Hiking Poles

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As the weather gets nicer and we’re getting out more I thought I’d talk a bit about various pieces of hiking gear. Top on my list for gear that’s essential to both day hiking and backpacking are hiking poles.

For years now I haven’t gone on a hike without poles. Quite often when I mention them to people though I get the response that they’re only for “older” people. That could be but I wish I had started using them 20 years earlier. Here, in my mind, are some of the benefits.

They help your knees. This is probably the most obvious benefit. Especially going downhill your knees take a lot of abuse. Using poles to cushion your steps can make a huge difference in the amount of force applied to your knees each step and help with knee pain issues. I see a lot of people who carry their poles in their pack going uphill and only use them on the way down, but they actually help immensely going uphill as well. Using the poles uphill contributes to more of a full body workout and gets your arms involved to help pull you up the hill.
They help with stability. As we get older most people tend to lose some ability to balance and hiking poles can help even on level surfaces but that’s not really what I’m talking about. For me poles help give stability in a variety of situations. Stream crossings for example. I don’t know how many times I’ve used poles to safely get across streams with dry feet whereas without poles it would have been almost impossible. Poles give you more contact points with the ground and often when hopping from rock to rock across streams I’ll stop on a small rock and gather myself to move to the next rock. Without poles I would be balancing on one foot and usually end up stepping into the stream. It’s not just streams though. Poles help provide stability crossing almost any slippery surface such as roots and logs.
Along those lines, poles provide leverage to jump further. When crossing streams and other obstacles I can probably jump at least a foot further using poles to help vault me across the object over what I could jump without the poles.
Poles can help cushion a fall. I don’t care how good your balance is, if you spend enough time hiking you will slip and fall. Or, maybe it’s just me. I’ve fallen many times though and in almost every fall the poles have helped me not to hit the ground so hard. Leveraging the pole can turn a potentially dangerous hard fall into a slow motion comedy routine.
Poles can save weight with your tent. There is a whole class of tent that uses trekking poles for the tent poles rather than dedicated poles that come with the tent, in fact most ultralight tents are trekking pole tents. Eliminating the dedicated tent poles most tents come with can easily shave a pound or two off the weight of the tent and the weight savings leaves room for other items, or just makes your pack lighter and reduces fatigue.
Unless you are spending a night or two in the wilderness this might not occur to you, but spend enough time outside and eventually you’ll need to dig yourself a cat hole. Hopefully. I carry a dedicated trowel for digging holes but the forest floor can be surprisingly tough to dig through and using the tip of a pole can help break up the ground and more easily allow you to dig down the six or eight inches you need to safely bury your business. Leave no trace….

Issues with hiking poles

Probably the biggest issue with hiking poles are that both hands are now occupied. Of course you can just use one pole and sometimes I’ll do that but for the most part I always use both together. I’m not someone who normally eats while walking but many people are and it’s inconvenient to juggle two poles and a sandwich… More importantly sometimes you need your hands to scramble over obstacles in which case the poles have to temporarily be stored somewhere.
I’ve not seen this discussed anywhere but I’ve observed that heavy use of trekking poles on trails is contributing to erosion. This is mainly on steep slopes where the trail runs horizontally across the hill. Poles have become very popular for the reasons I listed above but I’ve noticed that on the downhill side of the trail the constant poking of holes in the dirt breaks the trail up and makes it easier for the trail to get washed away. For this reason I try to avoid placing my pole to close to the edge of the trail and might just use one pole for that section of trail, only using it on the uphill side of the trail.

Hiking pole recommendation

You can easily spend over $100 on poles but for my money the hiking poles Costco sells every spring are a phenomenal value at $35. It was funny that as I was typing this I noticed a Youtube short video from Dan Becker, who is a popular Youtube hiking poster. He recommends the Fizan Compact 3 aluminum trekking pole as a great “cheap” pole at $70. I strongly disagree.

Costco’s Cascade Mountain Tech pole is half the money. Fizan has a great reputation and I’m sure their poles are fantastic but for a lot of people $70 isn’t cheap. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better pole for $35 though.
The Fizan pole is aluminum and may be a couple of ounces lighter per pole (literally the only benefit over the CMT) but the CMT is carbon fiber and much stronger while still weighing under a pound for the two poles. Carbon fiber has a reputation for shattering when it breaks as opposed to aluminum which bends but I don’t know how many times I’ve gotten a CMT pole stuck between two rocks or in a crevasse and thought for sure it would snap and they never have.
The Fizan uses a twist lock to extend the pole. Every twist lock I’ve ever used eventually slips. The CMT pole uses a cam lock which is much more secure.
The Fizan uses EVA foam for the grip portion. The CMT uses cork. IMHO cork is the only way to go. Cork absorbs sweat and water and doesn’t get slippery when wet like EVA does. It’s just a much more comfortable handle.
The Fizan extends to 52 inches. The CMT goes to 54 inches. It doesn’t seem like a big deal but it can be for taller people or, more importantly for me, some trekking pole tents need a longer pole to be set up properly. The CMT works for almost all tents without any other extensions.
I don’t know about the Fizan but CMT sells replacement parts on their website. After many hundreds of miles I had the tip of a pole come off and rather than replace the whole pole I was able to just buy the lower section and keep using the rest of the pole.

There are really only a couple of small complaints I have with the CMT poles.

First, due simply to the nature of the product mix at Costco, the poles are only for sale a couple of months a year. Costco has carried the CMT poles for years but only roughly in March and April. I was at the warehouse a couple of days ago and they still had them but I expect they’ll be gone in a couple of weeks.
Second, the straps tend to not stay at the length they’re set to. Over the course of a few hours they will move and get to a point where they need to be readjusted. To be fair this happens on other poles I’ve used as well.

That brings me to my last point, how to use poles.

First, in most cases take the rubber tips off. Poles usually come with rubber tips preinstalled on the pole. I see people on the trail all the time with these still on their poles. The rubber tips work great for walking on smooth surfaces such as concrete or pavement but they don’t work well on dirt and rock. Take the rubber tips off and you’ll find the pole finished with a carbide tip. The carbide tip works great on trail and protects the pole from wear. Eventually you’ll wear the carbide down and at that point the bottom section needs to be replaced but I’ve put well over 1,000 miles on the CMT pole before the tip wore out. Also, the rubber tips are normally just held on by friction and if you leave them on while hiking on trails you’re probably just going to have them eventually fall off and get lost anyway.
Most poles come with a variety of other attachments such as baskets which you can screw on. The baskets are for hiking in snow and help keep the pole from “post-holing”, basically helping to keep the pole on the surface of the snow rather than punching all the way through the snow to the ground below.
Use the straps around your wrist and don’t grip the pole tightly. If you just grab the pole your hand is quickly going to get tired. By putting the strap around your wrist you take most of the weight and stress off your hand and you’ll be able to use the pole all day.
Also, consider gloves to avoid getting blisters. I usually wear some type of glove to keep my hands warm in the winter anyway but I also wear gloves in the summer, both to avoid blisters but also to prevent sunburn. Outdoor Research makes a great sun glove that I’ve worn for many years. As an added benefit the fabric wicks sweat and helps keep my hands cool on hot days.
There are whole Reddit threads on how to use poles and the conversations can get heated. There is really no right or wrong way. Just try it and see what feels good to you. Normally if I’m on steep terrain, both up and downhill, I’ll swing my arms together plant both poles at once and then use the poles as leverage. On more flat ground I might use them individually with the normal swinging of the arms. Either way works so experiment and you’ll probably find yourself using both methods depending on the situation. When you’re jumping or balancing yourself plant both poles at the same time so that you always have at least three points of contact on the ground.

So that’s it. More than you ever wanted to know about poles. Feel free to add a comment if I’ve missed anything.