The Best Trekking Poles

If you walk or hike regularly (and, really, if you don’t, you should), we strongly recommend using a pair of trekking poles (or, at the very least, a walking stick).

After about 40 hours of testing on trails, streets, beaches, and many places in between, we’ve determined that the Montem Ultra Strong Trekking Poles are the best for nearly everyone. They’re simple to set up and use, comfortable, and able to take a beating.

Poles improve balance and cut down significantly on wear and tear in your legs (especially in your knees), particularly when you’re going downhill.

But poles also make walking—one of the best, and certainly easiest, workouts you can do—even healthier, because they also get your whole upper body involved.

If you’re looking for a fine, sturdy, simple set of trekking poles, Montem’s Ultra Strong Trekking Poles are our pick.

They’re made of aluminum—a malleable, sturdy material that is not as brittle as carbon fiber—so you can scratch them, ding them, and generally bang them around without worrying they’ll break, yet they’re lightweight enough for most people.

The EVA foam grip is less sweaty than cork and won’t chafe your hand over time like hard rubber, and the adjustment mechanisms are simple to use and tighten. Plus, these poles come with rubber tips and baskets included; for all our other picks (and most poles in general), you have to buy those pieces separately.

Montem is a small company that makes pretty much nothing but poles, and when we contacted the customer service, we found it to be excellent––the founder and CEO is often the guy who picks up the phone.

The assumption that trekking poles are only for serious hikers is deeply misguided.

If you don’t use a pole, what good is it? No good. On my treks, even in walks around the city, it’s amazing how many people I’ve seen with poles stowed away, sticking out of their pack, or carried in the crook of their arm, not touching the ground. What a sad pole! You have to use the pole. Don’t be afraid of the pole. In this spirit, usability was by far our main concern and the metric we returned to most often in deciding the best set of poles overall. But it’s also a huge, slightly fuzzy category that covers more concrete factors such as the following.

Adjusting mechanics: How easy is it to adjust the pole on the trail? Or to fold it away quickly into your pack? Generally, the locking mechanism is the agreed-upon easiest and best method for adjustment, but I’d argue that ease of adjustment has a serious downside: More joints where you might adjust a pole mean more places for the pole to fail on the trail. Ultimately, in our experience the easiest-to-use adjustment mechanisms were minimalist. The Gossamer Gear pole uses a twist lock mechanism, which adds to that pole’s overall simplicity. Our other picks all use simple flick locks for adjustments and offer the added benefit of measurements for remembering your preferred height.

Portability: A lot of trekking-pole reviews heavily weigh how quickly and well the poles collapse for packing. We realize some hikers have some extreme portability needs for which these highly collapsible poles are ideal, but for most hikers we think our picks are perfectly portable during travel. Not one of our 30-plus testers had much of anything to say about how packable any set of poles was, because, of course, they were busy using the poles. Note that you’ll probably have to check your trekking poles in your luggage, regardless of size, due to TSA carry-on restrictions; keep that in mind if you’re planning on flying with them. Afterward, however, set them up—that’s the best and surest way to make sure you use the poles. Despite all this, I spent several hours on several hikes swapping between pole sets, collapsing and adjusting, collapsing and adjusting, knowing in my heart of hearts that were I not researching these poles for review, I would not have been engaged in such mid-hike foolishness.

Here’s what I learned: Most trekking poles collapse into themselves by telescoping at two joints—the wider one attached to the handle or grip, the smaller one nearer the ground. The two-joint design means the poles are more packable, as they collapse smaller, but it also means more can go wrong. There’s also the unpleasant possibility of a slight rattling, making a little noise and causing a very minor tremor in the stick. A lot of people aren’t really bothered by the rattle. I was, because I crave as much silence as possible when I hike, except in bear country.

Comfort and versatility: What sort of options does the pole offer? Can you exchange the baskets or tips for different terrain or weather conditions? Do you have a bunch of different ways to hold the stick?

Grip shape and texture: One of the factors that most immediately determine whether someone will connect with a pole is how it feels in their hand. One tester—a physical therapist—gestured toward a clutter of poles in the corner of the office, where patients had been trying them out. “The first thing you see everyone do, without fail,” he said, “is pick one up, give it a squeeze, and then nod—sometimes satisfied, sometimes not.” Cork is generally a favorite grip material because it breaks down over time and slowly shapes to your hand. Cork stays cooler than rubber but is heavier and sweatier than foam. Rubber doesn’t absorb any water, so it’s probably better for hardcore mountaineering and winter treks, but rubber in hot climes or in sweaty hands might chafe after a while. The ability to grasp a grip in multiple ways, from multiple angles, is a big benefit, too—you don’t want to be locked into a single hand position if you’re using these poles for the long haul, over many years, in all sorts of places and weather conditions.

Aluminum versus carbon fiber: We were skeptical about the difference in feel between a carbon fiber pole and an aluminum pole—we thought the effect had more to do with weight and less to do with feel. Boy, were we wrong! Carbon fiber poles are lighter, of course, but also much stiffer. A downside: “Stiffer” is one way of saying “extremely brittle.” We didn’t have a problem with any of our carbon fiber poles, but plenty of other people have reported that a bad nick can quickly turn into a crumbling seam, causing an entire section of pole to fail. Aluminum is heavier but more malleable, able to survive nicks and scrapes and even bends, and it’s generally a less expensive option. In our experience, we tended to like the feel of carbon fiber more, but plenty of reviewers say they barely notice the difference. We found one upside to carbon fiber, too, in that it tended to be quieter on the trail.

Tips: Carbide or steel tips offer good traction in most natural environments, even on ice. Rubber tips are good for stowing and for use around the house or town, or in sensitive natural areas; some poles have angled rubber walking tips sold separately for asphalt or urban walking.

Strap or no strap: Extremely passionate backpackers have been engaging in a rather intense debate about this, but here’s our two cents: Get a strap, have a strap, use the strap. You can find a lot of poles with removable straps, but why would you want that? To avoid, like, a strap tan? To us, a removable strap is just one more part to lose, one more unnecessary thing to fuss with. Some straps are way more comfortable than others, and Leki’s trigger-grip straps are slightly divisive (this reviewer unexpectedly grew to love them). But the main thing about straps we found is that you are more likely to regret not having one when your pole careens halfway down a mountain or into a stream. Also, if you do decide to use your strap, make sure you’re using it the right way so that the strap helps support your wrists.

Baskets: The basket at the bottom of the pole says a lot about what you’re using it for: A smaller basket (or none at all) means more general everyday hiking, while a larger basket makes more sense for snow or scrambles or off-trail, muddy scenarios. Most of the poles we looked at either come with additional baskets or make it very easy to add a basket, but for the most part the majority of people are almost never going to think about the baskets on their poles.

Shock absorbers: Do you need them? No. Do you want them? Maybe. Do they work? Sometimes—and only really downhill. They actually work against you going uphill, but some people seem to swear by them. None of the models we extensively tested had them, and you can mimic plenty of the absorption action with a good $20 pair of rubber tips. At the end of the day, a pole is just a pole; too many whiz-bang options will overcomplicate a very simple tool and add more things that can break.

A few other factors we considered (and will be considering during ongoing testing) are the lifespan of the pole—not just the general durability but also the warranty it comes with and the manufacturer’s reputation—and that extremely vague but important metric known as performance. Basically, after several days, weeks, months, and eventually years of using some of these poles, are they still great? So far, our picks are.

We kept encountering various reviews and message-board posts about how wild temperature swings can radically affect a pole’s performance, expanding and contracting the metal, and challenging the locking mechanisms. So one February weekend after our original testing, we took three of our top picks into the southern Sierras, at the edge of Sequoia National Forest, and tramped around in the snow and ice for a while, up and down the side of a mountain. We also left the poles out overnight, when temperatures remained in the low 20s. We adjusted and readjusted the poles, and we leaned on them heavily.

The good news is that, overall, none of our top picks showed any significant failure in the cold. We stand by those choices. We will say, though, that the standard locking system in both the Montem and Leki poles can be a challenge to adjust while wearing gloves. And the biggest challenge of all, when you’re messing around with poles, comes when your hands are halfway frozen, shaky, and no good for delicately screwing and flicking lock systems. In snow, especially going uphill, the top of the grips also mattered significantly, and those on the Montem Ultra Strong Trekking Poles stood out as the most comfortable in this case.