Hiking Boots vs Hiking Shoes

Saturday 6th February Washout in Camaderry

Today's hike must have been one of the wettest, dampest, windiest and most miserable of hikes that I have done in the Wicklow Mountains.

It was a wet and miserable day, but it did give me a chance to do a small experiment based on the debate over the benefit of hiking shoes versus hiking boots.

I have long been fascinated by minimalist thru hikers and one such article that I found very interesting is this one titled 5 Reasons To Ditch Your Hiking Boots greatly aroused my interest.

As an experiment I wanted to try my shoes in the Irish weather and terrain. The wet and boggy Irish terrain coupled with heavy rain which is traditionally more suited to waterproof boots.

In my experiment, I replaced my boots with a pair of hiking shoes together with mid-length, mid-weight waterproof Sealskinz socks together with Gaiters.

As it transpired the weather was much worse than expected. It turned into one of the wettest days hiking that I've ever done.

After five hours and 18 kilometers in the pouring rain, while walking and sinking in bog and muck, I was completely soaked through. My shoes were full of water and my feet felt slightly wet.
However, my feet didn't feel very cold. There were cold but not really uncomfortably so.

The other hikers that I spoke with also had wet feet, despite having waterproof boots. Some said it was their first time to get wet feet in their current boots.
It would appear that rain just soaked down peoples bodies into their boots.

I certainly didn't fair any worse than than the people wearing boots and had I being wearing my boots, I'm sure the too would have been filled with water.
But the boots would be holding more water than the shoes and the ordinary socks would allow the water the penetrate directly to my feet causing severe discomfort.

I would conclude that given the extreme day that was in it, my feet were warmer than if had I been wearing boots and certainly no wetter.

So on this occasion, as counter-intuitive as it sounds, my hiking shoes out-performed my boots.