DPS Nori Adjustable Pole

Jonathan Ellsworth

Fact: Scott Team Issue poles are for gapers.

Just kidding, those poles are sweet. I just thought it would be funny to simultaneously piss off every single comp skier of the past decade….

I want to underscore a couple of things Will discussed, namely the Nori’s grip, swing weight, and locking mechanism.

For the past several years, I’ve been using Black Diamond’s fixed-length carbon fiber poles and Black Diamond’s adjustable carbon fiber poles, and I love both. (BD’s fixed-length poles are getting tweaked slightly for 12/13, and the adjustable BDs I’ve been using have received an update a season or two ago, so I can’t speak to these newer iterations.)

If I knew that I’d be sticking to the resort, I’d always break out the BD fixed length poles because I like their swing weight better than the BD adjustables.

But the BD adjustable poles are excellent, and I especially loved the grips found on both poles (they’re the same on the models I own).

So when DPS came out with the Nori and was advertising the race grip, I didn’t really care, because I had zero complaints with my BDs.

Grips

Funny thing is, after using the DPS Nori, the BD grips now feel too big. So if your experience is anything like mine, you’ll probably get used to either setup and be perfectly content, but after swapping back and forth, my favorite grips are no longer my favorite grips.

Swing Weight

I said that I liked the swing weight of my BD fixed length poles better than my BD adjustables. But I like the swing weight of the DPS Nori Poles better than both the BDs. The Nori is super light and doesn’t feel top or bottom heavy. This is the first adjustable length pole I’ve ever used that I wouldn’t mind taking out every day, whether I was in the resort or backcountry. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the Nori’s locking mechanism.

Locking Mechanism

I’m one of those friends of Will whose adjustable poles would sometimes loosen up. It’s not the end of the world, though it definitely sucks if you’re out on a tour—or in the resort skiing bumps—and the screws suddenly loosen up on you. To date, I haven’t experienced a single slip of the Nori.

If you think that ski poles are just ski poles, DPS has proven that they aren’t all created equal. And we have found nothing that we’d care to change about the Nori.