Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting Lightweight vs heavy boots?

I like shooting Garands…. and M1a’s… and Mini14’s…. and AR15’s…. with the aperture sights. Not dogpiling here.

Here we are a few years ago… this is at over 14k feet, on Whitney, towards the top. Anyone who’s climbed it will recognize the features. I was wearing Salomon X-Ultras, not sure what Cyn has on there, probably Altras. We’d done about 220 miles and 10+ passes in the Sierra to get there, most recently Forester Pass at 13k+ feet the day before. The vast majority of the footfalls on that whole trail (the JMT) are on granite.

I was wearing exactly the right shoe IMHO. As you can see, every step was an adventure; I wanted full use of my legs! Get those ankles flexing, taking up all the various foot-strike angles. In some spots along the JMT/PCT we ran into weekenders coming up trailheads to backpack to a lake or whatever, invariably in “boots” and suffering. The through-hikers all had low top light hikers on- aka exactly the right shoe.