Ski equipment producer SWIX has recently presented a new pair of ski poles,called SWIX Triac, which di¤ers from conventional (round) ski poles by having atriangular cross section. SWIX claims that the main objective for this design is thatit has superior sti¤ness to weight ratio compared to common ski poles. We provein this paper that this claim in general is not true. More speci…c, we show thatfor thin walled cross sections, a hollow circular cross section has up to 36% bettersti¤ness to weight ratio than a corresponding triangular cross section.