Carbonlite Reviews

Hi Ed, Sorry we haven’t replied sooner, we don’t check these posts daily but it shouldn’t have taken this long to find your post. In future it would be best to contact us by email or phone as mentioned on our support pages. http://www.alpkit.com/support/

There are a number of reasons the poles could have broken and without seeing them I cannot make that call. If you can send us the broken section back together with your original order number, name and phone number we can take a look and get back to you.

ALPKIT
Unit E5 The Ropewalk Ind Est
Ilkeston, Derbyshire, DE7 5HX

Cheers, Jim

Still no feedback?

Just a quicky to say that snow baskets are now available in the ‘Spares’ section.

Bought carbonlite recently to help with crossings. It’s fantastic because it’s so light with no springs or gimmicks. Cheers for such a great pole.

the silence is deafening

Bought some of your Carbonlites a few months ago for my girlfriend - she loved them.

Just back from Mallorca where I lent the poles to a friend who has used Leki’s ‘heavily’ (on his own admission) for 6 years; the Carbonlites broke within the first hour on a rocky descent (where the ‘expander’ fits into the middle section - I could send it back?) of Galatzo....he was using them as he has the Leki’s with no mishap...any ideas?

As my girlfriend likes them I will get a replacement part...but am somewhat suprised they went under robust use?

I have yet to break (sic) the news to her.....

A lack of snow baskets would put me off buying. From the spare parts (good idea - I would be more inclined to buy fully serviceable gear) images it looks like it could be possible to fit other manufacturers baskets - has anyone tried, & can they let us know if they’ve found any to fit? Surely carbon fibre has extra advantages over metal in low temps so baskets would make sense.

I’ve also found simple buckle adjusters to be more user friendly than adjusters built into the handgrip.

Very good (light) poles and excellent value. I see two drawbacks:-
1) The compressed length means that if flying anywhere they can only be fitted into the largest of rucksacks as hold luggage. I also have a pair of Leki Makalu poles (not sprung) which are a about 100mm shorter so they can fit much more easily inside my medium sized sack. [Exact length to follow] If/when you redesign, please aim at that sort of compresesed length.
2) (Less significant) No snow baskets available. 

Substantially lighter and (if the tests are to be believed) substantially stronger than any pole I’ve had before. Just recently snapped an Ally pole doing ‘nothing’ and was pleased to find the Alpkit ones much lighter and feeling much more comfortable. I’m gonna lob up a hill at the weekend so I’ll do a full test then, but I’m sure they will more than adequately do the job - and at a fraction of the price of a similar pole from Blacks or wherever…
The one issue I had was the need to take the locking mechanism apart to trim off some moulding plastic burrs. These burrs were making the device bind just a little too much whentrying to extend. Otherwise, they lock firm (before and after the cleaning of the edges). I’m sure you’ll agree this is a tiny problem, easily solved.

Sorry that you have had this problem, feel free to send the just the top section back to us to have a look at it. However if you did want to repair it yourself then we would use a contact Adhesive such as EVOSTICK.