Poles provide balance

ST. LOUIS — Rich Orr gave his wife, Jill, a pair of trekking poles. She wasn’t impressed.

“She stubbornly resisted using them on a flat or moderate slope,” he said. “She would drag them or put them over her shoulder.”

Then they hiked the Grand Canyon from the North Rim.

“She didn’t believe that going up could be so much fun,” he said.

Orr, camping buyer at the Alpine Shop in Kirkwood, Mo., believes trekking poles are a godsend for extending the life of hikers not quite over the hill.

“As people age, your knees become less resilient,” he said. “Trekking poles take so much of the stress off your legs and knees. If there is any segment of the outdoors-loving public that really needs these, it’s people pushing 40 and over.”

Lon McRae, owner of Spokane’s Mountain Goat Outfitters, insists it is better to hike with trekking poles. “You have increased balance. You tend to twist your ankle less … .With a pack on, it just really makes the walking easier.”

A normal hiker has two points of balance, the feet. Adding two more contacts with the ground not only improves balance and stability, it also allows a hiker to use his torso and upper body when walking, lessening the impact on the knees and lower back.

“It’s a quantum increase in efficiency,” Orr said. “You use more of your body. You get less tired.”

The poles actually function as an extra set of legs, especially on uneven terrain. The benefit is especially evident when walking downhill, which can cause the most pain for people with problem knees.

“They will actually allow people who thought they’d have to give up hiking to keep on hiking — and I speak from experience,” said Orr, 55. “I had serious difficulty going down steep mountain trails.

“It benefits people who had to be more cautious and baby their knees.”

And the entire benefit is multiplied several times for hikers carrying backpacks. Instead of being bent over, your posture can be upright, allowing more air to get into your lungs so breathing is maximized.

Using a pair of hiking poles, versus a single staff, is “night and day different,” Orr said.

“The rhythm is much easier to maintain and the efficiency goes up dramatically when they are used as a pair,” Orr said. “There’s no point in leaving half your body out of the equation.”

LEKI, Swix and Excel are three ski-pole companies that also make trekking poles. Most poles are made of aluminum and range from $65 to $150 a pair. The poles have hand straps and are adjustable so the elbow is slightly higher than 90 degrees when resting in the straps.

You can find the LEKI poles at The Walking Company store in Spokane’s River Park Square. One model, the Explorer, includes a compass that screws off, leaving a place to attach a camera.

That pole and some of the others have a removable tip to be used on icy terrain.

The Walking Company also sells low-tech wooden walking poles and sticks.

Walking Company sales associate Ryan Marek says he likes to use the LEKI Explorer when he’s out hiking to give his lower body a rest.

“Sometimes my legs get tired and I don’t feel like working that hard,” Marek says.

At Mountain Goat Outfitters, the Black Diamond trekking poles are especially popular, McRae says.

Make sure you tailor your poles to the type of hiking you’ll be doing, sales people say.

“The most important aspect as you go up in price is you get the spring-loaded model, which takes some of the shock off your elbows and shoulders, and they get lighter,” Orr said. “It’s like anything else: People are skeptical in the beginning, and they won’t invest in the over-$100 pole. They start at $65, and eventually upgrade.”

Not all hikers are fans of poles, though.

Ken Ratz, who is co-chairman of the Spokane Mountaineers hiking committee, prefers to use an old-school wooden walking stick when hiking. (Though he does use poles when snowshoeing, he says.)

“Basically it’s a third leg if I’m crossing streams or something,” says Ratz, who hiked some 700 miles last summer.

Plus, he says, “You can use it for flicking a snake off a trail.”

Nordic poles

While trekking poles are starting to become more popular, there is another kind of walking pole that is still something of a secret in the United States.

“Nordic walking poles are very popular in Europe; they have Nordic walking parks in Germany and the Scandinavian region,” said Angela Bono, an assistant manager at the Alpine Shop. “They were developed in 1997 for cross-country skiers to train in warm months.”

Unlike trekking poles, which are designed to take some of the load off, Nordic hiking poles add to the workout.

“You burn up to 40 percent more calories with the same effort, but you’re using your upper body,” Bono said. “You also see increases of up to 25 percent in a cardiovascular workout.”

While trekking poles are planted vertically on the ground for support, Nordic walking requires that the poles be planted diagonally. The left arm swings forward with a pole as the right foot steps forward. As you become more accustomed to moving the poles correctly, you develop a rhythmic stride.

The same ski-pole manufacturers that make trekking poles also offer Nordic walking poles. They cost from $89 to $150 a pair.