Can an Exoskeleton Help You Bag a Peak?

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In the last year, exoskeletons joined the likes of ebikes and smartphone satellite messaging as the piece of technology most likely to disrupt the outdoor space. These mechanical braces strap around your waist and over your thighs and, when activated, move your leg, relieving you of the effort of having to walk on your own. They look surprisingly sci-fi. I’ve taken to calling the two pairs I’ve been testing “robot legs.” 

What I Tested

For a category that materialized seemingly overnight, it’s impressive that there are already three exoskeleton for hiking companies to choose from. I tested the Hypershell Pro X and the Dnsys X1 Carbon. (The third is the Arc’teryx collaboration with MO/GO, which I hope to test in the future.)

Setting Up the Exoskeletons

Both the Hypershell Pro X and the Dnsys X1 Carbon came in small suitcases, folded up neatly inside. After unpackaging them and downloading their relevant apps (more on those in a minute), the first step was to charge up the removable batteries. I’ve tested a lot of power banks over the years, so I figured that the battery for something as heavy-duty sounding as an exoskeleton would be massive. To my surprise, they were petite and lightweight. 

Once your batteries are charged and installed, you have to use the app to figure out how to actually use the thing. While I’m not typically a big fan of apps, in this case they were easy to use and helped make sure I had put the exoskeletons for hiking on correctly.

Power Settings

Both the Hypershell Pro X and Dnsys X1 Carbon have different power settings that control the enthusiasm with which the exoskeleton lifts up and puts your leg back down. With the Hypershell Pro X, you toggle through these settings via a single button on the righthand side. 

There are two modes, Eco and Hyper, and four power settings within each one. Two clicks pumps up the power while three clicks brings it back down. A long click toggles between Eco and Hyper while a single click puts the exoskeleton on standby mode. The lowest setting on Eco feels like your every step is getting an energetic boost, while the highest setting on Hyper is akin to having your leg violently grabbed and yanked upward.

The Dnsys has a simpler setup with fewer settings: Eco, Sport, Boost, and Aqua. The range of Eco to Boost is similar to the range of power in the Hypershell Pro X, but without the ability to refine the exact power level. The Aqua setting is a resistance setting designed to boost a workout. You toggle between these four settings and the standby mode via a plus button at the right hip and a minus button at the left hip. 

Mechanics

I wasn’t clear on what an exoskeleton for hiking was actually going to do until I tested them, but now the mechanics seem pretty simple. It’s lifting your leg up. Then it’s pushing your leg back down. That’s it. 

Of course, it has to know when to pick your leg up, and when to put it back down. That’s the real trick here. It does this via sensors at the waist and on your thighs. It can tell by the movement of your body when you are starting the gait cycle and jumps in immediately to assist. AI of course has something to do with it. 

For me, there were a few questions to answer. How good of a job would the exoskeleton for hiking do at detecting when I was walking or running versus something else? Would it be able to detect when I was attempting to slow myself down? But of course the big question is: Does this actually make adventuring easier? 

Exoskeleton Test 1: A Casual Foraging Expedition

To get a feel for the subtle differences in how the exoskeleton handled different types of motions — and also assuage my own fears that I was about to be walked off a cliff by robocop — I started my testing with a foraging outing to collect some early summer berries. So plenty of walking, but also lots of turning side to side, squatting down low, reaching up high, and contorting my body to odd angles to avoid stinging nettle. Would the exoskeletons be able to detect the differences in subtle variations of motion? 

On that metric, I ended up pretty impressed with how the exoskeletons performed. I did not feel any unwanted jerkiness while foraging, bending down and reaching up with no interference from the exoskeleton. The Hypershell did tend to pop up an error message when I bent down — likely because the sensors at my waist were disengaging — but it was easily resolved. And the gears kicked back into motion again as soon as I started walking. At one point I even had to get down on the ground and shimmy under a fence and the exoskeletons didn’t react at all. Their ability to detect different types of movement on my part made me less nervous about the rest of testing. 

That was the good news, but there were some issues on that initial outing, too. I could feel the exoskeletons negatively affecting my gait, even on their lowest setting. Worse, my foot was hitting the ground harder than usual, which would in turn be increasing the impact forces on my knees and hips. The exoskeletons were also just uncomfortable. There was never a moment where I was able to forget that I was wearing them. Which was hard because I felt quite self-conscious. When I first walked out my front door, I felt like I was wearing the equivalent of a Cybertruck — to my mind, the exoskeletons were unnecessarily loud and flashy. But as I continued on my walk, some of which was on sidewalks to reach a local park, I realized that to most people I looked like a woman wearing leg braces. It’s more likely they thought I had a disability. (Both Hypershell and Dnsys have disclaimers reminding users that these are not intended to be used as medical devices.)

But my least favorite effect of the exoskeletons occurred when I turned them off. Even after only a short time of wearing them, it was as if my legs had forgotten how to walk on their own. My feet shuffling across the ground, my knees barely lifting my legs. And this wasn’t because my body was struggling with the extra effort; I had plenty of energy left. The feeling was closer to getting off a boat after some choppy water. Your brain has done some mapping to account for the new inputs so you can keep your balance. Once it’s gone, your brain has to spend some time rewiring its expectations for how your legs work before you feel totally normal again. It’s a strange feeling that could linger into the next day depending on how long I had been wearing the exoskeletons. 

Exoskeleton Test 2: Hiking up an Extremely Steep Trail

If there is one way that exoskeletons are being marketed to outdoorsy types, it’s as assists for tackling big adventures. Their marketing material shows people bagging peaks, running up scree, even backcountry skiing. So I decided to take the exoskeletons on a whirl up a real Type 2 trail: Old Mailbox Peak, which relentlessly ascends 4,000 feet in a measly 2.5 miles.

I’d last hiked this trail years ago so I knew the obvious starting out: At my current physical fitness level, this was going to be a real challenge. 

Despite the ridiculous stats, and the existence of “new” Mailbox Peak Trail (which covers the same elevation gain over five miles), people love old Mailbox. Even on a Tuesday afternoon, when I tested the exoskeletons, I saw a dozen people hiking up it. It’s fun and interesting to see what you can push your body to do. I was curious to see what I could push my body to do with the exoskeleton. 

Things started pretty well, if you ignore my discomfort at being seen hiking with robot legs. I was keeping a good clip, and I now appreciated being able to adjust to the higher settings on the exoskeleton after finding them complete overkill for foraging. After 10 minutes, I was keeping a 2.5 mile per hour pace. Not bad, I thought, I’ll be up this trail in no time. I even passed a few people, though I felt a tad guilty about that.

Then I noticed I was taking breaks without meaning to. First they were short standing breaks, but then they turned to sitting breaks. I switched exoskeletons and kept hiking, but I was moving slower. The people I had passed before passed me. Then some other people did. Even with the exoskeleton on, and with plenty of fuel left in my quads. Then it hit me that it wasn’t my quads that were tired, it was my lower calf and Achilles. I just wasn’t used to them giving out first, and had been overly focused on how my upper legs felt, especially given how the exoskeletons focus attention on that part of your body. 

This test ended up exposing a major weakness of the exoskeletons I tested: They are, at best, half a leg, and you need your whole leg to do just about anything. Taking some of the load off my quads didn’t suddenly make my calf or Achilles strong enough to handle the load of a trail this steep at a 2.5-mile per hour pace. If anything, it made me less likely to complete it. Because I wasn’t getting that burning quad feedback, I wasn’t taking as many breaks on the first leg of that climb as I normally would have, thus depriving the rest of my legs of the rest they needed. I realized what was happening before I actually injured myself, but it was easy to see how I could have done so by continuing to hike at the speed encouraged by the exoskeletons. 

A helpful sign to the side of the trail let me know I had hit 1,000 feet of climbing. At this point I had a decision to make. Do I finish the trail, get a sick hero shot with the eponymous mailbox to headline this story with? Or heed the wisdom of the sign at the trailhead?

When I really stopped to consider how my Achilles and lower calf was feeling I realized I was done. The best I could do was take a long break and then continue the climb with a lot of care, and it probably would take me the suggested time on the sign at the trailhead. And I didn’t think I could manage that nuance with the exoskeleton legs powered on. 

I experimented with hiking downhill in the exoskeletons for a while to see if there was any benefit, including the aqua mode on the Dnsys. They bothered me less than I expected, and I still had enough control to carefully pick my way down the steepest sections. But something in my left knee was starting to bug me (unusual for me) and even after all that time the exoskeleton still wasn’t that comfortable to wear. I took them off. 

After I’d stashed both pairs of exoskeletons in my backpack, I finished picking my way back down the Mailbox Peak trailhead. The pain in my knee disappeared. I noticed more birdsong than when I had the exoskeleton on, whirring away. A woman passed me going up the trail. She was sweating, all smiles. “It just doesn’t get any easier, does it?” she commented before continuing on her way.

Exoskeleton Test 3: But am I Faster? 

You’d think I’d have tested the speed potential of the exoskeletons straight out of the box on day one, but I was always the most nervous about pairing the robot legs with speed. After my ill-fated peakbagging effort, I took the next day off and just kept to some basic stretching. I need to be fresh for the speed test, I told myself. Sure, Jan. When on the following morning I had finished most of the draft of this story and still hadn’t put on my running clothes I knew something else was up. What kind of writer passes on an opportunity to procrastinate on writing?  

There were two speed questions I wanted answered in my testing. The first, and most obvious, was am I actually faster wearing these than I am without them. The second question was how difficult was it to stop while running in the robot legs at top speed. 

First, a Disclaimer

I once ran a 6:30 mile when I was 14 and that was the last time anyone timed how fast I could run a mile. I ran cross-country in high school to get out of physical education. Since then, I run for myself, for fun and fitness and endorphins. I care about not being injured, daydreaming, and distance, in that order. I only pay attention to the time when I need to get back to my desk in time for a meeting. And I’m only sprinting to catch my kid, and occasionally to prove to my husband that I’m faster than him. So take everything that follows with a grain of salt. 

Hill Speed Run

I picked a short hill in a nearby park for this test. I started at the bottom in the same place and ran as fast as I could to the top. In addition to the time, I also checked my heart rate at the top. I ran the first sprint without any robot legs at all. I then tested the Hypershell in Hyper mode at full power and Eco mode at full power. Next was a test of the Eco, Sport, and Boost modes on the Dnsys. I ended my test by running a final sprint up the hill with no robot legs. I took long enough breaks between sprints to allow my heart rate to come back down to normal. Here are the results, in order of testing. 

A few notes on these results. The least enjoyable part of this test was the Hypershell Pro X on Hyper Mode at full blast. It was very aggressive and difficult to get a cadence on, which likely accounted for the poor result. Conversely, the most fun I had in this test was the Dnsys X1 Carbon on Boost mode. That was the one time I reached the top of the hill delighted to have been flying faster than I thought possible.

I was surprised to not see a bigger effect on my heart rate. It does feel in the moment like you are exerting less effort in the exoskeletons — and I did feel that my breathing wasn’t as rapid on the more powerful modes than they were sans robot legs — but my heart rate was not particularly affected. My sense is that because there are muscles in your legs that are going to have to work at their regular rate, no matter the break your quads and hamstrings are getting, that your heart rate is responding to that level exertion. 

But, for me, the most interesting part of the test was to see that by the end of the test I was faster than I was at the beginning of the test by a fair amount. While it’s of course possible that getting the feel for what a fast pace was like made it that much easier for my brain to map how to get my legs to do that on their own steam, it’s also possible that I was just getting faster as the test wore on as my long-dormant fast twitch muscles sprang to life. If you want to run faster, you could try spending a grand on an exoskeleton. Or you could just run more.

Coming to a Stop

This test was both the most important test and the one I was the most afraid of. As I said above, my number one goal when I’m running is to not hurt myself, and running as fast as I could in robot legs and then trying to come to a dead stop sounded like a recipe to eat dirt.

I was actually really impressed with how quickly I was able to stop with the robot legs on. It wasn’t as efficient as without the exoskeleton — and I don’t think I really expected it to beat out the mind-body connection — but both were only off by 3 or 4 feet. More importantly, I didn’t feel any resistance from the exoskeletons. As soon as I started trying to come to a stop the robot legs got out of my way. 

A Serious Runner’s Perspective

While I am a more serious hiker than runner, I had an ultrarunner stop by to check out the exoskeletons and give me her take. While she was definitely entertained by the exoskeleton — laughing while marching around on full blast — she told me that there wasn’t any training use for her here. While she uses carbon-plated supershoes on weekend runs to help reduce the impact forces and speed up leg recovery, the extra weight and reduced control from the exoskeleton are, in her perspective, more likely to increase impact forces. If you already have strong quads and hamstrings, you are unlikely to benefit from this product. 

Isn’t This Cheating?

This is the crux of a challenge posed by friends and colleagues when the exoskeletons came up for testing. Do we really want technology to make the most challenging peaks accessible to people who haven’t earned the necessary physical fitness? The price point on the exoskeletons (about a grand) certainly don’t do any favors to imagining who would get to enjoy their new abilities. Images of lines of people heading up Everest spring to mind.

While I was resting my Achilles tendons on the way up Mailbox Peak, I got passed by a number of people — in better shape than I — who were making slow, steady progress up the old trail. Some had trekking poles. Others were sporting PT tape to stabilize their knees. One especially muscular man, sweating profusely while he kept one of the fastest paces I had seen up the trail yet, was wearing trail runners with ridiculously cushioned midsoles. No doubt, those shoes and the trekking poles and the PT tape made it easier and more comfortable for those hikers to tackle Old Mailbox. But we wouldn’t call any of that cheating; we’d call it gear.

This is what people do — find ways to make tasks easier and more comfortable — and it’s what we’ve been doing ever since someone came up with the wheel. A lot of outdoor gear that’s commonly accepted today was once considered cheating: bolts in climbing, mapping apps instead of the paper variety, trail cameras for hunting, even trekking poles. Other gear — ebikes, super shoes, and forward-facing sonar — is currently going through the cheat-to-gear wringer. (Let’s not get started on AI.)

So cheat it may be at the moment, but the more interesting question is whether this cheat is any good. Does the exoskeleton have the potential to change the face of hiking and peakbagging? Will it eventually earn enough acceptance to be called gear? 

I’m not optimistic. The human leg is one of nature’s crowning achievements, powered by innumerable muscles and tendons and ligaments and fascia. Most of us can only name the major muscle groups (quads, calves, hamstrings) and the tendons and ligaments that are the most likely to be injured (Achilles, meniscus, plantar fascia, ACL). But there is so much else going on behind the scenes to control and optimize your movements, to say nothing of the mind-body connection, and the exoskeleton is ripping away that control from your body in return for something a lot less nuanced.  

Final Thoughts

These exoskeletons are aiding your quads (or, weakening them, depending on your long-term use plans), but they aren’t doing a thing to help out the rest of your body. If anything, I noticed the parts of my legs that were not my quads were more tired and sore at the end of using the exoskeletons for hiking than they had been before. The exoskeletons make it easier to move, but they are also increasing the impact forces on the rest of your body while eliminating muscle fatigue, one of the key signs you would listen to tell you that it’s time to take a break. 

If you have $1,000 to spend, I recommend you opt for a personal trainer before you opt for an exoskeleton for hiking or running. You’ll get more bang for your buck.