Pole extender for Altaplex

Buy a wooden dowel from Lowes and drill out the end to take your trekking pole tip, cut to proper length and you are good to go. If you really want to get elaborate, paint it.

I’m not an engineer, but that sounds like in any kind of wind you’d get a great deal of lateral of pressure on the portion of the dowel holding the tip of the trekking pole. Maybe reinforce that with wire or something.

I use BD Alpine Carbon Trekking Poles in my hikes, which I also use as center pole for my Pyramid tent.  If you remove the last section of one of the poles, you can feed the tip of the other pole into.  You end up with a large adjustable staff with the handles at both ends.  Some folks will tell you that is a weak connection and you are risking breaking your poles, but I have been using that set up for over 5 years without any problem.  Zero added weight, cost and fiddling with tying straps, etc since I already have the hiking poles.  I’m not sure if it makes any difference but just for the record, my pyramid is a hexagonal base (all sides same size) so the load is fairly evenly distributed in every direction.

I found that the my Leki tips fit pretty snugly into a certain size curtain rod. I’ll measure it tonight. 10 inch extender = 1.5oz.
I’m definitely going to try Mario’s idea though. Using an extender allows free use of a second pole, but that’s only useful in a fairly narrow range of circumstances.

1/2″ schedule 40 pvc. Can usually get scraps for very little or free. I used a 6″ piece with a hexamid solo plus and it worked great.

Ok so I tried Mario’s method with My leki’s: I had to take both lower sections out and insert the tip of pole 1 into the top section of pole 2 (16mm OD tube). It feels VERY secure, especially since you can adjust the flick lock a little to get it nice and tight. I’ll probably use this method moving forward; definitely going to try it next week.

Also, the curtain rod tubing I used is ~5/8″ OD, very thin wall. @adamussg I’d be happy to mail you a section for cost of shipping. PM me your address and desired length.

Measure your pole tip and go to McMasterCarr.com and order a short section of thin walled aluminum tubing. Or just go to a hardware store and get some PVC pipe cut to length. I got the MLD pole extender for $10 but I was already ordering an innernet from him so I didn’t have to pay extra shipping.