Boots and Shoes

Sub-sections on this page:    Scarpa ZeroG 10    Hi-Tec Vlite Fasthike    Inov-8 Terroc 330

It's pretty much commonly agreed that boots, or more accurately, footwear is the most important piece of equipment a walker should posses. Even the naked rambler had boots on! You can do without almost any other piece of equipment from the list on the left, but you will always want something on your feet.

Getting a good pair of boots is therefore very important and typically the ease of achieving a task is inversely proportional to its importance. Such has been my experience, at least, in finding a good pair of boots.

My first boots, back when I first started walking in 2004, were a pair of Lowa boots, bought mainly on the basis of their price and the fact that they seemed to fit okay in the outdoor superstore I was in at the time. No expert fitting advice from a bearded sales assistants with 20 years experience of backpacking and hiking for me! Oh no, I went to Decathlon and found the second cheapest set of size 11's I could find.

Surprisingly they were okay - obviously I had no benchmark to compare them to - but I never got a blister from them, they didn't leave my feet aching at the end of the day and I sort of expected them to last 10 years or so. As it was I managed to put a rip in the right boot, just back from the toe box on a walk one day and they started to let water in. They lasted me just over a year.

This was rather worrying, as at the time I had my Coast to Coast walk coming up in less than four months and needed to find something reliable and comfortable and break them in before I set out for St. Bees. As the choice of my first set of boots had been something of a lottery, I decided to listen to recommendations for this next pair. I looked in Trail and they had recently voted Scarpa's ZeroG 10 boot their best buy award. I also decided to seek professional advice in their fitting, so I went to Ellis Brigham in Chester.

Scarpa ZeroG 10

 I shunned the attention of a pimply youth who inquired after my intentions as I entered the shop and held out for the wiry, reassuringly bearded, old guy in the back of the shop. Sure enough they had the boot I wanted and the old guy measured my feet and told me I needed a size 11. He also proceeded to expound the virtues of third party insoles in place of the thin and weedy variety you tend to get with the boots.

As it turns out the Superfeet Insoles have been the best thing I've ever bought and I cannot recommend them highly enough.

These Scarpa's have been brilliant. I found them instantly comfortable and my first walk in them, rather adventurously, was an 11 mile Lake District walk over Cat Bells and High Spy and back down the Newlands valley. The weather was very cold and much of the higher levels of the walk were frozen. It didn't help therefore that the boots seemed to slip very easily, even on rock surfaces I wouldn't have expected them to slip on. This made for a rather nervous descent from High Spy and I was much relieved to be back at the car in one piece.

On my next walk, however, this slipping wasn't apparent at all and I put it down to the nature of the surface I was walking over at the time (more on this later). This was the only "breaking in" the boots needed.

Four months later I walked the Coast to Coast in them and they were as comfortable as slippers for the most part of the journey. I suffered one or two hot spots in the first couple of days and I developed a blister on each foot, both in the same place, but I put this down to the continuous walking rather than the boots. I've never suffered from a blister since in these boots.

The soles are lovely and grippy and the tread doesn't easily get clogged up, even on muddy sections. The rubber bumper that seals the sole to the upper keeps out lots of water and also prevents damage like that I suffered on my original pair of Lowa's.

Being Gore Tex lined they do tend to warm your feet up and this can lead to smoking boot syndrome when you remove them at the end of a long cold walk. But on the whole they keep the worst of the water out. At least until you start to experience degradation of the rubber bumper.

           
Click each of these thumbnails to see the bigger picture

After only 14 months the boots started to fall apart. The seams started to split, the leather started to crack, the sole sections started to peel away from each other and the rubber bumper started to part company from the boot. The boots started to leak water on every walk and although they were still lovely and comfortable I knew I was looking at a new pair of boots.

I wrote to Scarpa and told them what was going on, I emailed them some photos of the problem and to be fair one of their customer service people contacted me and asked me to send them the boots. It cost me £8 in postage, but I returned them - with a note asking for them back as soon as possible, as the new walking season was upon us. Within 6 days I had a brand new pair delivered to the house. No explanation or anything, just a new pair of boots. That is still the best customer service experience I have had to date!

The new boots spent over 12 months in their box, until about 6 weeks ago in fact (March 2008). I used them for a short walk around the Yorkshire Dales - and spent the whole walk slipping on surfaces that I should not have been slipping on. These boots felt exactly the same as the original pair had when I used them for the first time. It must be something to do with the sole. Sure enough on the their next walk they were fine!

Conclusion

On the whole I can recommend these boots. They are comfortable and immediately so, they need very little breaking in. Their overall longevity remains a question, but that could be just they way I treated them. Not that I treated them badly, at least I don't think so. There was no indication from Scarpa as to the cause of the failures in the original pair. 

Hi-Tec Vlite Fasthike Mid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inov-8 Terroc 330

The start of my walking career seems to have coincided with one of the biggest revolutions in hiking and backpacking for generations; the lightweight movement. I'm sure people have been trying to reduce their pack weight and the weight of their other equipment for years, but in the past it appears to have been something done by individuals or as a cottage industry by one or two specialist manufacturers.

In the past two or three years these little niche companies have become the leading edge of the walking industry, breaking the ground for the "old boys" of the industry to follow. I don't think there's an outdoor manufacturer operating today that doesn't have a lightweight range or clothing or equipment.

One of the first of these new companies I heard about and perhaps now one of the most successful is Inov-8. I think it's fair to say that they have revolutionised walking and hiking footwear technology with their ultra-lightweight, flexible, naturally-attuned fell running shoes.

Initially I thought they would be like other leading edge outdoor products; very expensive and just about fit for purpose. That's what I have come to expect from waterproof jackets, fleeces and even socks for example. I dismissed them and continued to walk in my traditional 3-season boots, after all it's what you see everyone else on the hills wearing and even I would frown at people wearing trainers on the hills, unless they were fell running.

As time passed, however, I heard more and more people expounding the virtues of these shoes; TGO and Trail both had great reviews and many editorials discussing their benefits for walking faster and lighter. When I saw the price of them I was quite surprised too. They cost less than a decent pair of trainers. I tried a pair on in one of the outdoor shops and they were instantly comfortable - they're similar to what I wear every day of the year.

There are, for me at least, two main considerations with using these shoes. The first is that they are not waterproof, not in any way - not even in the way that trainers are waterproof. The uppers are made of a lightweight mesh that lets in the slightest moisture. The sole and lower part of the shoe do not stand as high off the floor as a walking boot, so walking through even shallow water will fill the shoe. On the upside though, the action of your foot inside the soaked shoe tends to pump the water out and it dries quite quickly.

Once you can get over the idea that having wet feet is a problem these shoes are quite liberating. I spend less time walking around boggy bits of the terrain, looking for a place to cross a river, avoiding puddles and so on. I just walk through them. If it's wet where I'm walking then I know I'm probably going to get wet feet - so I stop trying to avoid it.

The second consideration is foot and ankle support. It's been drummed into generations of hikers that they need big stiff boots to provide support for their ankles when they inevitably twist it on a hidden stone or on a tricky descent. I've come to the conclusion though, that most of the ankle twists I've had have been due to the boots I've been wearing. The boot itself prevents the natural shock absorption process which would be carried out by your foot, its ankle and the surrounding muscles and ligaments.

I've found that when walking in my Inov-8 Terrocs I have a much better feel for the ground beneath me - I don't have half an inch of Vibram sole hiding the lie of the land - I'm in much closer contact with the terrain and my foot is less impeded when it makes the adjustments it needs to prevent a twist.

The shoes weigh approx 330g each. Compare that to a traditional 3-season boot, which will weight anything up to 1kg. My feet feel much more responsive in the Inov-8's than they do in my boots. My foot placement is much more accurate and I can make adjustments much more quickly and easily. After 15 miles I will have taken something in the region of 30,000 steps. When I'm wearing boots, that means that my legs will have lifted 30,000kg by the end of a walk. I'm quite happy to swap this for 10,000kg with my Inov-8's.

There are some down sides of course. The main one I have come across is the number of stones I get in the shoes. As the heel is cut much lower than boots, they tend to let in many more little stones than boots ever do. When I'm walking through heather I end up with loads of twigs and other bits of detritus in them. This means I have to stop a bit more often than I would in boots.

For me these are a summer or 2-season alternative to boots. I would not consider wearing them in snow or in particularly cold and wet conditions. As the upper is so lightweight it doesn't offer any insulation from the cold. I have become used to walking in wet feet and in typical spring or summer conditions this isn't a problem; my feet get cold when I splash through a river, but they soon get warm again when the water is pumped out of the shoe. In winter this may be more difficult and I wouldn't want to spend all day with cold wet feet.

Conclusion 

A superb alternative to boots, especially in the warmer parts of the year. Providing you can get over the fact that your feet will get wet and you will get disapproving stares from the red sock brigade, these are something you should try. At about £50 for a pair it's not like you have to spend a fortune to test them either. If you don't like them for hill walking they still make a good looking pair of street trainers and I have even used them in the gym.

The only major problem is the amount of junk you find creeping into the shoe, but Inov-8 have thought of that one too now <click here>. 

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