Yes, that is a good tip if you want to dry them a bit quicker, stuff them with newspaper and change a newspaper daily. Good thinking! Have done that myself but these days I generally don't get out of consecutive weekends so don't need to turn the boots around that fast. :-(
Newpaper is probably the only way to dry them completely without ruining them. Better you dry them anyway so the snitching does not rot.
Hi everyone; my 1st post here although I think I've read every page of this website over the last couple of months - great site, btw.
My wife & I are coming to NZ for a 4-month tramping vacation over the summer of 2009/2010. We'll probably be tramping about 90 out of the 120 days, doing a wide variety of tracks.
Plenty of water-immersion river-type trails (Rees-Dart, Gillespie, etc), lots of varied-terrain (Heaphy, Banks Peninsula, etc), lots of beach (90-Mile Beach, Abel Tasman, etc), some climbs (Mueller Hut, Avalanche Pk, etc), some tops & tougher stuff (Tongariro, Ruapehu circuit, Taranaki, etc)
If we buy new boots 2-3 months before arriving, & ensure they're fully broken in...
...will they last the trip? Or should we be buying, breaking in, and bringing over 2 pairs of boots?
Assume good quality boots, if that matters.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
John
It will solely depend on the quality of the boots you purchase? What brand and type have you been looking at?
Post up some pic's to get some feedback.
I would go with genuine leather and a good rubber sole i.e. Meindel will defernately do the job
We would have high-quality leather upper, goretex lining, vibram rubber sole type boots. Not lighter weight hybrids.
We do a lot of desert & rocky trail hiking here, which will wear down your boot soles pretty rapidly, but the rest of the boot can last a very long time if it's good.
Wondering what constant immersion in water & mud, continual dampness, salt air, and 90 days of tramping 6-8+ hours a day will do to good boots?
Hi. I recently upgraded my boots and, after trying nearly every possible brand on in the shop, brought Merrills which fit my feet like gloves. They were a good mid-range price too and I could (and have) walked for days in them without problem.
trtlrock: I'm not an expert on this so wait perhaps for someone else to comment on what I say, but if you're planning to be out tramping for 90 of 120 days, you might want to bring two pairs simply so you can give one pair a rest and let them dry out while you're using the other pair.
It sounds as if you're planning to get around and you could probably expect quite a lot of mud and potentially wading through or walking up and down rivers from time to time. If you do this constantly on the same pair of boots without letting them recover, you'll possibly walk them to death much faster than necessary, especially keeping in mind that your boots are unlikely to dry well if you're busy driving between places. On the other hand, a single pair might still last the entire 120 days if that's all you want out of them. You may also want to invest in good socks. :)
Regarding the rest of the thread, I've tried Hi-tec * 2, Salomon and Zamberlans. I walked through the soles of my first pair of Hi-tec boots within about 2 years, but to be fair they also got a fair amount of road walking. I still have the second pair and they're my number 3 boots which I tend to use if I'm going on local nearby daywalks and such. I use the Zamberlans (which fit my narrow feet quite well) for regular non-alpine tramping, and I only use the Salomon boots if I need crampons, mostly because they have clips. I try my best to dry them out and look after them and treat the leather between trips, but I don't expect them to last longer than a few years as they tend to get a bit of a thrashing with lots of mud and river travel when I use them.
Generally though, I hate my Salomon Alp-7 GTX boots and I wish I'd bought something that had less seams around the sole. After I first bought them they came apart at the seams twice, each time lasting an average of about 2 weekend trips. Then they had to be dried out and sent back for repair which took about 3 weeks. (Perhaps it could have been done locally to be fair, but like things to go back to distributors when possible so they can actually know there are problems.)
This was very frustrating because at the time I was trying to get away every weekend and didn't have the Zamberlans at that point. I probably just got a dud pair, but it left a bad taste in my mouth about Salomon in general. After the second time I was going overseas for a couple of months anyway, so just put them away for a while and bought some new boots when I came home.
2 pairs are the go i reckon, i use my cheaper pair for daytramps and when in the scoria etc, and my $600 scarpa's for multi day and winter tramping, that way both pairs last longer and they do the job i ask of them very well
The sides just fell out of my Merrills at the weekend, so back to looking around for new boots... Dammit!
I think there's something to what Ruger said earlier. I do have a friend who does a lot of tramping both up and down rivers and on tops. For anything other than winter, he swears by the cheap Bullers (or something similar) that he got from a place like Para Rubber. It's not something I've tried but it's tempting.
