The 4 Best Trekking Poles for 2024 | Reviews by Wirecutter

By Trey French

Trey French is a writer focused on outdoor gear. He has tested thermoses and ice cleats everywhere from hot deserts to frigid mountaintops.

After a new round of testing, we have all new picks.

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.

These poles are the most comfortable and among the quietest hiking poles we tested. They come in two sizes and are easy to adjust to different lengths.

These poles satisfy the essential criteria for a trekking pole, with toughness, comfort, and replaceable parts, but they come with a minor sacrifice: The components wear out faster than in our other picks.

These poles are the quietest that we tested. They’re also built for the most challenging terrain—which is reflected in their high price.

This is the same pole as the men’s version, but lighter, with shorter minimum and maximum lengths.

A trekking pole can’t help you if it’s the wrong height. We preferred poles that had a wide range of possible heights.

Though grips come in many materials, cork is generally the most comfortable. But, we discovered, not all cork is created equal.

If you want to adjust the height of your poles—for a long uphill or downhill hike—the locking mechanism should be manageable.

The poles should help absorb the impact of their tips hitting the ground, and the shafts and locks shouldn’t rattle annoyingly.

These poles are the most comfortable and among the quietest hiking poles we tested. They come in two sizes and are easy to adjust to different lengths.

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.

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These poles satisfy the essential criteria for a trekking pole, with toughness, comfort, and replaceable parts, but they come with a minor sacrifice: The components wear out faster than in our other picks.

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.

These poles are the quietest that we tested. They’re also built for the most challenging terrain—which is reflected in their high price.

This is the same pole as the men’s version, but lighter, with shorter minimum and maximum lengths.

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, they’re longer than our top pick when they’re telescoped.

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I’m a staff writer covering travel and outdoor gear, including ice cleats and thermal underwear. I’ve also hiked and backpacked more than 7,000 miles with trekking poles.

For this guide, I’ve done the following:

If you hike on uneven, unpaved surfaces or trails with ups and downs, you may benefit from trekking poles. For us bipeds, they create two additional points of contact, helping humans keep their balance and better distributing the impacts from hiking on uneven surfaces.

One study from the University of Canberra suggests that trekking poles are helpful for “maintaining greater muscle function, reducing soreness, and, hence, reducing the potential for the prevalence of injury,” especially for hikers who make many long descents in steep terrain.

Another study, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, concludes that poles can help when carrying heavier weights, such as a backpacking pack, by keeping you more upright and redistributing “muscular demand, with no additional metabolic cost and improved comfort.” In other words, poles help and don’t cost you extra energy.

Some hikers use poles to increase their speed, relieve joint pain, or keep their hands busy during a long day of hiking. We’ve even noticed a psychological advantage personally and talking with others: Using hiking poles can provide confidence when hiking on uneven surfaces, even if we’re mostly just carrying them.

We do not recommend the poles in this guide as canes, even though we’ve seen them used that way. One of the poles we tested even has the words “not a medical device” printed on it.

You can also run using these poles (we did), but better options are available. Runners often use foldable poles, which pack down smaller than telescoping trekking poles and stow more easily in a running vest. They are, however, less durable and not usually fit for carrying heavier loads. We chose not to test such poles for this guide.

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Here’s what we prioritized when deciding which poles to test and what we looked for during our testing:

A wide range of lengths: Finding the best trekking pole starts with finding a pair compatible with your height. (When you’re holding your trekking pole, your elbow should be at a 90-degree angle or slightly greater.) For that reason, we focused on adjustable-length poles and preferred those with larger ranges of adjustability. (Telescoping poles do weigh more than fixed-length poles, but we considered the trade-off worthwhile.)

We tested poles ranging from 95 cm (suitable for people around 5 feet tall) to 140 cm (for those over 6 feet).

Comfortable grips: Handgrips are usually made of cork, foam, or rubber, with cork and foam being more common.

Cork is the leather of trekking-pole grip materials. It’s more tacky than foam when it’s wet—which is often, because your hands might sweat during physical activity—and conforms slightly to your hands over time. It’s a little heavier than foam and more expensive. All of our picks use cork grips, but as we discovered in our testing, not all cork is created equal.

Integrated lower grips: Lengthening or shortening your poles when hiking long downhill or uphill slopes gives you the best leverage possible. In our experience, hikers are unlikely to stop and fiddle with their poles for most smaller climbs and descents, no matter how easy the poles are to adjust.

So, we mostly tested poles with integrated lower grips. These allow you to simply come out of the wrist straps (if you use them) and move your hand down to the lower grips when going uphill. All of our picks have foam lower grips.

Sturdy shafts: We looked for durable carbon and aluminum options. There’s a misconception that carbon-fiber trekking poles are brittle and prone to breaking. That may be true for thin-walled, small-diameter shafts. But beefier carbon-fiber poles can be just as durable as aluminum poles and usually have less flex and less vibration, which means more energy pushing you forward and less buzzing going through your hands and arms. Most importantly, such poles are more comfortable on long hiking days. They’re usually more quiet, too, which we appreciate in what might otherwise be a serene, natural environment.

Aluminum poles flex more than carbon poles, which means they’re more likely to bend than break. (And if the bend is minor, you can bend the pole back close to straight.) Aluminum poles tend to transmit more vibration to your hands and arms, though some sufficiently dampen the vibration so you don’t notice it after a few minutes of hiking.

Weight: Most trekking poles weigh in the range of 16 to 20 ounces per pair, though some lightweight specialized poles come in at around 10 ounces as a pair. Even if you never carry your poles in a backpack, you’ll notice the weight difference when swinging them while hiking over several hours.

Durable, easy-to-use hardware: Each adjustable pole usually has two points of adjustment (or locks), meaning two pieces of hardware that can fail over time. When a plastic lock fails, it’s more often a minor crack than a catastrophic break, and such pieces are often replaceable. Aluminum is more durable, though.

Some trekking poles are secured with twist locks, while others use lever locks. There’s a lot of variability across locking mechanisms—we looked for secure locking mechanisms that we didn’t have to fight open or closed.

The tension of lever locks is adjustable (that is, the lock mechanism itself can be made to grip more tightly or more loosely when the lock is closed), and if the tension isn’t properly adjusted to suit how hard you lean on them, they might slip. Twist locks are only as tight as you twist them.

Replacement parts: We emphasized repairability when choosing hiking poles to test because even with a durable pole, accidents happen, and replacing parts is more affordable than replacing poles. On any pole, the tips, which are typically carbide or a similar hard metal, will wear out over time and need to be replaced. (In our testing, we looked for unusual wear and cracking problems on the tips’ housing.)

Portability: The packed size, also called the collapsed length, refers to how short a pole is when fully collapsed.

Accessories: All of the poles we tested included at least one set of baskets, often referred to as mud baskets, to keep the pole tips from plunging through soft surfaces like mud, sand, or layers of leaves in the fall.

These poles are the most comfortable and among the quietest hiking poles we tested. They come in two sizes and are easy to adjust to different lengths.

We recommend the Black Diamond Pursuit Trekking Poles for most of the terrain found in most trail systems.

They have among the most comfortable grips. Though other poles we tested also use cork grips, the cork on these poles was more comfortable than most other poles we tested, and equal to that of our upgrade pick (which is also from Black Diamond). The cork was soft from the first mile on the trail and required no break-in period. The grips on these poles subtly curve into the palm. Compared with a purely straight grip, it filled our palms more fully, and we felt more connected to the pole.

When heading up a mountain, we found the lower foam grips invaluable. They allowed us to hike uphill without needing to shorten the pole length. When going downhill, especially shorter downhills that didn’t merit adjusting the pole length, we simply palmed the top of the trekking poles to brace ourselves.

The lever locks are easy to operate. When we did want to adjust the poles, the lever locks felt almost as if they were spring-loaded. They’re made of aluminum where the lock meets the pole and soft plastic where your finger pulls the tab to open and close the lock. Though they require some hand strength, they are easier to release and close than all the locks we tested, except for those on our upgrade pick.

We had read reviews for other hiking poles left by novice hikers who’d set out on a hike only to find that their new poles’ locks weren’t sufficiently tightened, causing their poles to telescope unexpectedly, and they had no way of adjusting them. The Pursuit poles contain a small hex tool inside one of the lower pole shaft pieces that allows you to tighten or loosen the locks on the trail.

They’re strong and quiet for aluminum poles. The Pursuit poles use a 7001 series aluminum, which is commonly used in tents due to its ability to flex and return to shape in heavy winds. In a larger diameter, this kind of pole can also work well in hiking poles. The Pursuit poles were one of the most flexible poles we tested when we loaded it with unnatural (but possible during falls) pressure. After flexing, they always returned straight.

Perhaps because the Pursuit poles are coupled with an aluminum locking mechanism, they’re also quiet for aluminum poles. They don’t dampen vibrations from the ground as well as some carbon poles, but they are quiet enough that they didn’t distract us from enjoying our hike.

They’re available in two sizes—including the grips. While many poles are available in different lengths, these poles are also available in two handgrip sizes that correlate with the lengths. Plus, they aren’t unnecessarily gendered. Instead, the poles come in a S/M (with a range of 100 to 125 cm) or a M/L (125 to 140 cm), accommodating hikers from just under 5 feet to hikers topping 6-foot-5. If you can get away with a 125 cm pole, you’ll also benefit from a little less weight and a smaller collapsed size.

You can repair them. The Pursuit poles have a full range of spare parts, so if you break a piece or just wear out the tips, you can purchase a replacement piece instead of a full set of poles.

They’re pricey. Though far from the most expensive poles we tested, they are over double the price of our budget-pick trekking poles.

They’re not as stiff or as quiet as carbon-fiber poles. Though the Pursuit poles are quiet for aluminum, carbon poles at a sufficient diameter with quality aluminum locking mechanisms will still provide more rigidity and dampening. Also, Black Diamond doesn’t disclose the shaft or lever lock materials on its website (REI does).

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These poles satisfy the essential criteria for a trekking pole, with toughness, comfort, and replaceable parts, but they come with a minor sacrifice: The components wear out faster than in our other picks.

We recommend the Cascade Mountain Tech Carbon Fiber Quick Lock Trekking Poles (Cork Grip) if you’re just getting into hiking.

They’re less than half the price of our top pick. Hiking is more accessible, money-wise, than many outdoor activities, but the costs can still add up over time. These poles are an excellent value for people looking to spend less on gear. We’ve seen them used on long-distance trails like the Continental Divide, Pacific Crest, and Appalachian Trail, all over 2,000 miles long.

They’re carbon, and they mute vibrations well. Like our upgrade pick, the poles use carbon fiber shafts rather than aluminum. They’re stiffer than our top pick but less stiff than our upgrade pick. For the price, we were surprised at how well these poles kept the vibrations out of our arms. They are a little louder than our other picks—the plastic locking mechanisms rattle—but we forgot about it after a few minutes of hiking.

They’re lighter than our other picks. The Cascade Mountain Tech poles weigh 8.1 ounces each, 1.5 ounces lighter per pole than our top pick and half an ounce lighter per pole than our upgrade pick. That may not seem like much, but if you spend a lot of time carrying your poles, every ounce saved contributes to a more comfortable pack.

They’re only available in one size, but they have a good range of lengths. They’re 100 cm at the shortest setting, 5 cm longer than the shortest section on the smaller sizes of our other picks, so hikers under 5 feet tall may prefer our other picks. On the most extended setting, 137 cm, the Cascade Mountain Tech poles are 3 cm longer than the larger size of our upgrade pick and 3 cm shorter than our top pick, so hikers over 6-foot-5 may prefer our top pick.

They include more accessories than any poles we tested. These poles include two sets of rubber tip attachments to dampen the strike when you’re walking on paved surfaces; almost all of the poles we tested came only with a set of standard small baskets plus a pair of larger baskets for snow.

That said, unlike the screw-in rubber tips available for purchase (separately) from Black Diamond for our other picks, these rubber tips just slide on over the carbide tip. We found the rubber tips sometimes snagged on trailside objects and can become trail litter—they’re best used only on pavement or concrete.

Unlike our other picks, these poles include a soft storage sack to organize the accessories.

They use less robust components. The locking mechanisms are fully plastic; the locks on our other picks use at least some aluminum. We haven’t damaged ours, but we’ve seen reports of other reviewers cracking them with intense use.

The tips are shorter and will need to be replaced sooner. The carbide tips on these poles are about two-thirds the length of those on our other picks, which means they’ll wear to the tip housing sooner. Unfortunately for the current generation of Cascade Mountain Tech poles, when this happens, you have to purchase an entire lower pole piece for $13.1

The grips are less comfortable than those on our top picks. The Cascade Mountain Tech poles have cork grips with a lower foam handle like our other picks, but both the cork and foam on these are more coarse to the touch. We found that the cork softened a little over time but never became as soft as the cork on the Black Diamond Pursuit Trekking Poles.

These poles are the quietest that we tested. They’re also built for the most challenging terrain—which is reflected in their high price.

This is the same pole as the men’s version, but lighter, with shorter minimum and maximum lengths.

The Black Diamond Alpine Carbon Cork Trekking Poles, available in men’s and women’s versions, are our upgrade pick. They’re the best poles for people venturing off trail into trickier, tougher terrain.

They’re built for the most challenging terrain. As well as being made with carbon fiber, the Alpine Carbon Cork poles’ shafts have a larger diameter than any others we tested; these are the only poles with fully aluminum locking mechanisms. We’ve taken them on high alpine off-trail routes that were more talus and boulder fields than smooth ground, pitched pole-supported shelters with them in violent rain and wind storms, crossed fast-moving thigh-high creeks with their help, and ski-toured with them in mid-winter temperatures in the teens.

Some experts say carbon fiber can’t withstand cold weather, but we have so far found no reason to swap these for different poles in the winter (for what it’s worth, Black Diamond labels them as four-season, winter-worthy gear).

They’re the quietest and most dampening. Some poles we tested had so much rattle and vibration that we could think of nothing else but the poles while hiking. The stiff carbon used in the shafts help the Alpine Carbon Cork poles absorb the forces from the ground better than the competition.

They’re the easiest to lock and unlock. The low-profile aluminum lever lock on these poles is just a little easier to operate than those on our top pick.

They’re long-distance-backpacker-approved. In a 2023 survey of 751 Pacific Crest Trail hikers, the Alpine Carbon Cork poles were the most commonly carried and highest-rated poles on the trail, just ahead of our top pick, the Black Diamond Pursuit Trekking Poles. I used them for the entire length of that trail plus the rocky, rooty, and steep 273-mile Long Trail in Vermont’s Green Mountains. They’re also the current pole of choice for Andrew Skurka, one of the most traveled backpackers ever, known for his off-trail 4,700-mile Alaska-Yukon trip.

Using a former generation of the current Alpine Carbon Cork poles, I managed to bend only a pole tip by wedging a pole between two large rocks and then falling on it. Total damage: $15 for a pair of replacement tips.

They’re lighter than our top pick. Our home kitchen scale measured them at 16.7 ounces with handle straps and no baskets—about 1 ounce lighter than our top pick. We didn’t notice any difference in arm fatigue while using the two pairs of poles, but for those backpackers counting every ounce (or gram), any weight savings may be worth it.

They may be overkill for some hikers. These poles are our most expensive pick, and the benefits may not be worth it for people who prefer to hike short distances on smooth terrain. They are also more tailored towards hikers who carry heavier weights or who rely heavily on the poles for bracing.

They don’t suit taller hikers as well as our top pick. These poles are available in two sizes: men’s and women’s. The women’s lock down to 95 cm (5 cm shorter than our top pick), but the men’s poles extend only as far as 130 cm (our top pick goes to 140 cm).

The grips are the same on both the men’s and the women’s sizes. Unlike the grips on our top pick, the grips on the two sizes of these poles are identical in circumference.

They require a separate tool for adjusting the locking mechanism tension. We were surprised that these more expensive poles did not have the same integrated hex tool as the top pick. Be sure to set the right tension at home or bring a tool on the trail.

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If you want the lightest poles for groomed trails and easy walking: We suggest the Gossamer Gear LT5 Three Piece Carbon Trekking Poles, which are the lightest poles we tested and go almost unnoticed when you’re carrying them. They work well for smooth trails and for hikers who want a pole to help propel them forward more than support their weight on steep descents. However, they’re not as versatile as our picks. They use twist locks, which are more prone to collapsing under weight than the lever locks used on our picks. The same thin-walled and small-diameter carbon fiber that keeps these poles light also makes the shafts less durable under load. At 130 cm fully extended, they aren’t as suitable for taller hikers as our other picks either.

The Black Diamond Trail Trekking Poles are aluminum poles available with foam or cork grips. Essentially, they were a blend of our top pick and budget pick, and we recommend spending a little more to get our top pick or a lot less to get our budget pick.

The REI Co-op Traverse Trekking Poles are sturdy, quiet aluminum poles that are comfortable in hand. They’re also the heaviest poles we tested, though, and we noticed more fatigue in our arms on longer hikes when using them.

The Montem Ultra Strong Trekking Poles were our former top pick, thanks to their affordable price and simple design. During this round of testing, however, they rattled so much that the vibration in our arms and the loud noise ruined the peace of the outdoors. The wrist straps also have a light fleece backing, which isn’t ideal in hot weather.

The Leki Legacy Lite and Leki Khumbu Lite are similar poles with different aluminum pole compounds. We decided to test these despite their lack of a lower grip because of their affordable price and popularity. We found that the cork grips were too polished and slippery after sweating.

We’ve used the Fizan Compact 3 poles for long-distance hikes in the past and found them sufficient, if we didn’t put too much weight on them, but we managed to collapse them during testing. Like the Leki poles, they don’t have a lower grip.

This article was edited by Christine Ryan.

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We found mixed messages online about being able to replace these tips, so we tried to do it ourselves. First, we softened the pole tips for removal with a blow torch and tried to remove the tips with our best adjustable pliers, pulling them and trying to knock them off. After that failed, we dipped them in boiling water for 20 seconds before yanking and banging on the tips with our pliers to near strain to remove them, to no avail.

Trey French

I write about outdoor and travel gear. I test hiking socks, ice cleats, thermoses, and more things that make being outdoors more comfortable and fun.

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