- Mud Baskets: The small amount of flotation that mud baskets add help keep your poles from sinking into deep mud. They also protect the user from some of the splash back associated with muddy hiking.
- Snow Baskets: Similarly to mud baskets, snow baskets keep your poles from sinking into deep snow.
- Rubber Caps: Ideal for rocks, cement or boardwalks. Rubber caps are great for gripping hard surfaces.
2. Navigating Difficult Terrain & Balance and Stability: Trekkings poles also help hikers move up hills, down hills, across rivers (they are instrumental in facilitating safe river crossings), and over ice, snow, rocks, and mud! The additional 2 points of contact greatly increase stability, reducing the number of falls, tumbles and accidents that can unexpectedly happen on the trail. When going uphill, your trekking poles can be shortened to increase your leverage. When going down hill, your trekking poles can be extended to take the weight off your knees, keep your weight centers over your feet, and ultimately reduce the risk of tumbling forward.
While often times trekking poles can be used to push aside impeeding brush or overgrowth, there are occasional spots where trekking poles can be a nuisance. In these spots, you can easily tuck your poles away for later.
3. Reduce Impact & Risk of Injury: One of the major reasons why individuals choose to start using trekking poles is to reduce the physical impact of hiking and the risk of injury. Hiking is a highly repetitive and grinding activity, and trekking poles can help alleviate some of the weight placed on one’s knees, legs, ankles, and feet. When utilizing trekking poles, one's arms and shoulder muscles engage in activity, helping to absorb some of the workload typically performed by the lower body.
For day hikers, trekking poles help contain pre existing conditions and prevent against acute injuries. For long distance hikers, trekking poles help prevent overuse injuries caused by hundreds/thousands of miles of walkings.
4. Support & Structure: Trekking poles can be incredibly useful support structures when tarp or tent camping. When tarping, trekking poles can provide height, stability, and structure to your tarp shelter. There are a multitude of ways to utilize your trekking poles when creating tarp structures, and there are also specific tents designed to incorporate trekking pole into their structure. These trekking pole supported tents are very popular with in the UL community, and are designed to utilize 1 or 2 poles to reduce or eliminate the need for tent poles. This ultimately cuts down on the extra weight associated with carrying extra equipment, maximizing the utility of gear you already bring. Trekking poles are also stronger than tent poles, reducing your chance of breaking important structural pieces.
5. Safety: Trekking poles are essentially a less dangerous, less aerodynamic version of a spear. Because of this, they can do most things a spear can do (just less effectively). While it is important to be familiar with the proper ways to handle encounters with bears, moose, wolves, or any other wildlife, trekking poles can often help assist in keeping you safe. Some examples:
- Waving trekking poles in the air makes you look bigger and can deter certain bears (in certain situations) from charging. Banging your trekking poles together as you move through low visibility areas can also alert animals of your presence - scaring animals off and preventing surprise encounters.
- Similarly, the clicking sound produced by simply using your trekking poles will often scare off snakes and other critters, alerting them to scamper off and avoid contact!
- Throwing trekking poles towards a campsite invader can often scare them off, and it has the potential to prevent a closer (potentially more dangerous) encounter, damage to your gear, or the consumption or theft of your food.
4 comments
McD
Nothing says “old guy” more than trekking poles. I swear by them. They turn a human into a quadruped. I use an old pair of curved alpine GS poles. They help me go faster. B. McD
Nancy Schenck
Reason # 6: Carry trekking poles as your insurance policy in case of an unexpected injury. Trekking poles helped my husband get off the Routeburn Trek in New Zealand after he sprained an ankle a day’s hike away from the end of the trek.
Linda Paul
To say nothing of being great snake charmers. Poles out front can provide that extra bit of warning needed to avoid surprise rattlesnake situations.
Daniel
I love trekking poles, but rubber caps fall off or get stuck and metal tips scratch rocks which breaks “leave no trace”. I would love a set f poles with replaceable plastic and/or permanent rubber tips (instead of a rubber cap that fits over the metal end). Also cork handles are the best!