What you have described is in effect Nordic Walking.
Interesting subject, Lost Soul. Cheers for the links.
Given that by habit I often hike way too fast anyway, this would be disastrous in slowing me down
....hundreds and hundreds of these holes do their unnecessary bit to increase erosion.
It sounds like a valid concern to me, and one that I admit probably doesn't flag up in my mind enough when in sensitive areas as a cumulative effect. In my immediate area though, the places where people can walk are very limited to rights of way across land and up until late summer the word erosion just takes on a whole new meaning due to everyone being funneled onto the same routes.
Below are two photos taken yesterday that show how it is to walk in my general area at the moment, because the trails are used simultaneously for horse trips, off road bikers and hikers. Due to this multi use, we get a cumulative
'stomp, squish, slide and slice' effect which turns nearly all the trails around here into porridge and means using foot wear less than ankle height leather boots is not fun.
Funnily enough, it makes hiking poles essential to prevent falls, and to find out if some water around a farm gate is only an inch or two deep or going to engulf boots up to the tongue
I've never understood why spikes on poles are considered necessary.
My findings were that a narrow tip gave me far better hold than the rubber tip particularly on descents and especially when things were very wet. However, these were my findings when first starting to use a pole and maybe this would be less of a problem now that I'm so much more familiar with using them.
But the elements I haven't seen covered in posts yet - pulling clients out of/ over burns, boggy bits etc.
Good point. Now that you mention it, I can think of a day where this was used by myself and a friend on an area where ideally we should have both been using at least some kind of light crampon but hadn't taken them along that day