountain Gear (Aviemore) for tent repairs, pole sections, zips, waterproof jackets and reproofing. The go-to for anything with a membrane.
• Lancashire Sports Repairs (Rossendale) for boot resoles, zip replacements and jacket repairs, with a proper postal service.
• Alpkit Continuum for sleeping bag washes and repairs, plus jacket fixes. Send it in, get it back lofted.
• Brand warranty schemes are worth checking before anything else. Several outdoor brands run free or cheap repair services on their own kit, and a few offer lifetime guarantees on packs and hardware.
• Repair cafés and the Restart Project for headtorches, power banks and GPS gadgets. Your local library or community centre probably hosts one monthly.
• A decent local cobbler for anything leather. Ask before you assume they cannot do hiking boots.

Resale and rehoming

Before anything goes in the bin, try selling it. September to November is peak buying season on Vinted, eBay and Facebook Marketplace, because everyone else is doing exactly this audit. Photograph the flaws, be honest about the DWR, and price it to move.

Pre-loved outdoor specialists and kit resale collectives are worth a look too, and university climbing, hiking and mountaineering clubs will happily take functional kit off your hands. Anything genuinely worn out but clean can often go to a textile recycling point rather than landfill.

How to avoid a marketing-led purchase

Ignore the names. Look at the numbers: hydrostatic head, denier, fill power, R-value, weight in grams. A jacket described as 'storm-ready' means nothing if the spec sheet says 5,000mm, which is a light shower at best.

Buy last season's colour, wait thirty days before checking out, and write down what you actually want the item to do before you start browsing. Most of us do not need a new shell. We need to wash the one we have.

The Kit Up 2026 Gear Audit

We have put together a one-page checklist you can print and stick to the inside of the cupboard door. It lists all seventeen items above, with columns for condition, repair cost and replacement cost, so you can see at a glance which way the maths falls. Download it, work through the box one rainy Sunday, and then go and spend the money you saved on a train ticket instead.

Gear up. Get out. Go further.