It’s amazing this thread went 19 posts without any pole-bashers (just kidding milo)! I agree the poles are a life-saver in all the above mentioned ways, I use mine all the time.
The only thing I don’t like about them: when you’re taking a break and have them leaning against a tree, they always fall over right after you hoist that pack up on you back!
Rocky Trail
5 thru-hikes and 6000 “other” miles on the AT and I’ve never used sticks/poles. I’m 46 and have a “bad” knee. Had major surgery 25 years ago to repair 3 torn ligaments. Lekis are a marketing scam.
lone wolf
I’ve used two 48" bamboo poles that I glued bicycle handlebar grips to for years. I added the rubber feet you put on kitchen chairs to the bottoms and painted a few helpful runes on them praising the trail gods in a vain attempt to mollify the “Terrible Torrent” who seems to haunt my vacation weeks. They work great. Cheap too!
CitySlicker
I will second the vote for bamboo. They’re cheap, easy to replace, and you don’t have to worry about someone else walking away them 
george
I don’t think there’s are markieting scam, however I am a downhill skier, cheap b_st_rd, and nice guy. I going to try using my skiing poles and see how this works on my A.T hike starting in March.:lol
andrew van Ees
well, i love my Lekis… Having been hit by a speeding 18 wheeler and broke my hip, pelvis, legs, toes, etc. they really help me. I like the shocks as they absorb shocks on steep descents. Also, how the hell am I gonna set my tarp up on top of rock mountains without 'em?
Lately we’ve been hiking in Oregon w/o poles… I forgot how to walk without them…
ASWAH
Aswah
It is a fact that most people don’t trust anything that’s not marketed. If you put ads in Backpacker for sticks they would sell like hotcakes. Especially if you made them with some space-age material and put some squeaky springs in them. Then you could say how your modifications on the sticks beat what free sticks can offer. You could also tap into the ambient fear in the marketplace and of hiking in nature and offer yet another way to protect people from the fallacies of nature, including their frail bodies. Holding onto a real stick is just too much for some people.
Americans are suckers because we’ve been trained to be suckers. That’s what our economy is based on. Sticks just don’t put food on the table. But they do help your knees.
Tha Wookie
When I first saw the ads for hiking poles many years ago, I thought it was just another way to extract money from naive hikers. Man was I was wrong. I find poles one of the most useful pieces of equipment I own. I am past fifty so poles make my hike more doable and take a great amount of stress off my knees. Many times poles keep you from falling when you are going one way and the trail is going another way. If you are young and have a great pair of knees then mabey poles are not needed but I absolutley would not hike without them.
Life is good on the trail…Swamp Dawg
Swamp Dawg
I find myself loving poles on the downhills, fording creeks, navigating bogs, scaring off bears, harrassing snakes, guying out the sides of my hammock, pitching a tarp, making a gurny, balancing my camera etc. On the uphills however, I have mixed feelings about them. I think I may be putting to much weight on them on the uphills and makeing my arms tired. I might need to ease off a bit for uphills. Over all, I really like them…they are a multipurpose tool…and you look cooler when using them.
David Smith
Yeah. What Tha Wookie said!
He’s right on target on this topic … in a general sense.
But … I still love my poles … and I don’t feel like a duped consumer when I use them.
:rolleyes :boy
Tyger
Something that is funny is to see all the people walking around the skyline drive rest areas with those expensive carved sticks they buy in the visitors center. HaHa
george
The good thing about poles is that you will manage to scare off a bunch of wild life…hmmmmm hold on, I guess that’s a bad thing. Nevermind.
Prospector
I hiked and backpacked for 30 years without poles and have usually expreienced knee problems, especially after steep downhill stretches. On my first backpack (Vermont in 1977 when I was younger but in much poorer shape), my knees screamed after only a 33 mile hike. Prior to 2004, I never backpacked more than 50 miles in a single trip but usually had knee problems, even after only 3-4 days out. But I resisted poles because despite the obvious benefits on descents, I thought they’d be a drag going uphill.
So in 2004 for the first time, I began using poles. Last March, I hiked 103 miles Springer-to-Wallace Gap: no knee problems. In October, I hiked 182 miles Allen Gap-to-Wallace Gap - no knee problems. November: 90 miles in PA with no knee problems (although I broke a bone in my foot on the PA rocks). So I vote for poles - I’m convinced for me at least they’ve saved my knees. Of course, maybe the glucosamine chondroitin also helps! As other writers have pointed out, poles help in other ways. Just yesterday, I day-hiked in Shenandoah National Park and had to ford icy streams about 4 times. The poles kept me in balance as I tiptoed across snowy logs and rocks.
Cookerhiker
leki lost his leki’s because he was thinking with the wrong head, but prefered leki-less to WrongHead because he was the cutest guy on trail…gawd i miss you guys! and you too stud-finder
burn
you could try a pair of sticks-you-found-in-the-woods first to see if you liked them and then invest in a pair further up the trail. there are plenty of outfitters that would be more than happy to separate you from your money. i mean help you out.
seriously, my poles helped me with my knees a lot, but if you were concerned with stuff like not spending more money, not promoting erosion along the side of the trail, being worried about leaving them behind after a hitch, or being a silly american bowing to the marketing pressure, then i would just go with some sticks.
p.s. i didn’t buy my poles. i got them as an unasked-for present.
zero
I am greatly suprised that there are more than 30 some-odd posts (some odder than others - marketing scam, huh?) and NOBODY has mentioned the number one reason why so many hikers HATE HIKING POLES, and it has nothing to do with them being old fashioned or, as andrew van Ees put it, being a cheap bstrd.
It comes down to erosion, folks.
Now, let me state clearly that I use my hiking poles often. I love to use them. But . . . do they cause erosion? Yes, they CAN. I’ve seen some posts where such is indicated. Have I seen any firsthand? No, I haven’t, though some would argue that my using poles has scarred the landscape somehow. But here’s the thing…
Here’s a quote from a post on this website: “I have grown up here in the White Mtns of New Hampshire and worked several summers in the early 80’s on the US Forest Service trail crews. Those treking poles are causing a great amount of erosion. All the holes poked in the soil along the trails - the soil is being loosened up and during heavy rains and spring run-off the soil is eroding at an alarming rate. In addition, I have noticed that the poles cause widening of the trails - about a foot on each side where the pole tips are placed during walking. Next time you are hiking, take a look for yourself and you will see what I mean.”
Am I the only one who notices a glaring error in that post? (It’s Ron Fontaine’s post, BTW).
You see, in Maine, like New Hampshire, the soils in the mountains are very thin. With the amount of foot traffic (and poles) the trails would soon resemble a long bald trail - like on Moxie Bald Mtn, for instance. In this instance, there isn’t enough soil physically present that you can protect it in any way.
Not all trails in Maine are so thin, however, but there is still a real danger of soil erosion, because its still much thinner than in places like, say, Georgia. So what does the MATC do? They put rocks in the ground :eek: which helps prevent soil erosion. Go check out the Firewarden’s Trail on Bigelow Mountain (not on the AT, but oh well). What the MATC trail crews did here is beyond compare. And it works.
So what is my point (he asks himself :rolleyes)? On those New Hampshire trails, so scarred by trekking poles, the fault does not lie with the poles, but in the trail crew. I know rock stairs don’t grow on trees, but if these trails, on slopes which purportedly are so suceptible to trekking poles, had in place any degree of rock work, the problem would be lessened at once. Yeah, maybe the rocks won’t look as pretty with a bunch of scrapes and scars on them from trekking poles, but . . . the soils won’t go anywhere, and the forest will be much better off as a result. So if I’m to take MR. Fountaine at his word, apparently the trails in NH do not have decent rock work in place, which is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of.
Sillier still, though, is that all up and down the AT, LNT purists (who evidently have not yet come across this thread) bemoan the fact that the trail is being scarred by trekking poles. Instead of their ridiculous movement to remove the trekking poles, shouldn’t they instead petition the trail clubs to have in place better (or any) rock work? That might just work!
Kineo Kid
I talked with a thru last spring on the AT near Winding Stair Gap. While we chatted, he dug -DUG- into the trail, completely unconscious to what he was doing. I tried to follow what he was saying about his hike, but I just kept wondering if he somehow knew I study trail conditions for a living and he was trying to intentionally piss me off. But I knew he was a good guy and was just digging into the soft footbed for something to do while we talked.
The truth is, he just didn’t understand what he was doing to the trail. I doubt that he ever did trail maintenance or study erosion levels of trails. But just because he had good intentions doesn’t mean the trail didn’t feel it.
But why would I expect anyone to think about how a trail FEELS when they’re holding onto rubber handles connected to factory-made shafts and skewers?
I want to pose a question for all the fuzzy factory-pole story writers in this thread: Did you ever try some wooden sticks?
Tha Wookie
I have to say something about wooden, flat ended sticks… They are fine for level-ish ground, but start climbing and using poles and the carbide tip that digs into the ground / rocks / roots will keep it from slipping. In rain, ice, and snow, carbide tips destroy wooden sticks.
Also, I thought (and I may be wrong) that it was good for the soil to be turned by sticks. That it promoted growth and such. Like a roto-tiller.
I KNOW that the cicadas caused more problems with holes in the ground than any amount of sticks, yet nobody complains about them.
Also, I can’t remember a time when the ground was chewed up so badly by sticks that I looked at it and said, “Man, that poor ground.”
Dave and Miranda