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Alpkit Carbonlite Poles
Tested
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Price: £35.00 per
pair (!)
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Weight: 384 grammes (per pair) cork
handled version approx. 460 grammes
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Features: Carbon
fibre trekking poles with twist action, EVA or cork handles,
wrist loops, baskets and rubber tip cover.
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Light and cheap.
Will break rather than bend if you really want to kill them
badly...
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The Concept It's those fellas from Alpkit again with their
web-only deals on decent products at crazy cheap prices. These are
lightweight carbon fibre trekking poles at only 35 quid a pair.
They're intended to be light and help you walk along without
falling over and, if you believe it, take some of the load off your
knees.
Features They really are simple, standard issue trekking poles
in three sections with a twist to lock action and standard
dimensions. The only difference is that they're made from carbon
fibre which, the Alpkit chaps say, is up to 30 per-cent lighter than
the equivalent sections in aluminium. Overall though, the pole will
be around 10-20 per-cent lighter because most of the weight is in the
handle section of the pole.
No springs, no gimmicks, just a choice of handle materials,
baskets and some rubber things to stop the metal tips tip tappying
away on hard surfaces. A propos of which, the tips aren't
replaceable, but the individual pole sections are, so even if you
break one, it's not the end of the world.
In Action We're not dedicated trekking pole users, but in our
book, light is better than heavy. The real plus here though, is in
weight distribution. Because most fo the weight is in the handle, the
pole has a feathery light heft when swung from your wrists, which is
nice, very nice in fact and arguably less tiring over the course of a
day on the hill.
Otherwise they feel like, well, trekking poles. They screw and
unscrew like poles, have wrist loops and handles and stop you falling
over. As Alpkit admit on their site in a very upfront way, carbon
fibre tends to break rather than bend and we dare say, if we tried we
could bust these eventually. Iin normal walking use though, it didn't
happen and we like them too much to do it for fun.
Like we said, if they do fail, you can simply buy a replacement
section, though you won't be able to bend them back into shape,
because they'll be broken...
Killer deal for a pair of very light rather pimpy-looking trekking
poles that do pretty much everything you want poles to do while
weighing a lot less and costing significantly less than a lot of
other trekking out there. We happen to know that a well known
outdoors magazine editor actually bought a pair of these for his
wife, with money, which really, is all you need to know. If you want springs, you're out of luck, but we've never found they make any difference anyway...
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Performance
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Value
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Pushed for time:
Very light and very well priced. That's it, brilliant
bargain poles that do what poles do.
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Know more or want to?
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you have questions you can mail
us direct, ask
Richard Gear or try a posting to our gear
forum.
Ian McCartney
Not one, not two, but a whole load of great Christmas outdoor gift options from those nice fellas over at AlpKit :-)
