Really glad you went carbon with your product Drew. I’m starting to lose track of how many lower sections of aluminum poles I’ve seen bend or break.
I bent the lower section of my sissy stix 8 miles into our 8 day Frank hunt. That was definitely in my mind while putting everything together I wanted in a trekking pole. My ideal pole design and what inspired it.
The ones in AZ we cheap so leassoned learned there. In ID when we were hiking to our base camp up some steep steep I slipped pole bent and I went down. Brand new sissy stix, they were good about it though I called them up and sent them pictures and they sent me a new lower. But I have not used the poles on a hunt since. Likely was not the poles fault but it’s in my head now.
In my opinion aluminum poles are just no good for off trail use with a heavy pack. They bend and break all the time. With the Sissy sticks, in my opinion they should have made the bottom section carbon and the upper section aluminum. But full carbon is just the better product. I’ve had my BD carbons for more than a dozen years and they just won’t die. The packer that my outfitter sent on my sheep hunt bought a brand new set of BD aluminum poles before our trip and broke them both on the packout.
