A good trekking pole lightens the load on your legs while you’re hiking on trails, softens the impact from the ground, is comfortable to hold for long hikes, and lasts for several hiking seasons with minor maintenance.
After hiking 140 miles of sandy, rocky, and rooty trails, we’ve decided that the Black Diamond Pursuit Trekking Poles are the best choice for most hiking styles and terrain. They’re easy to adjust, comfortable to hold, quiet, and durable.
Our pick
The Black Diamond Pursuit Trekking Poles stood out for their comfortable grip, ease of adjustment, durable hardware, minimal rattling, and replaceable parts. They’re available in two sizes with different length ranges and grip circumferences, so they’re likely to suit most hikers’ heights and hand sizes.
In our testing, these poles endured rough and sandy hikes and mountain runs. The poles never collapsed under our weight. An integrated tool for adjusting the locking mechanism makes tweaks in the field easy.
We recommend these poles for anything except the most severe terrain that lies beyond established hiking trails.
Budget pick
If you’re just getting into hiking or are looking to invest in other hiking or backpacking gear, go with these poles. Known as the “Costco poles”—though they’re sold at other big-box stores as well—the Cascade Mountain Tech Carbon Fiber Quick Lock Trekking Poles (Cork Grip) are a budget-favorite of long-distance hikers. They’re carbon fiber poles with cork upper grips and foam lower grips that meet the essential requirements for a trekking pole: They are tough, have comfortable grips, and have affordable replaceable parts. They’re also an excellent value.
They do have plastic locking mechanisms and pole tips that are less robust than the hardware on our other picks, and the cork takes longer to soften. The poles held up well during our testing, though, and any parts that do fail are replaceable.
Upgrade pick
For hikers braving off-trail talus fields or crossing snow fields in the mountains, we recommend the Black Diamond Alpine Carbon Cork Trekking Poles (men’s) (women’s). These poles have the biggest (and therefore sturdiest) shaft diameter of any we tested and are made of stiff carbon fiber with durable aluminum locking mechanisms and comfortable, soft cork grips. These are the quietest poles we tested, and they produced the least vibration, all at a reasonable weight.
Like our top pick, the Alpine Carbon Cork poles come in two sizes (men’s and women’s, though, rather than S/M and M/L), but both have the same grip circumference. They’re also among the most expensive poles we tested, and the minor benefits over our top pick may not be worth it for hikers who don’t face such harsh conditions. Though they, like our top pick, do collapse, when telescoped they’re longer than our top pick.