Comfortable Shoes
On our trip up Mt Katahdin earlier this month we met “Last Out” on the trail at the end of the 100 mile wilderness. He was traveling with a group of scruffy trail worn friends that had endured a week of rain and a summer of extremes.
“Last Out” told us that his goal was to say that he had hiked the entire trail in one pair of boots. But on this day he was not wearing boots, but Crocs. I bet the people at the Croc company would love to know that their comfortable utilitarian shoes, ones that so may enjoy wearing around the house or on the town, had become “Last Outs” favorite trail shoe.
I can’t even imagine hiking on a nice day with loose fitting shoes. But amazingly these shoes held on through the muck, mud and deep water crossings so that on the last day of his hike he would be wearing the same boots he started with. I think Emma would relate, wearing her high top sneakers instead of boots was forward thinking in 1955. So here we are in 2012 and comfortable shoes trump “standard hiking gear” again for this through hiker.
I’m amazed he even made it in ONE pair of shoes — Emma wore out SIX during her hike!
Cool — I posted it on our facebook page.
FYI — something weird on the page — I tried originally to click the like button near the bottom of the post above the reply box, but another little box came up wanting me to fill in something, but I could not read the whole box in either Firefox or IE, nor could I MOVE the box to see what it wanted.