Incorrect recordings of total steps and the number of floors covered in hiking or mountaineering mode using trekking poles with the FR945

Steps are counted with an accelerometer wich has to move in a steps specific way. It’s not done in the hiking app but in the OS directly. Using poles will always alter the movement of your hand (wich is one of the reasons we use poles when hiking).

This is a Limitation of in watch step counting every device has. Pushing a cart is another example. You can either accept that there are always compromises to be made or in this case wear an HRM Pro which also counts steps. 

Using trekking poles is obviously going to change your wrist movement from normal. But the situations where you use trekking poles (steep gradients, heavy pack, are also going to shorten step length from normal.

If you are getting distance from GPS, the number of steps is probably the least important metric when hiking. 

But if this is important to you, get a footpod.

What do I think? I think those are impractical solutions, towards trying to provide meaningless data.

Footpods are not used for step counting. BTW, does Garmin even sell its footpod?

You are right - a bit of digging reveals that Garmin discontinued it's classic footpod in 2019. 

If the number of steps is important for you, you could get the Garmin Running Dynamics Pod. It attaches to your waist, so (even though it's primarily meant for running), it should more accurately count the steps in hiking also.

(Personally I couldn't care less about the number of steps during a hike, so I'm not wearing my RD Pod during hikes, even though I own one.)

But I definitely wouldn't like estimating the number of steps from the GPS distance and average step length. At least on my hikes, my step length varies a LOT depending on which kind of terrain I'm hiking (something like from 0.5 m to 0.85). So replacing an inexact approximate value with another inexact approximate value would make little sense to me.

Thanks a lot "mcalista" (as well as the others) to your replies. This helps already quite good to understand the situation.

Actually and frankly spoken at least for me an additional sensor won't be an option, be it the "old" footpod or the newer "running dynamics pod".

With regard to the issue of potentially "meaningless data" due to inaccuracies of the real step range even when applying an user-defined average step range, I'd object that the number of steps currently shown, when using poles are by far even more meaningless. The other thing is whether information on the number of steps is important to me or not: In this regard, I'd remind, that this information is shown to users of the FR945 as a standard all the time, i.e. every day in the summary of the Garmin website (connect.garmin.com) and also in the corresponding smartphone app!

Last year for example, I went hiking all the way and across all mountains from Munich to Venice (ab. 550 km incl. 50km vertical) which included daily distances of about 15-25 km. Unfortunately however, the FR945 showed half of the days useless data with regard to my number of daily steps, because I used to be hiking with poles. Typically it showed recalculated step ranges between 1,3m and 2m - ridiculous.

In summary, I'd admit that the issue of incorrect number of steps using poles may be of minor importance. However, this kind of data could easily be made much more realistic by applying an adapted algorithm when using poles, simply by taking into account not only the accelerometer data but also a pre-defined average step range in combination with distance from GPS in order to recalculate (not measure) the number of steps.

Just an idea to slightly improve the great FR945 even more a bit. Nevertheless, the FR945 is the best GPS gear I've ever had so far, helping to considerably accelerate navigation in difficult terrains easily and everywhere.

RGDS, Dirk.