Companion forum thread to:

Fizan Compact Trekking Poles Review

In Spain the brand McKinley sells them for 36€/pair, rebbranded as "super lite". I've been using them for a year now and they are relly good poles, the best you can buy for that price.

Danny, nice write up. These poles appear to hit the sweet spot. Rugged, reliable, and very light weight. And it sure doesn't hurt that they are affordable either. They may just be the next set of poles I buy.

Gen: they are about 1.5 oz. per pole heavier than the GossamerGear and TiGoat poles but half the price. Yep, pretty good value. No skin off the cottage poles though. Nice to have another choice.

Edited by WarrenGreer on 08/02/2011 21:33:30 MDT.

Danny,

I think you found my next poles for me! I know what's going on my Christmas list.

Thanks,
Todd

Two of my friends bought very expensive ($175 American a pair) GG carbon fiber poles. Maybe they mistreated them, I don't know, but they have had a lot of trouble with them. It is nice to hear about relatively light, competitively priced poles that have withstood rigorous field testing. I wish they were more readily available in the States however.

Great poles. I just used them on a month-long trip through the Pyrenees and they survived pretty much unscathed. However after a prolonged period of heavy rain followed by a couple of hours of intense heat, the tip (the plastic bit plus the carbide tip) detached from the lower pole section. It didn't brake off, but the glue simply let go. Maybe the combination of humidity and high heat caused this. Though with a little epoxy this is easy to fix.

When the poles are wet, the lack of any plastic rings/ferrules on the end of each pole section also makes it difficult to get a good grip on the poles when you want to adjust them.

Did you have any occasions where grit or sand got up inside the junction between the sections? The taper of the plastic joints on my carbon pole sections seems to keep some of the grit out.


I realize BPL has gotten out of the business of selling gear, but if anyone out there has a business that could order a very large quantity of these poles, and we could get a number of folks to prepay or commit to purchasing, we wouldn't all have to pay the high shipping costs. I'd sign up for 2 sets of poles, maybe 3.

George at Anti-gravity Gear, are you listening?????

I've got Leki Powder poles for skiing, those were the poles I used before the Fizan. The amount of grit is more or less the same on both. The only complaint I've got on the Fizan is the length, I prefer longer poles for tarp setup.

I've been using these poles for a year after some bad experiences with non-metal poles! I can say that these are great - the only real maintenance needed is to dry them out properly when wet otherwise the metal oxidises - but they still work, don't break, collapse small, grip well - I can't say how pleased I've been with these; I don't know of a better pole.

I just ordered a set of these for delivery to the US through Ultralight Outdoor Gear in the UK. The price, including shipping, was only $80 and change.

http://www.ultralightoutdoorgear.co.uk/fizan_compact_trekking_poles.html

Edited by hanserickson on 08/03/2011 17:29:25 MDT.

While I've been using these poles for over a year now, I must agree with Danny's assessment. Great poles at a great price is my take.


BUT, I promised the head of Fizan (Andrea Zaltron, info@fizan.it) that I would voice my distaste with the horrible customer service that I received from them last fall:

After numerous emails commending their poles, kindly requesting a replacement strap and eventually offering to pay for shipping myself, her replies were curt and impolite at the very least. In the end: no replacement strap. Hands down, the worst customer service I have received from a company after years of working in retail and the outdoor industry. I have a history of the emails fwiw.

In short, a great product but truly sub-par leadership/customer service. I will NEVER buy from them again. IMO, quality goods do not supersede customer service and brand reputation.

Buyer, please beware.

Bought these poles somewhat more than a year ago and have used them a lot by now, mostly on rough terrain (off-trail, over boulder fields etc) where you have to put a lot of pressure on the poles sometimes. I agree that these poles are probably the best UL adjustible & collapsible poles on the market. But I'm afraid mine are already worn-out by now. The problem with mine was that after a lot of use the aluminium teared at the end of the shaft where the flexy lock system is located. The locking system then shifts from the aluminium and might get stuck in the pole. I glued the locking system again to the section and could continue hiking with the poles again for some time until another section of the pole teared... now I have three teared sections and one expander stuck in the pole which I can't get out again. So watch out for this issue when the poles get older. Mine also started to slip at the end. Probably these issues won't appear as fast when you don't do a lot of serious off-trail hiking. I think they can be too short for tall hikers too. But besides from this, these are really great poles and I loved to hike with them.

I bought a pair as they were on special to use as wading staffs that I didn't need to take care of, one for my young son, and I've been using the other when I wasn't using my specialist Simms wading staff. I got them because they were really cheap on special, collapsed down to one third, and I wanted something more robust than my TiGoat carbon poles for a wading staff when fishing rocky streams here in Aus (didn't want to have to be careful about gouging the staff like I do with the carbon ones). I also sprayed the shafts matte black for stealth with a $2 can of paint.

They are actually very light, and extremely robust. I've been surprised that they are still taking all my abuse and misuse without a qualm. I've been using mine about without a care on the way to many a river, and, because I didn't care about it, I have often used it to cut a path through blackberries etc. Surprisingly, it is as still as good new, just a little scratched. Collapsing and locking mechanism has never given me a problem either, despite not taking any care with the rod.

So: budget priced, robust, zero maintenance, strong, packs effectively, reasonably light - what else could you want?

Craig

My LT4's telescope down to fit in my duffel bag or stow comfortably on or in my pack. That certainly meets the dictionary definition of collapsible. I think it even meets the loosely stated BPL criterion. If you're going to deviate from broadly accepted definitions, you should clearly state your own definition to avoid confusion.

Keith - I believe that my use of "collapsible" and "adjustable" are inline with BPL definitions. In Will Rietveld's review of the GG Lightrek 4, he describes them solely as adjustable. Will also reviewed BD's new Ultra Distance poles. In his Assessment, he wrote:

Value-wise, the Ultra Distance poles cost almost the same as the Gossamer Gear Lightrek 4 poles (US$150 versus US$160), so the bottom line depends on which feature you value most. If collapsibility is more important, get the Ultra Distance poles; if adjustability is more important, get the Lightrek 4 poles.

Furthermore, Gossamer Gear's website does not refer to their poles as collapsible.

You can adjust the GG LT4 to a more travel-friendly length of 90cm and the Titanium Goat Adjustable gets even smaller. But neither pole can collapse to as short a length as the Fizan Compact (58cm).

Edited by dannymilks on 08/08/2011 22:39:20 MDT.

The people in the pictures are not using the straps and there is little comment on the straps.

I just got a pair of BD ultra distance and the straps are the best designed of any I have tried. Easy in, easy out, easy to adjust and contoured to create the most comfortable stable platform I've experienced. They are soft comfortable with bare hands. The poles break down/assemble instantly and they don't "shorten" as you go.

Edited by backpackerchick on 08/09/2011 02:19:20 MDT.

Excellent write-up - thanks Danny! I may have to check out a pair since my TiGoat AGP's are too long to fit in my luggage when I travel.

Hi Hartley - The straps aren't particularly highlighted in our review because they are pretty standard in design. The straps are similar to what you'd find on many other brands of trekking poles, such as those from REI. They are padded, adjustable and fairly comfortable.

Black Diamond's Ultra Distance poles are hand specific, and so those straps (and hand grips) are more form fitting, and therefore, more comfortable.

I've used mine for perhaps 50 days of hiking thus far. They are nice poles and easy to carry just in one hand when not using them.

They lack the spring and resilience of say Leki Ti Makalu's which I notice on long rocky descents. They also dint relatively easy, so a policy of 'drop poles when you stop' can hurt them. I am pretty hard on my gear.

Thanks Danny:

I can't imagine using (or testing) poles without the straps like the people in the photos. Their hands must get tired. How much weight can you put on them without a "platform". (In all fairness, I skied before I adopted hiking sticks.) I prefer not to use sticks as they slow me down -- my feet are quicker than my hands, When lumbering along with a pack, I use them!

The BD straps are brilliant. I ordered a pair from backcountry.com to see what they were all about. The straps were the first thing I noticed. However, the sticks are not "weighted" well -- they don't have a nice swing. I suspect this is the price to be paid for shaving weight! Far from a hiking stick expert, for me the advantage when carrying a pack is largely about rhythm and balance, not about saving my knees -- in fact I haven't figured out how one with use them to ease knee strain. For hiking sticks, I have previously used various Leki models as I could obtain them favorably. Inevitably one or the other of the pair ends up shorter. I have never had a real incident but that's scary to have your sticks shorten like that! Makes you back off.

Edited by backpackerchick on 08/10/2011 02:12:42 MDT.