Pro tip: the $9 poncho that saved my butt on the Presidential Range

Two summers back I did a hut traverse in the White Mountains and packed for warm weather because the forecast looked fine at sea level. About a mile below Mount Madison the sky opened up and my fancy rain shell soaked through in maybe twenty minutes. I had a $9 emergency poncho from a gas station in Gorham shoved at the bottom of my pack as a joke and I put it on over everything, hood and all. It looked ridiculous, crinkled like a chip bag with every step, but I stayed dry the whole walk to the hut while my buddy's $200 jacket was basically a wet sock. The thing weighs nothing so now it lives in my pack on every trip no matter what the weather app claims. The catch is they shred if you look at them wrong, so treat it like a one and done. Anyone else carry cheap gear as a backup and end up trusting it more than the expensive stuff?