Don't buy hiking boots.

Buy these instead:

• La Sportiva Ultra Raptor
• La Sportiva Bushido
• La Sportiva Bushido II
• La Sportiva Akasha
• La Sportiva Wildcat

Introduction

OK, so here’s the deal with hiking boots… you don’t need them.

Why?

Because you’re not climbing Mount Everest.

You’re Joe or Sally day hiker or Billy backpacker who walks on mostly flat trail with the occasional rocky surface and your feet stay mostly dry.

Wearing hiking boots in these conditions, particularly if you have a lot of ground to cover, puts you in a terrible position.

Why?

Let me give you a personal story.

Jumping into the Deep End at Glacier National Park

Several years ago I went hiking in Glacier National Park.

Beautiful place, incredible sites, highly recommended – particularly if you like backcountry camping, which is what we were doing.

We took the 60-mile Many Glacier Loop, starting at Swiftcurrent Pass then on to Poia Lake, Elizabeth Lake, Stoney Indian, Fifty Mountain, Granite Park, and then thankfully we were out of there.

You see, the thing is… we had no idea what we were doing.

We had never gone on a backcountry camping trip before and we were in way over our heads.

Why?

Well, partly because expertise comes with experience (not necessarily true, and the relationship is certainly not linear).

And partly because good advice on backcountry camping is so difficult to find.

I scoured the internet for backpacking tips before I left.

But there was so much conflicting information; it seemed like everyone was trying to sell me something, so it was difficult to know which source to trust.

A Man Named Bill Gates

However, I managed to find a forum that looked like it was created in 1995 by Bill Gates, the man himself, or Al Gore, (can we ever really be sure?).

This terse backpacker with over a thousand posts said hiking boots were a mistake.

Why did this mysterious sage in his infinite wisdom say wearing hiking boots into the backcountry was a mistake?

Because they are heavy, non-breathable, and, most importantly, they cause your feet to “sweat.”

But wait a minute, feet don’t “sweat” says the man who’s never been on a backcountry trip before in his life.

Well, let me tell you something.

They may not sweat, but when you wear hiking boots, especially waterproof ones, which is what I did, your shoes will trap moisture within the waterproof membrane, causing moisture to build around your feet.

What exactly is the effect of moisture building around your feet, you say, when hiking 60+ miles over 6 days?

If I could sum it up in one word: misery.

By day two I had a large blister covering the balls of my feet on both feet.

How did this feel as I was hiking up and over Red Gap Pass?

Not great.

Each step was more excruciating and painful than the last until my body finally gave in and took pity on my soul by numbing both of my feet.

Which was great!

Until I stopped moving, and then the pain would set in again.

But as long as I kept going, the pain stayed away.

A Sage's Advice

So people, don’t make the same mistake I made.

Listen to the sage man who writes on obscure forums that look like they run on MS DOS.

Because he’s not selling you anything, has years of experience doing it for himself, and has no incentive to tell you what you want to hear.

Unlike all of the other listings for hiking boots on Google, that go through the pros and cons of each: this one weighs two ounces less and that one has two inches more “ankle support.”

Let me tell you, in the backcountry, it’s not the little things that will kill you, it’s the big things.

Like bears or buying the wrong hiking shoes.

Hiking shoes are the most important investment you can make as a backpacker because you depend on them with every step.

And whether it has two ounces less weight or two inches more “ankle support” will not make a significant difference to the success of your trip.

I promise you.

What will make a significant difference is making a better choice with your footwear, and that’s where Bill Gates (or was it Al Gore?), that old sage from the backpacking forum comes in:

Buy trail running shoes, he said.

They’re lighter and more comfortable than hiking boots and also more breathable.

All of which are critical factors if you’re heading into the backcountry and relying on your feet to perform over dozens of miles and several days.

Rained Out

But wait a minute, what if it rains or there’s water along the trail?

Great point, Joe or Sally day hiker.

There could be rain and there could be water along the trail.

In fact, it did rain on my trip around Many Glacier Loop, on the third day. And do you know how long it took my waterproof hiking boots to dry?

Two days.

That’s two days of miserably squishy feet hiking over Stoney Indian Pass and up Fifty Mountain with their several thousand feet of elevation change.

Why?

Because the waterproof membrane traps water in the interior cushioning of the shoes and makes it much more difficult for your hiking boots to dry.

If I had listened to Bill Gates, my shoes would have dried overnight and I could have hiked Stoney Indian and Fifty Mountain with dry feet.

But no, this random guy on the internet couldn’t know what he was talking about.

Surely all of these fancy retailers (I won’t name them) with incredible outdoor credentials and expensive-looking websites wouldn’t lead me down the wrong path.

Surely they wanted me to make the “best choice” with my money and buy what was right for my trip.

Wrong.

The Retail Machine

Retailers want to sell the most volume because they make a standard margin on each product they sell and if they sell more product, they make more money.

And so how do they do this?

By telling you what you want to hear.

By confirming your intuitions and making you feel smart about the purchasing decision you deep down already wanted to make.

But wait, that’s a little cynical… certainly these companies care about customer satisfaction.

You’re right, they do care about customer satisfaction.

But only insofar as it leads to higher sales and more profits.

Satisfying customers beyond this point results in diminishing marginal returns, which leads to negative return on equity, which leads to unhappy shareholders / investors, and that's bad for business.

La Sportiva to the Rescue

So what should you do?

Listen to the man from the internet and buy trail running shoes that are NOT waterproof.

They have better tread than standard running shoes and are lighter and more breathable than hiking boots.

We specifically recommend La Sportiva trail running shoes.

Don’t other companies make good trail running shoes?

Yes, some of them do.

Like Altra, which makes the Lone Peak 4 Trail Running Shoe that is excellent for backpacking.

But we’re not going to mention all of them here, although we could make more money by doing that.

We’re going to keep it simple and only talk about La Sportiva because it’s an outstanding company (no, they’re not paying us to say that; but La Sportiva, if you’re out there, hit us up on Venmo) that makes great trail running shoes that are perfect for backpacking or day hiking, and there’s no reason to go anywhere else.

So we’ve listed the ones we recommend here:

• La Sportiva Ultra Raptor 
• La Sportiva Bushido
• La Sportiva Bushido II
• La Sportiva Akasha
• La Sportiva Wildcat

Staying on Track

Again, keep it simple.

Go to Amazon, read the reviews, buy the ones you like. You can’t go wrong with any of them.

Is one of them more suited for this than the other?

Yes, probably.

And will some of them perform better in these conditions than those conditions?

I would imagine.

But remember: big things.

Don’t overanalyze the details.

I personally went out and bought the Akasha Trail Running Shoes as soon as I got out of the park.

I had seen someone in the backcountry, just as it was beginning to rain on the third day, who looked fairly seasoned, like he knew what he was doing.

That person was wearing Akasha Trail Running shoes, so I went out and I bought the same pair.

It was one of the first purchases I made after leaving Glacier, and at the time I thought I was way overpaying for hiking shoes.

But looking back, it was some of the best backpacking money I’ve ever spent.

So go out there. Don’t listen to the crowd.

Or to the vast number of marketing dollars telling you to buy Gore-Tex this or waterproof that.

Unless you’re hiking in snow or up a serious mountain, you will not need hiking boots, and you will never regret not having them.

If you are hiking in snow or up a serious mountain, then you probably know what you are doing, and will be sophisticated and experienced enough to know how much of this applies to you and how much of it doesn’t.

But if you are Joe or Sally day hiker or Billy backpacker like I was and you’ve been wearing hiking boots for years on short out-and-backs thinking all that “ankle support” was keeping your ankles intact, think again.

Go out and buy some trail running shoes.

And you’ll never look back.