Red Yeti's Blog

“Suitable” footwear – What’s “suitable”? To me and to an increasing number of others it’s “approach shoes” or even “trail running shoes“.

The difference between having lightweight well designed approach shoes and clunky old leather boots is amazing. A pair of these can make the largest immediate difference to how easy I find it to move about – except perhaps for not carrying a pack!

Ask anyone that’s been with me recently in South Wales – I’ve started running up hills (with a pack on) for no apparent reason. It’s just such a pleasure, and I don’t normally enjoy running.

This isn’t some crack-pot idea used only by a few crazed thru-hikers on the Appalachian Trail. One of the foremost advocates of the use of approach shoes for summer and winter (using “mid” height versions) is Chris Townsend. Who, apart from having a truly awe inspiring amount of walking experience in all conditions has just become head of the Mountaineering Council of Scotland (congratulations Chris!). Someone whose opinion it’s therefore hard to dismiss.

I used approach shoes the first time I did half the TMB in 2003 but for some reason persuaded myself to go back to boots until this summer. I’ve got a pair of Montrail Hurricane Ridge XCRs but it’s a bit of a hard choice between them and the Keen Targhee IIs for me (LB has a pair that she loves).

However, there’s no way to be sure without trying them on. Remember to bring any insoles like Superfeet that you might use! Even then, walking around the shop isn’t enough, you must try to hammer your toes into the front of them by stomping down a slope (any good shop outdoor shop should have one).

It’s also vital to try walking across a slope (the edge of some stairs with someone’s shoulder below you to steady you will do it). You need to let your ankles start to “turn over” and see if the cuff starts to push hard into your foot just below your ankle. Almost any shoe will do this to some extent so it can be hard to judge. But if it’s quickly uncomfortable then beware, a few kilometres of walking could bruise and/or blister it.

Finally, like anything else, remember to check for stitch faults in the pair you decide on. I was surprised to find a bad one in a pair of Montrails that I got from Snow & Rock (who replaced it of course – but they also have a three month “half your money back if they don’t fit” policy that applies no matter how much you’ve worn them).

I certainly won’t be writing this much detail about everything on here! But there are certain things that are so important to comfort on a long walk that they’re worth concentrating on. Like socks for instance.

There’s no point in spending a money on good footwear if you then put on a pair of cheap socks. We’ve tried X-Socks Smartwool and Sealskinz as well as a host of cheaper ones. The cheaper ones aren’t worthy of mention. I’ve found Bridgedales to be fine but only Thorlos give Smartwool any competition in my experience.

What we’ll take

You certainly don’t need a fresh pair of socks every day! You’d probably need an extra bag to carry them.

I’m planning to take one pair of thick Smartwools, two Smartwool liner socks and a pair of Sealskinz in case it gets really wet.

Then, each night in the hut, I’ll wash out the thick sock and liner from that day. Roll them up in my towel and squeeze the water out. They should be dry enough by the morning. Even if they’re not completely dry you’ll be putting on the dry, spare liner sock and quickly getting them damp with sweat anyhow.

Taking an extra pair of thick socks pretty much guarantees that you’ll have a dry pair each day and taking just one pair for a week seems like under doing it, but it can be done!

X-Socks

The X-Socks were of the lightweight hiking variety (I must admit I’m not sure which ones now – have you seen how many there are?). We found they were too thin and both ended a weekend with slightly sore feet but that’s our own fault really for choosing the wrong thickness. But the most off-putting thing was the smell! Being synthetic it was very, very cheesy after just a day’s walk. There are lots of people that love these socks but even with thicker ones I wouldn’t want to put up with that smell.

Smartwool

Gorgeous. Really cushioned and grippy. Best of all, because it’s only Merino wool in contact with your skin, they are amazingly smell resistant (there’s elastane in them but it’s not touching your skin). Nothing much more I can add. Wouldn’t buy anything else. Apart from a pair of…

SealSkinz

Sealskinz appear to be tougher than other brands of waterproof socks. Possibly because they’re not a laminate fabric. And to be clear – they have nothing whatsoever to do with seal skin!

Wearing waterproof socks whilst walking up hills with a pack in pouring rain obviously will not keep your feet 100% dry, but they do at least get no worse than rather damp. Which means warmer feet of course.

My first pair actually failed within four days of use but that seems to be very much the exception. Also, I simply stuck them in an envelope with a covering letter saying they leaked and they sent me a brand new pair within a week.

There are now many people that use an unlined approach shoe (no waterproof membrane), which is cooler, combined with a pair of Sealskinz when it’s wet.

Liner Socks

Both LB and I went from thinking Liner Socks were just more unnecessary faff to not wanting to be without them. They can certainly prevent blisters in our experience. The theory being that they provide a slip plane between the liner and the outer sock that prevents friction raising a blister. Smartwool make these as well.

Although I try to go as light as possible I still carry more than an “Ultralight Hiker“. Partly this is due to enjoying my creature comforts. Partly perhaps due to having spent time in mountains often as a slightly more experienced, and therefore more responsible, member of a group rather than solo hiking.

But it’s amazing how by concentrating some thought on each bit of kit, or rather on each function that a bit of kit provides, you can shave off a really significant amount of weight.

A couple of summers ago I started carrying a DSLR camera and the extra weight tipped the balance from awkward to painful. But with a little thought and not too much spending I managed to shave off the weight of the camera and more besides.

With a lot of thought and rather a lot of spending, last winter, I dropped something like five kilos off my previous overnight winter kit. Going from around 18 to around 13 kilos. A hugely noticeable amount!

Another good reason for trying to reduce your pack weight that I can’t recall being mentioned, is in case you have to carry someone else’s gear as well. I’ve had to do so on two occasions where a minor injury left someone able to walk but not bear much weight. Once it’s been the other way around and LB took most of my pack weight whilst she helped someone with a sprained ankle and I sped off to a road to hitch a lift back to our car.

This kit list assumes that I’m carrying just my own kit but of course I’ll be taking a fair proportion of LB’s too for obvious reasons.

The weights are from my digital scales. I’ve been very forgetful about adding weights into the Blog so far. I also plan a final weighing next week…

HR Kit List

Passport
Flight documents
BMC Insurance card
European Health Insurance card
Driving license
BMC Card
Credit card
6″X9″ Aloksak for documents 18gms
Local Currency
6″X9″ Aloksak for currency 18gms

Nokia 6233 Phone 112gms
Earphones for phone 22gms
A5 Ortleib bag as wallet and phone case 20gms
Silva Expedition 4 compass 44gms
Silva Field 7 compass 24gms
Swiss Topo maps 84gms
Guide book 252gms
GPS 87gms

Head torch 68gms (inc. Lithium batteries)
Spare torch 60gms
Emergency shelter 428gms
Spare bits bag (SilFix, needles and thread etc) 60gms
Whistle (six blasts in the Alps and the UK) 6gms
First Aid kit (including blister kit) 308gms

Care Plus alcohol based sunblock 80gms (might also take an extra tube between two of us)
Care Plus lip sunblock 14gms
Tilley Hat 108gms
Sunglasses+ case 94gms (possibly SportEYZ but I’ve not tried them yet: 9gms plus an Integral Designs 4gms silnylon stuffsac)

Granite Gear Vapor Trail rucksack 1056gms
Silnylon rucksack rain cover 75gms

Rab Drilium waterproof jacket large 353gms
Montane Atomic Pants (waterproof trousers) large 178gms
Jack Wolfskin Gecko micro fleece large 244gms
Montane Lite Speed wind proof large 186gms
Icebreaker 140 weight Tech T Lite merino wool t-shirts X2 XL 180gms each
Silk gloves 30gms
PHD Minimus down jacket 570gms

Silk boxer shorts X3 large 82gms each
Rohan double-convertible synthetic trousers medium 342gms
Integral Designs Shortie eVENT gaiters large 70gms
Smartwool socks size 11 UK medium weight 86gms
Sealskinz socks size 11 UK 106gms
Montrail Hurricane Ridge approach shoes size 11.5 UK 1124gms (inc. Superfeet insoles)

Silk sleeping bag liner 108gms
Ear Plugs 4gms

Wash kit 253gms
Towel 30gms
3 packs travel tissues (in 6″X9″ Aloksak) 88gms
Multi vitamins
Swiss Army knife 128gms
Tea bags
12″X12″Aloksak for food 32gms
Freezer bags for food X3 44gms total
Re-used Indian Tonic Water bottles X3 42gms each (for water)

Canon EOS 400D DSLR camera + 10-22 lens 1070gms
Canon 17-85 lens 496
Foam camping mat cut and gaffer taped to form a cover for the above 40gms
22Gb (yes gigabytes) of memory 98gms (7XCF cards at 14gms inc. case each)
Lens cloth 1gm
Camera batteries X7 (not 5 – I bought 2 more!) 44gms each total 308gms
Camera battery charger with shortened lead 142gms (saved 44gms by shortening the lead)
Ortleib Aquazoom waterproof camera case 224gms

Kestrel 3500 (measures wind, temperature etc) 65gms +37 for the case (which I may change)
Binoculars 288gms

As I mentioned before, using approach shoes worked very well in terms of comfort and grip. LB loves the Keen Targhee IIs and they’re almost unscathed. Of course she’s only 53kg (+3kg pack) to my 78kg (+14kg pack) so they took less of a bashing. Never the less, the Montrail HurricaneRidge XCR let me down pretty badly in some respects.

These were the third pair of Montrails I’ve used. The last two were great and took quite a pounding. With this pair, the waterproofing failed on the left one within very few days of wearing them (around four or five days from memory), then the right one started to leak on the third day of the walk. Oh well, I thought, Sealskinz are a better solution anyhow.

But midway though the walk, a total of about twenty days of walking for the shoes, the plastic eyelet at the top of the lace started to tear away. The picture shows me gently lifting it away. The slightly jagged edge you can see at the bottom of the bit of plastic is meant to be stitched into the dark grey band of material. But it’s now only attached at the top.

The emergency repair kit, consisting of a good strong polypropylene thread and a darning needle, was invaluable. I sewed the second eyelet back down to the shoe and it held fine. In fact I think it’s probably stronger than the original design. The “leather” needle I bought wasn’t up to the job and bent when I was using a 5 Swiss Franc coin as a thimble.

Also, I stumbled on a rock a couple of days later, and the rock went straight through the toe of the shoe. It tore a two and a half centimetre (one inch) hole through everything except the GoreTex XCR liner. Right through the tough-looking black rubber you can see in the picture above. It was a very slight stumble, hardly broke step. In fact since I was going steeply uphill I just stopped dead in my tracks with my toe in unexpectedly close contact with the rock and a shocked expression on my face as I immediately realised what had happened.

Overall I’m not impressed with the build quality of this model especially considering I took back the first pair I bought due to a nasty stitch fault I’d somehow missed.

This has convinced me that you need to carry more than the basic sewing kit that you happened to be given in a hotel once. I’m in the process of putting together an even better repair kit based on Kevlar thread at the moment. More on that later.

I’ve yet to send the shoes back. Oddly, it’s not just laziness. They are so comfortable and, apart from the obvious failures I’ve just mentioned, have been so good to wear I’m almost loathe to part with them!

But I must. I couldn’t trust them on another long walk. Which might happen quite soon since a contract of mine is ending. I’m at a third party supplier to Northern Rock at the moment! But the contract was ending anyhow, it’s just an amusing coincidence.

Rachel bought some brand new Smartwool liner socks before we left. They were great except that one of them got a big hole through the toe during the very first day it was used. She had cut her toenails properly before the trip and none of the other Smartwool liner socks failed her.

It just shows that no matter how good a manufacturer is you should always take new gear out for at least a couple of “shakedown” weekends first.

LB, Chris and I caught the last of the snow this weekend in Snowdonia. At least I expect it to be the last of the snow we catch but I’ve expected it to end for the last couple of weekends away and it just keeps on coming.

We did a nice route up across Carnedd Dafydd but were beaten back from the ridge leading to Carnedd Llewelyn by a fifty mile an hour blast of snow that occasionally hit sixty-five (according to the Kestrel). We dropped into the cwm and camped at the foot of the Black Ladders. It was beautiful with the brilliant snow covering parts of the black rock forming the massive amphitheatre of Cwmglas Mawr.

Sunday saw the usual long slog out of a cwm. This time all the way to the top of Carnedd Llewelyn and back along the ridge to Dafydd. With the wind doing the same sort of speeds as the day before.

But what of the bionic legs?

Chris has super-human, bionic legs. He out-walks everybody. Whenever you walk with him, he disappears off into the distance and sits on a rock waiting for half an hour whilst everyone else catches up. Except for this time. This time we were ahead of Chris at almost every step. We couldn’t understand it.

We asked a couple of times if he was okay and he said he was fine but just finding it heavy going. It took a while to realize that of course Chris was wearing full winter boots, a B2 crampon fitting. Whereas we were carrying Kahtoola crampons and therefore we are able to wear lighter footwear. Mid-height approach shoes in my case and summer leather boots for LB.

So although we never actually had the crampons out, we didn’t need to carry as much weight in the pack. Also, critically, we had very little weight on our feet compared to Chris. And post-holing your way up the side of Llewelyn in those boots is just plain painful.

Intuitively it’s obvious, but to see such a graphic demonstration of the enormous difference that lightweight footwear really does make was very interesting (and quite gratifying, after spending the money!).

We just have to make sure Chris doesn’t get any for next season…

If you live in England, Wales or Scotland, take a weekend walking in the Peak District. Whilst you’re there pop in to Outside in Hathersage and get Mike Pickwell (head of their footwear dept.) to fit you with a pair of Inov8 Terrocs.

They are the most amazingly comfortable, functional footwear. Always assuming they fit your shape of foot of course – but they are very soft and flexible so I expect they fit more than most.

You’ve probably heard of their lightness, their comfort, their ability to dry even after stream crossings. Well, from what I can tell from the last eight days we’ve had them on the hill everything you’ve heard is true.

Three of the Iceland crew have been wearing them; myself, LB and Kev. They also come in women’s specific fit which does actually seem to be a differently designed shoe. We tried them with Smartwool socks, up a clough scramble to get our feet nicely wet with the air temperature at only about 6C (43F) and water a couple of degrees less. Afterwards, everyone’s feet became warm, and eventually dry, as the day progressed and were never uncomfortable.

On a colder, wetter day we found that our feet didn’t dry. But reversing the route the next day with us all wearing Sealskinz socks instead of Smartwools we found it perfectly comfortable.

To me, they’re far preferable to an eVent or Gore Tex lined shoe since when a lined shoe leaks (and they will, one way or another) you are stuck with a plastic bag full of water on your foot, which generally refuses to dry.

Since we’re going to be crossing many small waterways in Iceland, their ability to dry is invaluable. I’ve tried crossing (very shallow!) glacial-melt barefoot and it’s not something I want to repeat. I’ve also looked at carrying sandals but I’d rather avoid the weight. These look to be a good solution. Combined with some waterproof Sealskinz if our feet get too cold, I think they’ll do everything we need.

Of course it’s early days so I can’t comment on their durability which I know Lighthiker had a slight problem with. I’m not expecting them to be as durable as a leather boot though and fortunately I think the price reflects that fairly well. They’re about two thirds of the price of a really sturdy pair of three season clumpers.

The most interesting thing about them is the way that they bend. Look at a normal pair of shoes or boots as you stand up on your toes. They’ll bend almost square across the shoe from side to side. But the Terrocs (and all Inov8 footwear apparently) have a deep groove which runs across the base of all your toes, where they join your foot. And that line is diagonal. So when you stand on your toes in the Terrocs they bend exactly where your toes bend. Which is actually a very odd feeling! We found that if you tried it whilst imagining you were barefoot it felt fine. Very interesting.

The picture on the left shows how the Terrocs bend naturally, across the top of the long bones of your foot. The picture on the right shows where a “normal” shoe bends. Notice how I’m having to grip the toe hard to force the Terrocs into bending there.

What was also interesting was that in the first day’s walking, I got a single, very sore quadriceps muscle. It was the one quad that’s weaker than the others and that I’ve been doing physio-advised exercises to strengthen (thanks Rachel!). The fact that just that one muscle was sore, and the rest weren’t suggests to me that my leg is working in a far more natural way whilst wearing them. With all the muscles doing their share of the work. Making less strain on the knees and more energy transmission into actually propelling me along. Since then we’ve all noticed that our feet seem to be tired in an “unusual” way. As if muscles in them have been working more than usual.

Whether it’s the weight, the improved bio-mechanics or both, we’ve found that we really fly along wearing these. We did a route recently that we’d done last year, whilst at a relatively similar level of fitness and we found it was far too short. We could have done it in half the time easily.

I’d been thinking of getting them last year but hadn’t found a shop where I could try them on. It was an interview with Mat Hazley that convinced me (not sure which one – one of Bob’s perhaps?). Initially he rejected them as too odd-feeling. But then he was sent a trial pair, free, by the owner of Inov8. Once he’d tried them on the trail rather than the shop floor he was convinced. He now says he wouldn’t wear anything else. I already know how he feels.

Are they the ultimate walking shoe? No. Such things only exist in the breathless, sticky dreams of marketing folk. But for the summer they’re certainly the best we’ve found.

The only question I have now is; why didn’t I get them last year?