Probably the two pieces of backpacking gear where fit is most
important are your pack and whatever you wear on your feet.
In both cases, the gear is an interface between your body
and a heavy load, so it's important to have something that
works for you or you're likely to end up in serious discomfort.
Back in the old days, everyone used to wear hiking boots but
as lightweight backpacking has started to take off, it's
become a lot more popular (and more practical) to wear
something lighter, generally some sort of trail runner.
I've always worn hiking boots but this time I decided to
transition to trail runners. Since I already had experience
with them, I decided to go with Inov-8
Roclite 295s.
I've worn these for plenty of trail miles and I know they
fit well and are comfortable, though they wear fast,
so I bought a new pair and just lightly broke them in before
my trip.
I had two major concerns about transitioning to a trail shoe:
ankle protection and water resistance. One of the claimed
benefits of a hiking boot is that the high top protects
your ankles, but after my most recent trip to
Emigrant Wilderness, my ankles were still pretty beat up in
my boots so I figured trail shoes weren't likely to be much worse.
A few short hikes with them seemed to confirm that.
My second concern was water resistance. Like many hiking
boots, mine are Gore-Tex lined and so waterproof at least
until you step into water above the top of the boot. The
Inov-8s are largely mesh and so not water resistant at all.
I considered getting a Gore-Tex trail shoe, but the problem
with those is that they don't drain and since a low shoe
increases the chance you'll step into water above the top of the
shoe, I figured better to have mesh shoe that drains fast.
I also brought a pair of VFFs for stream crossings
and use as a camp shoe.
As far as socks go, standard procedure is to wear two pairs: a liner
sock and a thick hiking sock, but with a shoe this light
I decided to skip that and just wear
Injinji Tetrasoks.
I've worn these for plenty of runs and races and know they're comfortable
and wanted to give my feet some space to breathe.
I initially brought two pairs of Injinjis and one of hiking
socks as a backup, but I never wore the hiking socks and
traded them in for Injinjis at Muir Trail Ranch.
Overall, this system worked out moderately well. While I
was initially worried about the water issue, it turned out
not to be a problem. On day 4 or so I stepped ankle deep
in a stream and it just turned out not to be that bad.
My feet dried quickly and I was comfortable enough that
I didn't feel like I needed a water shoe.
Unlike other trips I've done, my feet didn't feel horribly
beaten up at the end of the day and I found myself just
wearing the Inov-8s without socks and unlaced to walk around
camp. I never wore the VFFs and when I got to Muir Trail Ranch
I shipped them home: no point in carrying an extra 300g of
useless shoe.
The Injinjis got dirty fast but I was able to wash them in
streams and keep them from getting too filthy.
I said I was reasonably comfortable, but I did experience
two problems. First, by day 7 or so,
due to some combination of rocky terrain forcing constant pronation
and supination, fatigue, and maybe just being poked by the
occasional rock was starting to wear on me and the outside of
both feet started to hurt in mid-metatarsal. I was worried this
would be trip-ending but keeping a high load of naproxen and
wrapping a couple of strips of tape around each foot seemed to
relieve the pain enough that I only got occasional twinges if
I really stepped wrong. This was uncomfortable but not fatal and
after the 9th day I was no longer seriously worried about this
killing the trip—two weeks later my right foot still
hurts though, so I'll have to see how long it takes to recover. It's
hard to know if this would be a problem in hiking boots, since
it only happened after a week or so and I've never been
out that long before.
The second problem is that the Injinjis wear fast and by days
9 and 10 the pair I was wearing had gotten so threadbare that
I got a blister on the ball of my right foot. This was my only
blister the entire trip and I just drained it and kept going,
so overall this was very minor. Still, it serves as a reminder
that you need to pay attention to your sock wear and in the future
I might bring one more extra pair of socks.
All things considered, I don't think I'd go back to boots. They're
less comfortable for short trips at least and the weight penalty
is just too extreme. However, I might try out other trail shoes
or experiment to see why I started to develop foot problems towards
the end. I should also mention that I beat up the Inov-8s pretty
badly—200-300 miles is about normal for a trail shoe and the
soles on these had worn pretty far down and the synthetic leather
part of the uppers was starting to peel off the mesh. I suspect another
week and they might have started to fall apart on me. Even as
things were, I had to replace the Engo patches that stopped me
from getting heel blisters. I'm not complaining here: it's just
something you would need to keep an eye on if you were doing
a lot of backpacking in lightweight shoes.