Quoted from bzbatl:I’ve read all the posts, listened to friends who praise 8 lbs 4 oz baby Jesus about this thing, and have watched dozens of videos on how simple people make it seem to move a pin with Escalera. They’re either full of crap, or I’m doing something severely wrong. My forearms are destroyed and my knees hurt from stabilizing and rebalancing the pin from every single step. There is simply no way an old man can supposedly move this with such ease.
Coming back down on hardwood steps, it slips every step. I had to just lay the entire thing down on cardboard and slide it down the steps.
Will someone please explain this to me before I take a sledgehammer to it?
If it's that bad, practice with it empty that way you can see the Escalera angle that is best for the stairs. My guess is that you are too close to the stair edge. The moving roller should never slip over the edge of the stairs. I opted for the brake attachment that detects the edge of the step to make sure you don't roll too close or off of it. For me, the top handles move less than 6 inches as it goes down the stairs ... and it is uneasy to trust it with a pin on it. I do get nervous doing it, but I'm getting more confident with it over time. It only slipped on a single stair once for me and that was because the brake mechanism reset on me when I was positioning before I went down the stairs, I relied on that brake to stop when close to the edge, was too close when I started, and the roller slipped down the step. Without the brakes, you will need to find that right spot on the step so that the rollers wont slip and not too far back which would make the top handles tip back and forth with pressure on you.
Without weight, go up and down and try to find that sweet spot where the top handles hardly move and it doesn't slip. Then add some weight of some sort and do it again and you should feel less forced pulling and pushing at the top handles.
