A year on the bench.

Ultralight hikers already pitch the tent on one pole, so we wanted to know if the other one could be a chair. In the first pitch, we called it a Swiss Army knife for trekking poles. It started as a sketch and a 3D-printed connector.

Asa took store-bought poles, a printed hub and a sewn green seat outside. He sat down, and it held.

We put a flexible tip and a reel on a trekking pole and took it to a steelhead river in December. The poles got him across, and then one became the rod.

The first sewn seat sagged, so we added side panels that give it a scoop. The table tipped when you leaned on a back corner, so the top got an overhang.

The chair’s rear foot sheared, so we redrew it as a machined aluminum part. Then we rebuilt the hub with thicker walls and had an engineer review the new design.

We built a light into the pole and walked night trails with it. It worked. It also added weight to every pole, made the handle the most expensive part, wasn’t waterproof yet, and fought the joint that lets the pole collapse. We parked it to get the four conversions right first. We want it back.

Outside engineers are reviewing the design, and factories are quoting molds for the chair parts. Next is load testing on the refined prototypes, then trail footage. The campaign comes early next year.