[at-l] Trekking Poles ? Nomad Lite?

[ellen at clinic.net (Bob C.)]

I didn't use a hiking staff until 1991, when at the age of 62 I hiked 280 miles
of the Appalachian Trail in Maine with a somewhat clumsy, 9-year-old grandson.
He kept falling so I fashioned an improvised pole from a piece of alder sapling
left by a trail-clearing crew at the foot of Dunn Notch Falls in western
(southern) Maine. He wouldn't use the pole unless I used a pole also. So I found
a second alder sapling.

By the time we reached Katahdin I had grown habituated to a pole. Two years
later I carried the same stick between Springer Mountain and Katahdin. By then I
had carved a handle and installed a soft rubber crutch tip on the bottom. That
pole has so many fond memories attached to it, that I retired it a few years ago
and cut a fresh alder hiking stick, this one with a commercial strap for the top
and a 1/4-20 screw imbedded so I could use the pole as a camera monopod.

The strap and cork tip (with a compass insert) cost around $11 mail order. The
crutch tip about 90 cents at a hardware store. By the way, the total weight is
about 10 ounces, about the same as a Leki.

I don't use two poles because I like to keep a hand free for my camera and to
check out interesting things found along the trails. As my sense of balance
deteriorates I find a pole increasingly useful.

I don't use commercial poles for several reasons. One the cost. Two their
fragility. (One of the claimed attributes of the Leki is that repairs are
available at many places along the trail. I use my alder pole to whack off dead
branches of pine and spruce trees to ease my passage while bushwhacking. Three,
and most importantly, the holes their sharp-pointed tips leave in the trail soil
offends my sense of "leave no trace."

Though my staffs are about 4-feet long, I have never found them a problem,
either when using public transportation or hitching rides. I haven't used them
on a plane as yet, but I would expect no problem. When I'm at the air port in
Maine during the winter I see far longer and more awkward cross country skis,
and ski poles routinely in the baggage carousels.

Weary