Request for Trekking Pole Advice: Durability

Transferring weight from the hands to the wrists doesn’t translate to saving energy. Frankly, the hands are designed to grasp. The wrists…aren’t.

Sure, on occasion I use my arms and poles to take a large step up onto a rock. But use my arms to propel me up a 2,000 foot climb to a pass? No. The legs are far more powerful than the arms. Skiing is a different animal. Backpackers don’t glide across snowy terrain. Nordic skiers don’t carry 25 pound packs over rocky ascents.
Apples and oranges.

Totally agree the legs are much more powerful than the arms.

You probably don’t actually need poles as much as I do. There really aren’t any good hikes right here that don’t have a lot of vertical so I’m just happy to be out there.

Poles don’t save energy. They transfer the force. There’s really no other reason to use them unless you fall over a lot.

“Poles don’t save energy. They transfer the force. There’s really no other reason to use them unless you fall over a lot.”

I don’t fall over but I like poles. I use them for lots of applications on the trail.

Well I got the Makalu Lite and took it on my usual daily training circuit I mentioned earlier: 20 pound vest, about 600 feet ascent over 1.75 miles, and back again. I’ve done this over a hundred times, so I have a sense of slight differences in my experience.

I’ll record a few notes for the benefit of the archives while I can remember the first impressions, and return to it after I’ve done a few hundred miles of exercise plus some backcountry trips.

The first thing I notice, after about a mile: definitely I’m using some muscles I wasn’t using before with the Gossamer Gear LT5 to re-set the pole position with each stride, being that they are over twice as heavy to lift. Well, no surprise there, but it’s qualitatively noticeable, and quickly. I sort of stopped noticing a bit later, but I think that’s because I got used to the sensation. I’ll train with them for a while, seems like it might help before I head out on a trip.

The other thing I noticed was they are much wigglier than the GG LT5 at lower pole lengths, likely attributable to the fact they’re in aluminum. The magnitude is not a proportional increase in all situations, it really depends on how I was planting the pole. The effect was largest for me when moving quickly on flat ground or shallow inclines or declines and I’m striking the ground fairly hard at a shallow angle to source some of my forward force from my arms.

The other aspect that changed the amount of wiggliness was how much grip I put on the poles. I found even a light grip would increase the duration of and transfer of vibration considerably. I also tried giving them a firm grip (something I don’t normally do) and I can see how the wiggle being translated to the arms could be very annoying. This is most likely to occur on lightly graded terrain where you might be going 3.5 to four miles per hour.

But if I am slightly mindful to have more or less an open grip while striking the ground and exerting force via the straps in those situations, the wiggles dissipate much more quickly this way, when the trekking pole handle is free to move. I don’t mean this just from the standpoint of how much the vibration is translated to my body, a visual inspection of the pole in motion shows it reaches quiescence much more quickly this way. To my mind, the duration and frequency of the vibrations translated are similar to my GG LT5 poles in that situation. Must change the resonant frequencies.

I’ll write back in a few months, and I think that’ll be all the documentation I could contribute.

“Well I got the Makalu Lite”

You are in good company. Reinhold Messner who was instrumental in the creation and design concept of the Leki Makalu became the first person to climb Mount Everest without supplemental  oxygen and he did it with the Leki Makalu. He did some multiple peaks with them too. We keep an old Makalu in the vehicle to prop open the hatchback. Had a pair of Makalu lites at one time and yes they were flexy but finally moved to carbon. Enjoy those fine tools.

Andrew Skurka’s Nine-year review: Black Diamond Alpine Carbon Cork Trekking Poles .