Powered Hiking Is Quietly Becoming a Product Category

Two things are happening in the same release cycle and they point in opposite directions. One is powered assistance: another hiking exoskeleton appeared in early September, the second from the same manufacturer in a short span. These are hip-mounted motors that assist on climbs and brake on descents, and a year ago they read as a novelty. They are now appearing often enough to be a category.

The other direction is subtraction. Xero expanded its minimalist line with the Mesa Summit collection, built for people who want the ground feel of a barefoot shoe without the stiffness of a protective trail runner. Six Moon Designs showed an ADC V2 travel pack under two and a half pounds that the company is calling the lightest fully featured travel pack made.

Both are answers to the same complaint, which is that carrying things up hills is hard. One adds a motor and a battery; the other removes material until there is nothing left to remove. Which one is right for you is mostly a question of whether your limiting factor is load or legs.

The rest of the early-autumn releases are unremarkable in a useful way: waterproof panniers and packs, solar trail cameras, camouflage editions of things that did not previously come in camouflage, and a steady drift of winter gear arriving before anyone wants it. A helmet with a MIPS system and headphone-compatible ear pads at $170 is the kind of quiet release that matters more to more people than an exoskeleton will.

Our position on powered assistance is that it is a mobility device before it is a performance device, and the most interesting question is not whether it makes a fit hiker faster. It is whether it puts trails back within reach for people who had written them off.