Best Hiking Poles: For Skiers Looking to Build Summer Fitness

Hiking is a great summer activity for skiers looking to build power and endurance through relatively low impact activity. To ensure you’re balanced and engaged your upper body in ski-specific movements, we recommend grabbing a pair of hiking poles. Sure you’ll blend in with the older crowd but you’ll also do a better job imitating the full body movements of skiing.

Although you may be tempted to use your classic ski poles for hiking, we’d advise you to purchase a dedicated hiking pair so you can take advantage of the purpose built poles with key features like packability, ergonomic grips, adjustable size, and lightweight technology. And, do not, I repeat, do not, use hiking poles for skiing. We will find you and break your skis in half if you’re trying to use hiking poles for skiing. Anyways, below are five picks for hiking poles depending on what you’re after:

Best Hiking Poles On a Budget

Amazon Basic Trekking Poles - Collapsable, strong, adjustable, and lightweight, all for under $30. These are great to stash in your car or throw in a pack in case you need some back-up on a hike. They are aluminum, so not as light as carbon poles. They also use pretty basic mechanisms for adjustment meaning you’ll need to tighten things up quite a bit if you want to avoid them collapsing on you.

Best High-Quality Hiking Poles

BLACK DIAMOND Trail Trekking Poles- Reputable, lightweight, and built to last, these are the poles for you if you only want to buy one pair of trekking poles ever. These are aluminum, adjustable, and ergonomic. They’re super durable and known for their reliability. The adjusted layers won’t slip into one another and you can trust them in the diceyist of situations.

Best Hiking Pole When You Only Want One Pole

LEKI Super Micro Trekking Pole- Look, this thing is not going to help with any upper body engagement — it’s purpose is to help with balance if you got yourself in a hairy situation. It’s tiny and packable, and has a nice horizontal handle to help you get a grip. Buy it, throw it in your bag, and use it when you’re unsure or need to cross a creek or fight an old man with a cane.

Best Dual Purpose Hiking Pole

MSR DynaLock Explore 3-Section Alumunium Backcountry Poles - These are collapsible, strong, and functional in both summer and winter! If you want a hiking pole that doubles as a downhill ski pole, these are your buy. They also can be adjusted without a tool so you can hand them off to your tall buddy who needs some extra balance descending.

Best Lightweight Hiking Pole

BLACK DIAMOND Distance Z Trekking Poles - Carbon fiber hiking poles are a unique item but worth a look if you’re trying to move with speed and efficiency. These come with a higher price tag but maintain all of the same adjustable/ergo features of cheaper poles, while baking it all on a 308g, ultra-lightweight pole.

That’s the shortlist of the best hiking poles. All of the poles featured above will help you hike more efficiently and get your arms moving to help simulate some cross country ski motion. If you want to disregard our note about classic poles, you can, in fact, use them in the summer, but stick to more explosive intervals like bounding or moose-hoofing. Happy hiking!