How To Maintain External Locking Trekking Poles

Trekking Poles with external locking systems have a lot of versatility. They’re great for use in the summer and in the winter, ah you can adjust them with gloves on or you always have that visual confirmation that your poles are locked in.

 

After you’ve used your poles for a while, you may find that you need to adjust the external locking mechanism to keep the pole section tight when you lock them in. Backcountry Edge stock three brands of poles that use external locking mechanisms and here’s how you adjust them. Easton’s locking mechanism is called the Rock Lock. I really like this mechanism, you know it’s very simple to open and close and if you do find yourself needing to make adjustments on the fly, you don’t really need anything to do it. You just stand up the locking mechanism, twist it to the left to loosen it, twist it to the right to tighten it, flip it back over and lock it in. Black Diamond uses the mechanism that they call the Flick Lock. What the Flock Lock does is it pulls these two plates right here together, to lock the pole section in place. If you need to make an adjustment to the Flick Lock, just turn it right here, you can see we’ve got a Phillips head screw right here. Get your screw driver in there, tighten it up a quarter of a turn and everything is good to go. A little bit more tension to lock it in and you’re set for the trail. Leki’s external locking mechanism is called the Speedlock.

 

So you’ve got this red lever here, that’s how you unlock and lock the pole. What that does, is there’s a couple different steel plates sandwiched back in here. When you clamp it down it pulls everything together. You get that nice click to let you know that you’re locked in, and if you need to adjust this one you’ve got kind of a knurled screw, right here, you can just twist that a little bit, make your adjustment and lock the poles in. So if ease of adjustability and use find their way to the top of your list or you’re just working on poles that you already own, these three locking mechanism are easily maintainable and give you a secure lock every time.