What is Pole Hiking and Why Should I Care?

If you’ve done much hiking, you’ve probably seen them: purposeful-looking people striding through the woods with poles in their hands. Perhaps your first thought was that there was something missing from this picture– snow, for instance.  Perhaps you feared that these people had been wandering in the woods since last winter, when they lost their skiis in a terrible fall, and had been trying to make their way back to civilization ever since. Wrong. Quite wrong. These people know exactly where they are, what they are doing, and how much they paid (way too much) for hiking poles that look a lot like old ski poles they could have picked up for nothing at the town dump. Does all that sound unfair? Read the other side of the story– why pole hiking is the next big thing in outdoors fun, on Pete’s Pole Page. It does looks weird at first, but the more we read, the more we like it, despite Pete’s diplomatic warning that “financial outlay may be required.”