From time immemorial homosapians have utilized sticks to augment their bipedalism. Moses used one in the Old Testament as has the reigning Pope for centuries. A third ground support is just so darn useful. Modern recreational hikers have also used them. They were the only option until the past 50 years or so. John Muir used one in the 1860s and Gradma Gatewood used one in the 1960s. Hickory was often prized as superior to other woods among sportsman and campers. If one could acquire a hickory stick with a twist or knots, all the more stylish.1
Lord Baden-Powell instructed Scouts to carry a walking stick in his 1911 Boy Scout Handbook. He preferred a staff made of ash or bamboo and recommended garden tool handles for those that couldn’t find suitable wood in nature.2 Colin Fletcher also recommended bamboo poles 1.5 inches in diameter in his 1968 The Complete Walker book.
Historically, most hikers simply found their own sticks and broke them in on the trail. Some industrious souls carved their own. Wood poles did have a few drawbacks. First, the tips wore down and split, especially in rocky terrain. Once one’s pole split or broke, it was sometimes difficult to find a suitable replacement on the trail if trees were not plentiful. The second drawback was weight. A sturdy staff was also often fairly heavy and could tire the arm over many miles unless one was fortunate enough to access bamboo.
Hiking poles were especially popular in mountainous regions where hikers battled steep slopes and ice and snow. In some of these regions hikers dabbled in skiing in the winter time. So ski poles easily found their way into hikers hand and doubled as a superb hiking pole on the snow-strewn walking paths. After World War 2, when recreational skiing exploded in popularity, bamboo ski poles with metal or plastic tips became standard as the bamboo was lighter than most other woods.
So in the 1960s and early 70s, bamboo ski poles grew in popularity as hiking poles. One man who frequented the Alps saw the potential for a more sturdy yet lightweight pole. After-all, bamboo is ideal for a ski pole where a light amount of weight is placed on a pole. But less ideal while descending a steep slope on foot while bearing a heavy pack where a hiker may lean much more strenuously on their pole.
Karl Lenhart was a Czech skier and mountaineer who decided to do something about these problems. Around 1970 he experimented with aluminum for the shaft of ski poles which had been used in high end ski poles since the 1940s. It worked superbly. His new pole was marketed by his family company, Leki. He quickly noticed that the hollow metal tube opened a possible solution for another problem. When not in use, ski or trekking poles are carried in the pack. Their length can make them cumbersome. So he decided to try a three part telescoping system like a camera tripod leg to make them collapsible.
His method worked well and was introduced in 1974. He even tested his own product on a successful summit of Mt. Everest. Leki quickly became a leader in commercial hiking poles, but trekking poles did not become ubiquitous overnight. Many hikers preferred the free poles provided by Mother Nature to spending money on another expensive piece of gear.3
While trekking poles were fairly popular in the rugged mountains among off-season skiers and mountaineers, they were less so among backpackers and day hikers in less rugged regions like the Appalachians. There were always those who used walking sticks, but there was another crowd who saw this as wimpy.
In 1988 Exerstrider arrived with their trend-setting Nordic walking sticks. Nordic walking was an off-season training fad that tread onto the fitness scene in the 80s and took it by storm. The Exerstrider poles were fixed length aluminum ski poles with fancy graphics and large rubber foot that gripped well on any terrain from dirt to pavement. Nordic walking promised to keep skiers in shape through the summer by engaging the arm muscles while walking for exercise.
Whether Nordic walking lived up to its claims or not, the Exerstrider made walking with modified ski poles cool, and by extension, hiking with them. Over the next decade the high tech hiking pole supplanted the wood stick as the de facto third ground support.
Ski pole technology has continued to trickle down to trekking poles over the decades. For example, the first carbon fiber ski pole was made in 1990 by Dave Goode of Goode Ski technology. It slowly found its way into trekking poles.4
Leki has continued to be a major influence and has introduced other innovations over the years. In 1982 they released trekking poles with a built in shock system to reduce upper extremity fatigue. In 2009 they created a rapid release for the hiking pole hand strap that improves safety and allows more rapid adjustment on the fly. But they have not been on the forefront of every innovation.
In 2004 two friends started Trek Technologies LLC to sell one product, the TrekPod. This was a hiking stick designed for the selfie age! It combined hiking pole and foldout tripod, but its secret weapon was a magnetic camera mount which allowed quick connection and disconnection. This made it excellent for a quick trail side pause to snap wildlife or a selfie.5
In 2004, the digital point-and-shoot camera was common in nearly every house, Xanga (an early blog-style social media website) was gaining large numbers of users, MySpace was a year old, and the GoPro debuted. YouTube was only a year away. The stage was set for the selfie to become a cultural staple and the Influencer lifestyle to take over. The TrekPod was there to support every camera.
Sadly, it would never become the trekking pole of Influencers everywhere as some thought. The TrekPod and later iterations did sell well for over 18 years before Trek Technologies went out of business. It created a myriad of copycats along the way. Trekking pole selfie sticks have been around ever since, but they have never been a staple of backcountry foot travel. Leki and other big manufacturers eventually got in the game with optional camera and smart phone mounts.
Today, improvements in grip shape, tip design, space age materials and other features continue to improve the comfort and lightness of high tech walking sticks. They can carry us farther and faster than ever before. Sadly, they still don’t carry the pack weight for us. Maybe one day though.
Appendix:
Notably in my research on this topic was the lack of discussion about walking sticks by William H.H. Murray, John M. Gould, George Washington Sears, or Horace Kephart in their respective publications. These giants produced some of the earliest and most important guides on camp craft but all neglected this topic. Perhaps none of them preferred to use one, or else they deemed the topic too mundane for inclusion. I could locate no pictures of them holding one. So perhaps the former is the reason. Whatever the case, I was surprised by the lack of a single mention on the subject.
Sources:
- https://books.google.com/books?id=5i09AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA120&dq=hickory+walking+stick+camp&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwit0NOokdmIAxV_pokEHVILByoQ6AF6BAgGEAM#v=onepage&q=hickory%20walking%20stick%20camp&f=false
- Boy Scouts of America: The Official Handbook for Boys, 1913, New York Doubleday Page & Company, Pg 365
- https://www.leki.co.uk/customer-care/the-history-of-leki#:~:text=1948%20%2D%20Karl%20Lenhart%20created%20LEKI,and%20baskets%20for%20ski%20poles.
- https://backcountrymagazine.com/stories/carbon-fiber-forefather-dave-goode-passes-away/#:~:text=Goode%20founded%20his%20company%20in,fiber%20ski%20pole%20in%201990.
- "History," accessed Sept, 19, 2024 viahttp://web.archive.org/web/20190125150535/http://www.trek-tech.com/company/history.html.