Trekking Poles: Who Actually Needs Them and How to Use Them Properly

For a piece of equipment that has been in widespread use for several decades, trekking poles attract a surprising amount of ambivalence. Experienced hikers are divided on them in a way that experienced hikers are rarely divided on, say, boots or sleeping bags. You'll find ultramarathon runners who swear poles are essential and equally accomplished athletes who have never used them. You'll find alpine guides who use them daily and other guides who regard them as beginner equipment.

Much of this confusion comes from a failure to distinguish between what poles can do and what they actually do when used incorrectly, which is most of the time. The majority of hikers using trekking poles are extracting perhaps forty percent of the available benefit. They're holding them too long, gripping them wrong, and using them on the terrain types where poles contribute least while ignoring the techniques that make the most difference.

The short answer to who needs trekking poles is: most people, on most multi-day trips, in most terrain. But the full answer requires understanding what they actually do.

What Poles Actually Do (And What They Don't)

Let's begin with the most evidence-supported benefit, because it's not the one most people cite when they explain why they use poles.

Poles reduce lower-body loading on descents. This is the finding that appears most consistently in the biomechanics research, and it is the benefit that matters most for anyone carrying a meaningful pack weight over meaningful terrain. A loaded pack — say 15 kg — on a steep descent puts enormous compressive force on the knee joints with every footfall. On a 30-degree slope, the peak knee force on each step is substantially higher than on flat ground, and this repeats thousands of times over the course of a descent. Cartilage fatigue, patellofemoral discomfort, and the general knee degradation that causes long-term problems in aging hikers all accumulate from exactly these conditions.

Poles, correctly used on descents, transfer a significant percentage of this load to the upper body. The transfer is not total — you're not eliminating knee stress, you're distributing it — but the reduction is measurable and, over the course of a long descent, felt very directly. This is why the most enthusiastic pole advocates tend to be people who have experienced knee problems on long trips, or people who have been on descents long enough that the knees are the limiting factor. They have felt the difference directly.

On ascents, the benefit is different and somewhat more contested. Poles don't significantly reduce the muscular demand of climbing — your legs are doing the same work regardless. What poles do on ascents is provide a rhythm and a forward purchase that reduces perceived exertion, helps maintain consistent pace, and provides four-point stability on loose or steep terrain. This last point matters in Australian alpine environments, particularly in the NSW and Victorian high country after rain, when clay-over-rock surfaces become extremely slippery and a slip with a pack has real consequences.

What poles don't do, by themselves, is make you faster or more efficient. This is a common misconception. The efficiency gains are conditional on technique, and they can actually become losses if the poles are badly fitted or badly used — unnecessary upper body work with no lower body benefit is pure wasted energy.

Length: The Setting Everyone Gets Wrong

Pole length is the most commonly mismanaged variable in trekking pole use, and getting it right makes a categorical difference to the benefit you receive.

The standard starting point for flat ground: stand in your normal hiking posture with the pole planted vertically beside you. Your elbow should be at approximately ninety degrees — your forearm parallel to the ground. This is the correct base length. Most people who own poles have set them at this length and left them there for the entire trip. This is a mistake.

On ascents, the correct adjustment is to shorten the poles by five to eight centimetres per grip length from your flat-ground setting. The effect of this is that the pole plants closer to your body rather than requiring a reach forward, which is how you get forward propulsion out of a pole plant rather than just balance. A long pole on an ascent forces you to reach forward to plant it, which rotates the shoulder forward and disrupts your posture. A shortened pole plants naturally in your stride and drives you forward efficiently.

On descents, lengthen the poles by five to eight centimetres. This allows you to plant the poles ahead of your leading foot, which is where you need them for braking and load distribution, without bending forward at the waist to do it. Upright posture on descents is both more efficient and safer — a bent-forward posture moves your centre of gravity ahead of your feet and dramatically increases the consequences of a slip.

Most telescoping poles adjust in ten to fifteen seconds. Make it a habit: shorten going up, lengthen going down. After a few days this becomes automatic. Before it does, you can mark your flat-ground length with a permanent marker on the shaft so you have a reference point when returning to flat terrain.

Grip Technique: The Part Nobody Teaches

Most hikers hold their poles the way they'd hold a shopping bag or a cane — fingers wrapped around the grip, slight squeeze, relying on the grip itself to carry the load. This is the wrong technique and explains why some hikers develop sore wrists and forearms that make them conclude poles aren't worth the hassle.

The correct technique uses the strap, not the grip, to carry the load. Drop your hand through the strap from above — the strap goes over the back of your hand — then close loosely around the grip with your fingers. The loop of the strap now sits between your hand and the grip. When you push down and back on a pole plant, the force goes through the strap and into your palm and wrist, not through your fingers squeezing the grip.

The consequence of this is that your hand barely needs to grip the pole at all. Your fingers can remain relatively relaxed, particularly during normal travel. You tighten your grip slightly on technical terrain where you need positive control. But over the course of a ten-hour day, the difference between constant tight gripping and relaxed strap-supported technique is the difference between significant forearm fatigue and none.

Adjust strap tightness so that it is snug around the back of your hand without cutting into the wrist. Too loose and the strap slips back, removing the benefit. Too tight and you get pressure points on the wrist that become genuinely uncomfortable over long days.

Pole Material: Carbon versus Aluminium

This is the decision most people agonise over when buying poles, and it is actually less important than length adjustment and grip technique.

Carbon fibre poles are lighter — typically 300 to 400 grams per pair lighter than comparable aluminium poles — and this matters on ultralight trips where every gram is being accounted for. Carbon also tends to be stiffer, which gives a more responsive feel on pole plants. The disadvantage of carbon is that it fails differently from aluminium: aluminium bends under impact, often remaining usable; carbon snaps, often leaving you with an unusable pole in the middle of a remote trip.

Aluminium poles are heavier, more durable, and significantly cheaper. For most recreational hikers who are not counting grams obsessively, aluminium poles represent better value and better reliability.

If you're buying your first pair of poles, buy aluminium. If you've been using poles for several seasons and are comfortable with the technique, and you're doing trips long enough that the weight saving is meaningful, consider carbon.

Who Should Actually Use Them

The empirical answer: almost anyone hiking with a loaded pack on terrain that includes significant ascents or descents. This covers the vast majority of multi-day trips in Australian alpine country — the Snowy Mountains, the Victorian Alps, the Tasmanian wilderness, the ranges of Western Australia and South Australia.

For day hiking on well-graded tracks with minimal pack weight, poles are genuinely optional and the benefit is modest. For creek crossings, poles provide stability that can be the difference between a dry crossing and an unplanned swim. For anyone with pre-existing knee issues, poles are not optional equipment; they are management strategy.

The cultural resistance to poles — the sense that using them is an admission of some limitation, or that they belong to a less serious category of hiker — is not supported by the behaviour of the most accomplished wilderness travellers. Every elite ultramarathon racer on mountain courses uses poles on the descents. Every serious alpinist uses them on approach terrain. The evidence is not ambiguous. Pick up a pair, set them correctly, learn the grip technique, and adjust them for the terrain. Then decide what you think.