Black Diamond Ultra Distance Trekking Pole Review

Nicely designed poles. They look well engineered. It would be cool if they somehow added one adjustable section, so you at least had 10cm or so, of adjustment.

Well at least they're seemingly doing these in 4 fixed lengths, as opposed to a single fixed length as often seems to be the case.

The adjustable thing – there is one in the range if you see the top of the article – seems to add a fair bit of weight. Makes you wonder why it isn't possible to do adjustment the 'traditional' (from wooden poles!) way: just extend the grip to cover the top third of the pole and make it so you can slide your hands up and down it. Very effective with wood.

thanks for the review. I've been eyeballing these since they were announced at the winter outdoor show. I've been wanting to get into a light pair of poles, but have been reluctant to give up the robustness of my BD Alpine Corks.

I've read through most of the reviews I could find on lightweight adj poles and seems like there are some issues routinely brought up about adjusters giving out/not working etc

While adjustability is definitely useful, I don't find myself adj mine often and my new shelter (duomid) needs pole jacks so not going to be an issue w/ shelter

I'll probably have to wait a bit though and see how the new CAMP poles are received :)

Nice eye for detail Mike. That makes these poles seem a lot more reasonable.

As a cheaper slightly heavier alternative one might consider the Fizan compact ultralite trekking poles made out of light 7001 alloy. Telescopic 3 parts, 158g per pole, pole length 58-132cm starting from 23 B-pounds or 31 dollar per pole. The grip is quite small though.

I have these poles and find that by depressing the button and collapsing the upper portion of the pole, it shortens the pole and I can use it this way when going uphill. This provides about 10cm (not measured, estimated) of shortening adjustment. There is enough tension in the joints of the pole that it does not fall apart.

Also, because of the way that the sections slide together, it is easy to untension the pole then slide the sections slightly apart for use during shelter setup. This gives you an opportunity to clove hitch a guyline at about the 1 foot and two foot points on the pole if you wish.

Therefore, for shelter setup you have the options of fully extended, fully extended – 10cm, and 12 and 24 inches (approx).

Chicken

My only concern with these poles is their long term durability. I took a pair of brand new Gossamergear Lightrek 4 adjustables on the John Muir Trail this summer : one pole snapped after 110 mls, the other snapped just after finishing ( they both snapped in the lower section 1 1/2 ins below the upper part). I only weigh 126 lbs , but do put all that weight on the poles, especially going down rock steps. The first failure happened when I tripped getting onto a log and probably overloaded the pole, but hey, who doesn't stumble once in a hundred miles? The second went for no apparent reason, just had had enough I guess. (I mended the first with a short piece of tent pole that had sat in my first aid kit for years, and it lasted out the trip).

So, I would like to ask Will whether , after a summer of further use, he thinks the poles are strong enough?

PS. I have ordered some lengths of 11mm aluminium pole to insert into the lower sections of the Gossamergear poles, which will hopefully both repair them and make them stronger.