How many poles?

[DG99]

[

Black Diamond adjustable poles. Never have broken one. Looks very mountaineer too. Orange.

Adjustable poles (and very especially the Black Diamond ones), are the worst poles ever. They are totally deprived of feeling, it's like skiing with a dead stick. No feel at all, they actually kill the feeling. But sadly, they are an XCD skier's must, we just cannot live without them. We have to learn to live with them. I hate them, but I need them.

when I ski tele at a resort I use BD adjustable poles...I never adjust them, its just what I own...

Jesus... This is so terribly sad... Can I send you a pair of real poles by mail? It will change your entire life...

I hear you…. Once skiing BD adjustable at the resort, alpine, hardpack, I suddenly realized how bad they were. Clunky, flexy etc. Never bothered me in the BC though.

[fgd135]

I still have one of those Ramer poles - the other one is broken. They saved my neck once in 1986 when descending from the summit of the Strahlhorn (4190m) on very hard Spring snow. I took a tumble and both bindings (also Ramer) released and I was left dangling, held by the poles alone, directly above a very large open crevasse. Fortunately, I was able to get back in the bindings, while hanging on precariously to one pole. I liked the idea so much that I purchased the modern equivalent from Grivel. They have retractable steel picks and are correspondingly heavy. I would only take them in April or May - quite reassuring on a dodgy descent.

Did you ever write Paul Ramer and tell him that story? Good stuff. He would've put that anecdote in the catalog, I think.

[riel]

After my Asnes pole broke with limited use I started wondering whether it makes sense to have a couple backup poles, or at least one set, although they aren't cheap by any means. How many sets of poles do you folks usually have? Is breaking of poles a thing that happens often? Many years of alpine skiing I got by with one pair. XC I was fine with the swix and they still work well. Just a little worried now that this one pole snapped so quickly.

I have 3 pairs of ski poles I use regularly.

155cm Swix poles with powder baskets
160cm Swix poles with trail baskets
105-145cm MSR Deploy TR-2 adjustable poles

The XC ski poles are all pretty generic and I treat them as essentially interchangeable.

The latter are adjustable downhill poles. A little heavy for pure XC skiing, but great for doing trail maintenance, when you might need to use your poles to stop on a narrow trail before taking out your saw to cut through some fallen tree branch, or when you need to switch between skis and snowshoes.

Unfortunately those poles no longer seem to be made.

[Jurassien]

Did you ever write Paul Ramer and tell him that story? Good stuff. He would've put that anecdote in the catalog, I think.

I did actually write to them once and got a reply from his wife. I can't remember the subject matter of the letter, but it certainly wasn't a complaint - I liked the Ramer stuff.

In one issue of their catalogue, Ramer wrote about a ski-tour in the Glarner Alps with his Swiss distributor, a man called Vonetsch. I went to see Herr Vonetsch and left with the same pair of skis he used in the mentioned article (which he knew nothing about). The skis were from a small French manufacturer called Duret and had the Ramer bindings. They were my first touring skis.

The Ramer binding was the first truly lightweight touring binding and held that position till the Dynafit system hit the market. People scoffed at the heel-lifters (his invention), but they're not laughing now. It would be hard to imagine a modern touring binding without them.

The nordic-touring world needs a Paul Ramer to barge onto the scene and shake the foundations of the Rottefella monopoly. To the best of my knowledge it took an American company to come up with the very simple (but logical) idea of adding a cable to the 3-Pin 75mm toe-piece and to develop a cable binding with separate walking and skiing modes. Maybe a modern incarnation of Ramer could cook up a boot/binding system which does everything one could possibly ask of a nordic-touring system - without any ifs or buts, and do the same to the nordic-touring scene that Dynafit has done to the alpine-touring world.

So, where were we?......Ah,yes....poles, and how many. I have several Polish companions that I go skiing with.

[randoskier]

After my Asnes pole broke with limited use I started wondering whether it makes sense to have a couple backup poles, or at least one set, although they aren't cheap by any means. How many sets of poles do you folks usually have? Is breaking of poles a thing that happens often? Many years of alpine skiing I got by with one pair. XC I was fine with the swix and they still work well. Just a little worried now that this one pole snapped so quickly.

Oops I thought it was going to be a joke about changing lightbulbs....

[CwmRaider]

Oops I thought it was going to be a joke about changing lightbulbs....

I have a pair for skating (175cm) pair for XC on track (160cm small baskets), a pair for XC offtrack (160cm large baskets) and a pair of adjustable poles for alpine.
The XC poles are both carbon / kevlar Åsnes. I have used the first pair, Åsnes Spitsbergen Expedition for 6 years, then got a new pair of Åsnes Amundsen for offtrack XC and changed the baskets and put new grips on the Spitsbergen. I have some duct tape around the ends where ski edge contact is possible but otherwise these carbon/kevlar Åsnes held up much much better than any other poles i have used before.

[bauerb]

ok, this has gone far enough !! Asnes ski poles? really?

How many Asnes devotees does it take to change a light bulb?

[mca80]

ok, this has gone far enough !! Asnes ski poles? really?

How many Asnes devotees does it take to change a light bulb?

I think that question requires 40 pages of responses.

[Rodbelan]

Oops I thought it was going to be a joke about changing lightbulbs....

saucisse.jpg

I have a pair for skating (175cm) pair for XC on track (160cm small baskets), a pair for XC offtrack (160cm large baskets) and a pair of adjustable poles for alpine.
The XC poles are both carbon / kevlar Åsnes. I have used the first pair, Åsnes Spitsbergen Expedition for 6 years, then got a new pair of Åsnes Amundsen for offtrack XC and changed the baskets and put new grips on the Spitsbergen. I have some duct tape around the ends where ski edge contact is possible but otherwise these carbon/kevlar Åsnes held up much much better than any other poles i have used before.

Hé Roelant, you read a bit of french? I do not know if you noticed, but they translated «Polish sausage» into «Polishing the sausage» in french... That image has many layers of funniness...

[Jurassien]

Hé Roelant, you read a bit of french? I do not know if you noticed, but they translated «Polish sausage» into «Polishing the sausage» in french... That image has many layers of funniness...

One could argue that anyone who uses Åsnes ski-poles must be a sausage-polisher.

(Running for cover for the second time in this thread).