Do You Need Trekking Poles for Backpacking?

“Do I need trekking poles?” is one of those questions where the gear industry has an obvious commercial interest in a yes, and where the honest answer for most people is “probably not, but they might be the best cheap upgrade you make.” So let's separate the two halves properly: the case where poles are genuinely a matter of preference, and the case where they are a hard requirement most first-time buyers don't see coming.

The honest answer, up front

Millions of people backpack without poles and are fine. They are not safety equipment, they do not make you faster on flat ground, and they occupy your hands, which matters more than people expect when you want to eat, take a photo, or scramble. If you have never used them and you are buying your first kit, poles are not where the first dollars should go — a pack that fits, a shelter you trust and a pad warm enough for your trips all matter more. Our beginner backpacking gear guide puts that order in writing.

That said, poles are one of the few pieces of gear where the cheap version does most of the job. The gap between a budget adjustable pair and a premium one is largely weight and warranty, not function, which makes “try poles” an unusually low-risk experiment. If you hate them you have spent very little; if you love them you have found a real improvement for the price of a couple of freeze-dried dinners.

When poles are required gear, not an accessory

This is the part that catches budget buyers out, and it is the reason this page exists on a site about getting lighter for less. A large share of the cheapest ultralight shelters on the market are trekking-pole tents: they have no poles of their own, and they pitch on the poles you were already carrying. That is exactly how they get so light and so cheap.

The catch is that the advertised weight excludes the poles. The 3F UL Gear Lanshan 2 Pro is listed at 902 g (1 lb 15.8 oz) with trekking poles explicitly not included. The Zpacks Duplex is listed at 505 g (1 lb 1.8 oz) on the same basis. If you do not already own poles, the real cost of one of those shelters is the tent plus a pair of poles, and the real carried weight is the tent plus however much your poles weigh — which, across the pairs we track, ranges from 280 g (9.9 oz) up to 590 g (1 lb 4.8 oz) per pair.

If you are still deciding between shelter types, read trekking-pole tent vs freestanding tent first. The poles question is downstream of that one, and the comparison there prices both routes honestly.

Pole lengths your tent actually needs

If your shelter needs poles, it needs poles of a particular length, and this is where a cheap pair can quietly fail. Every figure below is the shelter maker's own stated requirement:

• 3F UL Gear Lanshan 2 Pro: two trekking poles, 120–125 cm, not included.
• Zpacks Duplex: two 48 in (122 cm) trekking poles or tent poles, plus 6 to 8 stakes, none included.
• Six Moon Designs Lunar Duo: 45 in (114 cm) poles, not included.
• Durston X-Mid 2: two trekking poles; the fly pitches to a 48 in (122 cm) peak height.

Read those four and the design brief for your poles writes itself: you want a pair that adjusts comfortably through roughly 114 to 125 cm. Most adjustable poles do. The Cascade Mountain Tech pairs run 66–137 cm, Black Diamond's Trail runs 100–140 cm, and the Gossamer Gear LT5 is marked with a tent graphic right at 125 cm so a pole-tent pitch is repeatable.

What the research actually found

There is real published evidence here, and it is worth quoting accurately rather than hand-waving at “studies show.” Howatson and colleagues published a controlled field study in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise in 2011, titled “Trekking poles reduce exercise-induced muscle injury during mountain walking.”

Thirty-seven physically active participants (26 male, 11 female) were split into a trekking-pole group and a no-pole group, carried a day sack, and ascended and descended Mount Snowdon. The researchers measured maximal voluntary contraction, muscle soreness, creatine kinase and vertical jump performance before, immediately after, and at 24, 48 and 72 hours after the trek.

Note carefully what that does and does not say. It is about recovery and perceived effort on a mountain day, not about speed, and not about injury rates over a season. It was a single day on one mountain with a day sack, not a thru-hike with a full load. And the most load-bearing phrase in the whole abstract is “reduce the potential for subsequent injury” — a mechanism, inferred from preserved muscle function, not a measured reduction in injuries.

Still, it points the same direction most multi-day hikers describe: the benefit shows up going down, and it shows up the next morning. If your reason for considering poles is sore quads on descents or knees that object on day three, that is the use case with actual evidence behind it.

When to skip them

Being even-handed, there are real reasons not to buy poles:

• You want your hands free. Scrambling, photography, navigation, kids — poles are a genuine nuisance for all of it, and stowing and deploying them repeatedly gets old.
• You hike mostly flat, maintained trail with a light pack. The evidence above is about mountain descents. On a flat lakeside path with 20 lb on your back, there is much less to gain.
• Your base weight is already very low and your shelter is freestanding. Then poles are pure addition: weight in your hands, money out of your pocket, and no structural job to do.
• You have not actually tried them. Borrow a pair before buying four figures of carbon. Plenty of people discover they dislike the rhythm.

There is also an honest trail-etiquette point. Carbide tips chew up soft trail surfaces and leave marks on rock. Most poles ship with rubber tip covers, including every pair we track, and using them on hard or heavily used surfaces is the considerate default.

Poles and your base weight

One accounting quirk worth knowing, because it changes how pole weight should feel to you. By the usual convention, trekking poles in your hands are carried, not packed, so they sit outside base weight — which is exactly how this site treats them in its budget builds: poles are listed but excluded from the base-weight total. If you are new to the term at all, our what is base weight guide defines it.

That convention is useful, not a loophole. The grams are still on your body and still cost you energy. But it does mean that if you are chasing a base-weight target, poles are one of the cheapest places to stop worrying about grams — and conversely, that paying a premium for the very lightest pair buys you a number that your base weight will not even show. The Black Diamond Distance Carbon Z is 310 g (10.9 oz) lighter than the cheapest aluminum pair here; neither figure appears in a base-weight total.

Compare that with the gear that does count. A grade of down fill power is the same kind of pay-more-carry-less decision, except the grams land inside your pack where the number is visible — which is why down fill power explained is a better place to spend an upgrade budget than a premium pole if you are chasing a base-weight target.

What to buy if the answer is yes

The buying brief is short. You want a pair that adjusts through the 114–125 cm range your shelter may need, locks reliably, and does not cost so much that trying poles becomes a commitment. Lever locks are easier to adjust with cold hands than twist locks. Cork or EVA grips both work; cork is more pleasant in heat. Rubber tip covers should be in the box.

For the full field, including the cottage-brand pairs and the two Montem models, see our best budget trekking poles ranking, which scores all of them on grams saved per dollar against LEKI Journey Lite at 510 g (1 lb 2.0 oz) per pair.

Aluminum or carbon

The weight gap is real: the Cascade Mountain Tech carbon pair is 131 g (4.6 oz) lighter than the same maker's aluminum pair, by Cascade's own figures. So is the durability difference, and it runs the other way. Cascade's own product pages state that aluminum is less likely to snap under lateral pressure than carbon, which is the kind of admission worth reading twice when it comes from the company selling you the carbon.

Practically: carbon if you mostly stay on trail and want the grams; aluminum if you lean on poles hard, cross streams, travel off-trail, or simply would rather a pole bend than break a long way from the road. Warranty is part of this decision too, and it is published: the Cascade carbon pair carries a 1-year warranty, Black Diamond gives two years on the Trail and the Distance Carbon Z, and LEKI covers shaft breakage for life on the Journey Lite. A snapped pole is a bigger problem when your tent pitches on it.

What we can't tell you

We can't tell you whether you personally will like hiking with poles. It is a preference, not a spec, and nothing in a maker's published data predicts it. Borrowing a pair for a weekend will answer that question better than any page can.

We can't tell you how long a given pair lasts. No pole maker publishes a cycle count, a lateral load rating or a failure rate, so warranty length is the only durability figure on the table and we treat it as exactly that — a statement about the company's confidence, not a measured lifespan.

And we can't extend the Snowdon study beyond what it measured. It was one day, one mountain, a day sack, 37 people. It is good evidence that poles help your legs recover from a descent. It is not evidence that poles prevent injuries over a season, make you faster, or help on flat ground, and anyone telling you it shows those things has read the headline and not the abstract.

What this means for your budget

If you own or want a trekking-pole shelter, poles are not a separate purchase decision — they are part of the shelter's price and part of its weight, and you should add both to the tent's listed figures before comparing it to a freestanding tent. That is the single most common accounting mistake in budget ultralight, and it is the reason this page sits in the builds hub rather than the gear pages.

If your shelter stands on its own, treat poles as an optional comfort upgrade with genuine evidence behind it for descents, and buy at the cheap end to find out whether you like them. There is no case we can see for spending near the top of this category on a first pair. Once you know you want poles and you are seriously cutting weight, the pole rankings show where the next grams cost the least, and how to lower your base weight shows the places that usually beat them.