Even in the land of Goshen
Hard lug soles cause erosion.
WINSLOW THRATCHETT
THE TALISMAN OF today’s hiker-backpacker is his boots. The hiker without his boots is like the hunter without his gun, the fisherman without his rod, Heifetz without his violin, Babe Ruth without his bat. And yet the image of the traditional hiking boot is changing, partly as a result of the new way we look at our hiking surroundings.
Throughout most of our early hiking years, virtually every experienced hiker we met on the trail was shod in a heavy, stiff-soled boot. The things make a terrific racket tiptoeing across a mountain cabin floor, and they track in dirt and mud every time they step inside. But no self-respecting backpacker dared be seen without his or her mammoth boots. We had ours—it was a badge of the tribe.
In fact, during the early days of the 1960s and 1970s boom in outdoor recreation, the heavy, lug-soled hiking boot became a kind of status symbol. Everyone who coveted an outdoorsy reputation had to clomp around on big, stiff wafflestompers. College coeds, newly signed up for the outing club, stomped from class to class in their hiking boots with ⅜-inch raised cleats.
Then a minor revolution took place. Two points began to dawn on a lot of outdoors walkers. The first was an environmental consciousness. The second was the question of whether the heavy boots were really necessary.
The environmental conscience beset backwoods hikers in a big way. Many backpackers advocated environmental-saving measures such as those we described in the last chapter.
When this environmental conscience took a look at the mud tracked in on the cabin floor, it began to ask some embarrassing questions. Questions like, where did all that mud come from? Lug-soled boots were picking up a little bit of every trail they passed over and were carrying it out to shelters, cars, and homes. The impact of heavy, cleated boots on trail erosion began to be noticed.
A hiker named William Harlow determined experimentally that those little raised-earth footprints left by a cleated sole tend to wash away in rainstorms. Harlow found that the amount of earth left so exposed by one cleated sole weighs close to an ounce. Figuring a 2.5-foot stride, he computed that one hiker traveling 1 mile leaves 120 pounds of raised earth in his footprints, ready to be eroded down the trail at the first rain.
Carry that logic out and you’ll find that a party of four lug-soled hikers walking up a 5-mile trail just before a rain just might be responsible for a ton of earth washing down. That’s a lot of backcountry being washed down into frontcountry.
Harlow wrote up his results for Backpacker magazine, arguing strenuously for hikers to use smooth-soled boots or lightweight footgear for any kind of travel except the most demanding mountaineering. “Millions of backpackers,” proclaimed Harlow, “wear lug soles in country where such footing contributes little to hikers’ safety, yet claws at trails and smashes vegetation in cross-country rambles.”
In western high country, some of those lovely high alpine meadows are especially vulnerable to boot impact. One national park estimates that as few as 15 lug-soled hikers crossing the same meadow in the same place can cause significant damage to the soils and plant life. Divide 15 into the kind of visitor totals some of these parks get and you can imagine the impact.
Thus all over the country wildland managers and concerned hikers began to question the last generation’s love affair with the lug. (A lug affair?)
A first step was to begin taking lighter footgear along to change into when you camped in the woods. Maybe you want the big lug sole to hike in, but once in camp, change to something that won’t scuff up every inch of turf you walk on. Counciled one Vermont camp director: “Sneakers, moccasins, or even bare feet have far less impact on the ground cover.”
In springtime especially, there’s no question that lug soles are tough on a wet trail. As we mentioned, Vermont’s Green Mountain Club has officially urged its members not to hike during the early spring mud season because of the damage hiking boots can do when trails are wet. More recently others, like the Adirondack Mountain Club and New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest, have asked hikers to reconsider mud season hiking, and the Society of America Foresters raised this issue in a 1989 booklet called “Wilderness Management.”
We agree 100 percent about mud season. We are involved in volunteer trail maintenance, some of which absolutely must be done in May, so we see what the trails look like at the time of year when the snow pack and the frost have just left the high country for the first time. The mud you see then is not like the mud you see during a summer’s all-day rain. It’s much deeper, much squishier, the soil far more vulnerable. We cringe at our own impact and wish there were some way to reconcile that needed trail clearing with a moratorium on trail workers, or anyone else, tramping on those vulnerable soils at that time of year. For pure recreation we—and increasingly lots of others—stay off the trails during mud season.
The environmentalist antilug reaction is strong enough to have engaged the attention of the Quabaug Rubber Company of Massachusetts, the American manufacturer of Vibram soles. This company has issued a public-spirited booklet on how to minimize hiker impact on the backcountry and has produced a variety of alternative soles that cause less damage to trails. Three cheers for Quabaug.
If it were just an environmental conscience that argued against heavy lug-soled boots, the move to other footgear probably wouldn’t get very far. However, while relatively few hikers seriously ask, “What are we doing to the environment?” quite a few began to ask, “What are we doing to ourselves?” A lot of walkers we know wondered whether it’s really necessary to carry all that weight around at the end of each leg. Might it not be a lot more practical to wear something light and more comfortable? Are heavy hiking boots really necessary?
Grandma Gatewood, the fabulous woman who hiked the entire 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail three times—the first time at age 67—wore sneakers. If Grandma Gatewood could hike 2,000 miles in sneakers, does Joe Athlete really need heavy boots with lug soles?
Another grandmother, the Adirondacks’ super hill walker, Trudy Healy—who climbed all 46 of the 4,000-foot mountains in the Adirondacks at least six times and wrote the first guide to rock climbing in that region—originally climbed those 46 peaks in sneakers. So did her six children.
We’ve noticed that some of the young people who work in the high mountain huts of the Appalachian Mountain Club have discarded their big black hiking boots—formerly so much a symbol of their hiking prowess that many hut guests wondered whether the boots were surgically appended to their feet. Now we occasionally see hut people clad in sneakers or running shoes.
In the summer of 1977 two of those hut boys traversed all eight high huts in a single 16-hour day—racing up and down 49 miles of rough mountain trail with elevation changes of more than 1,000 feet at many points along the way. The two chose to wear running shoes rather than hiking or mountaineering boots for the incredible jaunt. Their achievement struck a body blow to the conventional wisdom that rugged hiking requires big, heavy boots.
One American friend who now lives and hikes in Switzerland is a devotee of running shoes. “From the store shelf to an eight-hour walk and never a hint of a blister,” she writes. “Dear me, when I think of all those Band-Aids and moleskin consumed! To say nothing of the weight.”
Another friend recently traveled to the Andes to climb several high peaks, one over 20,000 feet. For the upper snowfields he took mountaineering boots, but as high as 16,000 feet he wore simple running shoes.
The idea is that hiking boots are simply a lot heavier than they need to be.
One friend of ours, embarking on a long hike involving major ascents and descents through the mountains, carried both hiking boots and sneakers. On the uphills he wore the sneakers and carried the hiking boots, feeling much lighter afoot that way. Then on each summit he’d switch to the hiking boots and carry the sneakers for the jarring descents on those rocky trails.
Those superwalkers, the Sherpas of Nepal, have not traditionally enjoyed the questionable benefits of big, heavy boots. Many walk their rugged trails barefoot, even crossing snow passes unshod. These days, we’re told, the Sherpas who escort visiting hill walkers on treks through Nepal’s hill country wear a colorful variety of sandals, sneakers, work boots—whatever Westerners’ largesse may have brought them—and still occasionally bare feet.
Now, having said all this, we must say a word on the other side of the debate. At least three good arguments on behalf of the old lug sole deserve attention.
First is the matter of safety. When you are dealing with slippery footing, rain-slicked rocks, frozen ground, or any terra that is less than completely firma, the lug sole has undeniable advantages. We must report that more than one person we know who is involved with search-and-rescue work tells us that the victims are disproportionately clad in softer hiking footgear. Unquestionably the lug sole grips slippery surfaces better.
We would hate to be responsible for a rash of accidents by people indiscriminately switching away from old-fashioned hiking boots as a result of reading this chapter.
Second, we’ve heard at least one respected source argue that lug soles are in some ways easier on the mud than sneakers. C. Peter Fish, Adirondacks ranger extraordinaire, contends that he sees sneaker-clad people slip on slanting mud where a good lug sole would grip that same spot without slipping. Thus, Fish argues, the mud takes a worse beating from the slipping and sliding of the soft-soled hikers, while the lug-soled denizens plant each foot just once and securely.
Third, if you have any weak ankle or knee problems, you’re probably well advised to stick with a solid, substantial hiking boot. As both of us have grown older and our limbs less dependable, particularly following ankle and knee injuries, we must concede we’ve gone back to our good old Limmer boots, with their strong ankle support—and their tough lug soles.
Where does this bring us out? Not to any simplistic answer, apparently. Each individual hiker must consider what kind of hiking he or she wants to do, on what kind of terrain, and even in what kind of weather. For the extreme mud of April (at low elevations) and May (at high), maybe we should all give the trails a respite from any kind of foot traffic. For the rest of the summer and fall, if you think lighter footgear is right for you, you might be helping the mountain environment in the bargain. But judge each case on its merits.
What comes out of reflections like this, however, is maybe the most important point of all: think. Consider your environmental impact as a recreationist. Question the old ways—not necessarily to reject them, but to evaluate them in light of new concerns. The mountains and forests and deserts and wetlands and tundra and grasslands are under a lot more people pressure than they were 50 or 100 years ago, and what worked fine in Dad’s and Mom’s youth may not be fine today. Think about what you do.
If you think, and still decide, “I think I’ll wear my good old monster hiking boots,” that’s fine with us. But if we all are conscious of the issue, maybe it will help us modify not only exactly how and where we choose to walk, so as to reduce the worst of our footprints’ mischief, but especially if we choose to walk at all—maybe mud season is a time for reading about the mountains and environmental problems, rather than hurting the former and becoming the latter.
That point is this book’s most important message—not so much a set of convenient and inflexible rules as an invitation to think about our actions and try to be a little less of the problem and a little more of the solution.