Ron, I don't agree (but am willing to be educated).
I thought the most common cause of Skier's Thumb was not holding the straps in the palm of your hand between your hand and the pole.? If you just loop the straps over your wrist and over the top of the thumb and forefinger (the natural way, but wrong) and the pole gets caught, then the pole pulls the straps down over your thumb and dislocates the thumb.? The problem is the leverage betweeen the loop around the wrist and the straps over the thumb.? That's the reason that we loop the strap around the wrist but then make sure the straps are on the palm side of the hand and not the back side.
With the Leki attachment point, there really isn't any leverage to stress your thumb.? The pole is either going to move your whole hand or, in my one case of a dramatic fall, the elastic that carries the attachment mechanism just ripped off.? I didn't feel anything with my hand at all.? Also, the newer attachment mechanism has a flexible hard rubber component that will actually let you pull the glove away from pole without using the trigger release.? This would seem to be a big improvement (for the reason given below).
The biggest problem for me has been the tendency of the older trigger mechanism to pack with snow and then not be able to move enough to release when I get to the bottom of the lift and want to remove the poles. The older mechanism was a slot in the pole handle, and a plastic tab that inserted into the slot attached to the glove.? The newer mechanism is just a loop of rope that loops over a hard rubber prong on the back of the ski.? Pushing the trigger moves the retaining pin and allows the fabric loop out, the the hard rubber prong is flexible enough to allow someone to just pull the fabric loop out if necessary.
Anyway, if your skiers thumb problems came while using Leki poles I'm surprised.? I don't see anything that would allow the movement and leverage of normal straps, and I see the fact that it holds the skis pretty close to the hand as a big advantage.? Makes it very easy to just let go of poles while looking at a map or something and they stay close at hand. I like them. The only advantage is see to normal straps is that it makes it easy to drape the pole straps over the tips of the skis when you put them in the ski rack.
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