Ron - NY wrote:
I was on the lift one day with a ski patrol guy
and he told me there is a special way to wrap the strap around your wrist
when gripping the pole but It might not be easy to explain . He said to put
your hand through the strap and instead of just gripping the pole , to put
your hand over the strap so it's between your index finger & thumb and then
grip the pole .

The advantage of using the strap that way is you get more leverage when
you're poling across the flats. It's essential for X-C, but I'm not
sure I see the advantage for downhill.

Personally, I don't put my wrists through the straps - you're supposed
to unstrap when you get on the lift, and with the small hills here it's
just not worth the extra ten seconds to re-strap every run.

Note that going strapless is a really really bad idea if you're skiing
terrain where self arrest may be necessary. So whenever I encounter
such a slope, I carefully put my wrists through the straps, taking
sometimes three or four minutes to do so. Usually by that time I've
come to my senses and go ski some other run.

Returning to the OP's question, The "handguard" style pole is probably
useful for bashing gates, but I doubt it's really much help in
preventing injuries where the thumb falls on the pole. Usually, these
are a result of someone trying to break their fall by putting their hand
out in front of them.* The safest bet is to fall with your hands close
to the body and trying to land on your hip. Or not fall at all (c:


* Yes, this happened to me. I speak from experience - broken thumb
metacarpal.


--
//-Walt
//
// There is no Völkl Conspiracy