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How To Make And Use Walking Sticks For Hiking Or Working In The Hills
If you spend time in mountain or hill country, you soon realise that there is one essential piece of equipment, your walking staff. If you've never used one before, a hill stick, is a chest high staff, usually made of a local wood, that's used to give you extra balance and stability when moving through difficult terrain. Also known as walking staff or walking stick, it's more commonly known as an alpenstock in Europe.
For 1000's of years, shepherds, ranchers, hunters and travelers have used a staff of some sort to help them maintain balance in steep or difficult terrain. In places like New Zealand, the shepherds of the backcountry have used hill sticks when working "on the hill" since sheep and cattle were first introduced on the mid 1800's.
Each country will have it's own suitable wood to make a hill stick. In New Zealand they have a bush called manuka, known to most people around the world as tea tree. Manuka is renowned for being incredibly strong, knot free, and found in long straight lengths, an ideal material for the trusty hill stick. An ideal stick is generally around 25 mm in diameter and cut to approximately 1.6 metres long. Many stock handlers prefer a thicker stick, but for general hill work and hunting, 25mm is about right. Manuka grows all over New Zealand, and the best sticks are obtained from thick patches of tall manuka, where the bushes have had to compete with each other for sunlight and grown tall and thin. When you find a suitable patch of manuka, cut several sticks and take them home to dry. Once dry, it is an easy process to strip the paper-thin bark off the stick and tidy up any small knots or branches there may be. And that's all it takes to make a hill stick.
Once you have one, what do you do with it? Most people who spend long periods of time in the mountains and hills carry them nearly all the time. Usually, when you're walking on flat, level ground, the stick can just be used in the traditional vertical manner and brought back to the horizontal when the going gets rough and you need that extra stability. Where it really comes in to its own is on the hill and sidling. On the hill, the hill stick should be carried horizontal, in two hands across your front. The top end [the good end] is in the palm of your outside hand. The other hand or hill hand is approximately half way along the stick and carrying the stick under the hand. Now all you need to do is to hold the stick at an angle and press in to the slope so that it can take some of your weight, using your lower hill hand to provide extra stability. Or use the tripod principle, using the stick as a 'third leg' to provide additional stability on particularly steep or dangerous terrain. For hill work it is only useful if it is being used horizontal, used vertically, with only one hand, a hill stick is really of no use, yet this is how most people seem to use one.
Experienced Hunting Guides and fishermen have also found a hill stick to be invaluable. Clear water sight fishing usually involves walking over several kilometers of rocky riverbeds and many stream crossings. In difficult terrain, particularly around bluffs or banks a hill stick is used for balance, but in the river, a hill stick provides stability as a third leg, especially on deep or swift river crossings.
Such a simple idea, and for very little cost, a hill stick is an invaluable piece of "kit". Try one sometime, you may be surprised how much easier you can traverse steep terrain, and how much strain it takes out of working or playing in hill country.
About the Author
Sara Leadbetter is an Internet Marketer and Business Advisor based in New Zealand. This article was written about her work with Al Kircher, from
Fishing and Hunting Guide NZ
, an experienced Fishing and
Hunting Guide
who lives works and plays in the South Island of New Zealand.
Speak softly & carry a big stick pt 1