Four Practical Reasons Trekking Poles Make Hiking Safer And Easier

We break down four concrete reasons trekking poles belong in a hiking or backpacking kit, from better posture to real stability on rough ground. We also share how we choose and set up our poles, and why they can double as shelter support and first-aid tools when things go sideways. 
• Why trekking poles are not just for older hikers 
• setting pole height for better posture and biomechanics 
• choosing foldable versus collapsible designs and lever locks 
• using trekking poles with trekking pole tents to reduce pack weight 
• keeping tip covers for sensitive terrain and safer use 
• turning a pole into a splint in a first aid situation 
• gaining stability on stream crossings, boulder fields, and steep descents 
If you have questions about trekking poles, drop those in the comments below. If you're on the podcast, make sure to listen, click that link, and drop me an email letting me know what you're thinking about, what you have questions about. If you like this video, make sure to give it a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel so you can see more great content just like this.

Transcript

Quick Intro And The Goal

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey folks, it's Craig the Natural Medic and wanted to give you a little bit different video this time. It's not going to be a too long of a video, but I'm going to talk about trekking poles. I know I've talked about them in the past, but I wanted to iterate some things about trekking poles, about why I like them, and about how they're useful, and things like that. Without further ado, let's get started talking about trekking poles. I'm going to try to give you four good reasons. Not five. The four good reasons that you should use trekking poles. Alright, so here we go. Let's talk about the ones that I use. These are the ones that I currently use. They are from Trekology. I was using some cheapies I got at Walmart. And they were fine. They were collapsible. These I like because, as you can see, they are foldable. I guess would be the right term. These are aluminum. As I said, they're made by the company Trekology, which is on Amazon. I'm not sure what other presents they have on the interwebs out there, but this is what you do. You basically just put it together kind of like a title. This little piece right here has a snap-out piece. You might hear a little click sound. Go click. And then I've had these for a couple of years. So worn out set them usually almost all the way at the top, about 125 centimeters. Or I think the very top that says there's actually a stop sign right there, see? It says stop, that is at 130 centimeters. And let me select the other guy. And benefit number one, I would say, for trekking poles, is they're not just for old people. I know some of you might be saying, Craig, if you're over 50 years old now. When I'm recording this video, I've got a birthday coming up. I've got a trip. I'm going to Joshua Tree. My first time to go to Joshua Tree. But the nice thing about that is that the nice thing about having tripping poles is they give you a nice form. I think when we tend to hike, especially with heavy loads, we're backpacking or we have a heavy day pack. We tend to probably readjust our weight, lean forward a little bit. This kind of gives us some extra stability on flat terrain. You can see my arms are pretty much at a 90-degree angle. Just looking at the deal here, looking at the angle on the camera. So that's going to give me good biomechanical form. We talk about that a lot. In medicine, I've been a paramedic since 2014. I guess this year will be like 13 years that I've been a paramedic. Something like that. And having good biomechanical form there is good for your posture, it's good for your bones, your joints, all of the way that your body moves. Nice thing about having trekking poles is it helps create proper biomechanical form and posture. My physical therapist friends out there would probably agree with that. So you want to set them up. I'm about six foot tall, maybe a little bit taller, maybe a little bit shorter. Anyway, so I've got them set at about 130. I might want to drop them a little bit, but 130 seems to be about right. These only have the cork handles. There are some that do have the foam handles below the ones for that before that were from Walmart, where that it doesn't seem to be any big deal, really, with me, because I can just choke down a little bit on it where my hands are now to do that. Number one, proper biomechanical form. When you're choosing your checking pole, there's a couple different ways to do it. There are some slide lock ones out there. I've always used the ones that are lever locked. So basically you have a lever here and a screw, which causes tension on there and causes that to lock that in place. Mine have a lever. They did at one point have tips on there, but I've lost the tips to cover that carbide tip. There are some places that don't want that sharp tip to damage the terrain or if it's a sensitive site. So that's something you probably want to have the ability to have at least. But the other thing about having trekking poles, number two, would be their usefulness for other equipment. In this particular case, I'm talking about tents. I don't have one to set up because I'm inside and I'm on the second floor of my apartment. I really can't set up a tent that's not freestanding in my apartment or on my patio. But you can use trekking poles. There's a lot of trekking pole tents out there that use one or two trekking poles. The tent that I have that I use for backpacking uses trekking poles can set regular poles in order to put it. And the nice thing about that is you're, of course, saving weight because you don't have to carry those heavy poles. I can remember back in the 90s, early 2000s, and stuff before they had trekking pole tents, you're carrying that extra weight because that's that's what you have to do in order to set up your tent. But they have a lot of trekking pole tents out there of various types, right? From budget all the way to more expensive. The nice thing about that is it helps to reduce some of your weight. So we're already talking about two positive things here: good posture and reducing the weight by using your trekking poles for setting up your equipment, like your tits. Third thing I would say is trekking poles are useful in a first aid situation. You could use your trekking pole right here to help you uh create a splint. So if you wanted if I you can't really see this, since they go to varying lengths, as long as you had some tape of some sort or some white bandanas, handkerchief, triangular, whatever, you could shrink this and make yourself a pretty good splint with this. So it's definitely useful in first aid. I'm not gonna go too far in depth in that. I'm gonna go into a first aid video pretty soon. Hopefully by summertime, get a good first aid video out there. So make sure if you're not subscribed to the channel, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss that. This is gonna be a outdoorsman, backpacker, hiker type first aid kit that's self-built from uh somebody that's a longtime outdoorsman and paramedic. So you don't want to miss that. And I'm gonna say, fourth thing you can do is adding to the stability when you're crossing obstacles like streams, rock, boulder fields, you can use these as an extension on uneven terrain, whether you're going across the boulder fields or a stream crossing, or you're going up or down, these provide extra stability, giving you four points of contact, your two feet, and then you have your arms now on the ground, helping yourself go up a hill, using these very carefully to hold yourself up as you descend a steep trail or embankment or something of that nature, so you don't fall, so you don't hurt yourself. So that's four quick deals there. These are pretty inexpensive trekking poles. I'm partial to them because I've been using them for a couple of years now. There's certainly more expensive ones out there that go upwards of$200, but these are not going to break the bank, and they're useful for all the things that I talked about in this video. So if you want to check those out, I'm gonna link that in the video below. If you have questions about trekking poles, drop those in the comments below. If you're on the podcast, make sure to listen, click that link, and drop me an email letting me know what you're thinking about, what you have questions about. If you like this video, make sure to give it a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel so you can see more great content just like this. And I hope to see you out there on the trail. Everybody, be safe. See you next time.