On the East Coast, you do not need to wear a bear bell. Aluminum trekking poles — if applied with due diligence — will make all the noise you need.
Seriously, trekking pole noise is an issue that deserves to be … heard.
This post is my brief inquiry into trekking pole noise. And what I can do about it.
To cut to the …
I count at least three distinct, common trekking pole noises.
First, there’s the ringing slap of the aluminum pole against rock. What I would call the bangety-bang noise. This isn’t something you do intentionally, it’s just the side of the pole accidentally banging against the rock as you put the pole down, over and over again, in time to your walking.
Second, there’s the potential for the inner workings of the pole to rattle, make boinging-boing noises, and similar, as most trekking poles are “spring loaded” to minimize shock to your hands as you use them.
My poles don’t have this problem. But some of them jangle as they are used.
Finally, there is the noise of the carbide pole tip biting into the rock surface. I’ll go into it at length below, but suffice it to say, they put carbide tips on these for a good reason. They are integral to these functioning well on rock, in all weather.
I don’t think I can get rid of that noise.
So, of what I count as the three main sources of noise, the only one relevant to me, that I think I can do something about, is the ringing bang of the bare aluminum pole against rocks.
I’m trying the above, to minimize that. If for no other reason than “Of course I have a dead bicycle inner tube hanging up in my garage. Doesn’t everyone?”
Anyway, this is surely an idiot-proof fix. We’ll see if it stops the banging, on my next hike.
Trekking pole noise, a more sensitive issue for hunters than hikers.
On line, you see sporadic mentions of trekking pole noise, as an annoyance on the trail.
On my most recent hike, I heard a bit of grumbling from one hiker. Not direct at me, but at a guy who had jangled up the trail some tens of minutes earlier.
And my fellow hiker had a point. When a trekking pole user is approaching along the trail, you can typically hear the clackety-clack, and sometimes the jingle-jangle, from quite a ways off.
But what to do about that? As a trekking sticks user, I mean.
Logically enough, the best discussions of trekking pole noise that I stumbled across were in the sportsman (hunting/fishing) community. Trekking pole noise is a drawback when stalking prey, so it receives full and serious attention in that market sector.
From discussion among hunters, I learned that
- sloppy users make more noise than those who are more careful,
- and some brands of poles are noisier than others,
- carbon fiber poles are quieter than aluminum.
And, finally, I ran across this bicycle-inner-tube fix, in those sportsmen’s discussions.
It was a goldilocks moment. Soft plastic — pool noodle, pipe insulation — couldn’t handle the abrasion of the rocks. Hard plastic — like vinyl tubing, rubber garden hose, or similar — would take some ingenuity to attach, and have it stay attached.
But inner tube material seemed just about right. Very tough, for sure. Prevents metal-to-rock contact. And big enough to allow the pole to be fully collapsed, even with this inner-tube sleeve attached.
Why I’m (probably) not going to use rubber crutch tips.
Source: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/mohs-hardness-scale.htm
A separate part of trekking stick noise is the impact of the carbide tips on rock.
Not only does the impact of stick tip on rock make noise, but it scars the rock. This draws some ire because, in some heavily-used areas, this leaves the rocks visibly scarred.
But carbide trekking sticks tips scar the rock by design. Tungsten carbide is harder than any common rock, by a wide margin. On Moh’s scale, it’s a 9+, where quartz (about the hardest rock around here) is 7 on the Moh’s scale. That carbide tip “bites into” the rock underneath it when you apply weight. That keeps the tip from slipping under adverse conditions (e.g., wet and muddy).
I have rubber crutch tips to fit over the carbide tips on my old, cheap trekking sticks. I can see that a) I used them, b) I took them off, and c) they have some mud on them.
My take on that is that the rubber tips aren’t much good, under the circumstances where I rely on trekking sticks. That is, going downhill, putting a lot of weight on the sticks to take stress off my knee joints. In that situation, if the tip skids on the rocks, the results could be very bad indeed.
And so, from the look of it, and as best I can recall, when I last used these — about seven years ago — I tried the rubber crutch tips and found them to be unreliable for rocky trail descents in adverse (muddy/wet) conditions.
They’ll slip, in situations where the carbide tip — with its minuscule surface area in contact with the rock, grinding into the rock — will not.
I may try some upgraded rubber tips, to see if that makes any difference. Or, maybe, see if I can find ones that are adequate in dry conditions, for me, leaning on them as I descend rocky trails.
Plus, as a day hiker and retiree, if it looks like rain, I ain’t going hiking. So maybe I don’t need much in the way of muddy/wet performance. (Or, when I don’t, maybe I can get by with rubber tips.)
Conclusion.
I’ve done the simple fix, for one component of trekking stick noise.
Nothing to do but try it out on the next hike and see whether it makes a difference or not.
