Lowes. Lowa’s. What’s the difference.
The story so far
Thanks to yesterday’s big adventure (Raven Rocks overlook hike), I now know that I need better boots (or maybe shoes) to hike in. And that I need to eat before I hike.
What the mountain hike lacks in average intensity, versus cardio machines at the gym, it more than makes up in duration. By the book, this little 5.4 mile hike involves four hours of walking, plus lunchtime. I’m sure this well-under-six-mile hike burned at least twice the calories of an hour’s CV exercise at the gym.
But that means I needed to have twice the readily-available stored energy, on tap. Turns out, I didn’t. I don’t pack that much glycogen. And, worse, I can’t burn fat fast enough to keep up with the demands of hiking. That’s how I interpret that last hike. I ran out of sugar and glycogen, and I’m too low-power as a fat burner, for hiking.
A degree of “brain fog” of fatigue ensued. Not terrible, but not good. Double plus ungood if you’re a geezer hiking a steep rocky trail. Do I need to wear a helmet when I hike?
The obvious fix for running out of energy on the hike is to eat breakfast first. Duh. Eat a high-starch breakfast, then drive an hour to the trail head. Somewhere in the first couple of hours of hiking, presumably, those carbs will be available as sugars to burn. A few packs of ramen would provide an easy test.
Then there’s the boots.
About a boot. I bought boots.
Lowa Renegade boots. And I know they’re cool because they’ve got speed laces. And because they’re pronounced re-ne-GAh-da. Or should be.
For the Raven Rocks hike, I made do with some work boots and two pairs of socks. That worked. The stiff soles and leather uppers of my old Walmart/Brahma work boots kept the soles of my feet from being beaten up by the rocks. For which I am grateful.
Those work boots failed on the downhills. No shame in that, and not unexpected. The “work boot” design isn’t made to prevent that downhill slide, within the boot, that results in your toes getting crammed into the end of the boot, on the downhills. Making the boot rigid/close-fitting enough to stop your foot’s downhill slide within the boot would make the boot uncomfortable as a work boot.
I need something made for hiking. If nothing else, I’m old, and need all the help I can get. Stiff soles are required, else the edges of the rocks beat up the soles of your feet. Ankle support (high tops) are a good idea if you’re stepping around fist-sized rocks a lot. Finally, I need something that passes the “toes remain comfy on downhills” test.
The more I looked, the higher up the market I went. For one thing, a lot of low-end hiking boots are more … hiking-style boots. They aren’t typically bought to be used for mountain hiking. Which suggests to me that they aren’t typically made to do mountain hiking well.
Weirdly, that crossover at the low end — people using hiking-look boots, as general-purpose boots — occurs in part because, for reasons I cannot fathom, this category of footwear is known as “waterproof hiking boots”. Waterproof is, as far as I can tell, not optional, and absolutely integral to the category of footwear I wanted. You want hiking boots, of the type I’m after, you’re getting waterproof hiking boots.
Apparently a lot of people buy them not as hiking boots, but as a style of waterproof boots. A lot of commenters actively disliked the features — e.g., stiffness — that made them hiking boots. And so, at the low end of the market, you have a lot of what I’d call hiking-style boots, whose construction and fit is more like … eh, work boots. And if the boots fail to fit and act like work boots, the commenters call them out for it. (And for failure of the waterproofing.)
Long story short, after a lengthy shopping expedition, first on-line, then at my local DSW, I finally ended up at REI on a Saturday afternoon. And I bought the best of what they had on the shelf. Which is a story in and of itself.
I paid about what you’d think, buying top-shelf boots from REI. But, arguably, less than the cost of a broken ankle.
What I ended up with was a pricey thin-but-stiff leather boot with thick Vibram sole, from Lowa. Which to my surprise, is a German-made boot, explaining both the high cost and excellent everything else.
So it’s a German-designed and assembled boot, incorporating American fabric (Gore-Tex), and Italian soles. A real-life lesson for the Age of Tariffs and Supply Chains.
At any rate, these are the right boot for the task. Stiff sole. Stiff ankle support. Good toe room. Vibram sole. And speed laces.
Leather uppers, which I did not want. But that’s not a terrible choice given that these are, after all, boots. And they are disposables, which I also did not want in a high-end boot. But, like a pair of sneakers, they cannot be resoled.
I’m guessing that at my age, this is unlikely to be a problem.
Conclusions
Cheap boots are false economy. But sometimes cheap boots will do. And the availability of better boots does not give you carte blanche.
That said, at the end of the day, I bought the best hiking boots I could find locally. Locally, so I could try them on first. And the best I could find, not because I set out to do that. But because, somewhere along the line, after looking at what was for offer, that started to make sense.
My other take-away is that REI, here in NoVA, is a fundamentally weird place. Doubly so on a spring Saturday. A whole lotta shopping goin’ on. An eclectic mix of staff.
They say these German-made hiking boots should last 1000 miles. Or maybe it’s kilometers.
Either way, I’d like to put that to the test. Otherwise I’m just another doofus in expensive boots.
Starting just as soon as I heal up from the last hike.
Addendum: Tuning the lacing on a stroll downtown.
I strolled to Walgreens, to get sunscreen. Maybe two miles round-trip, on the sidewalks.
The boots did fine. I did fine. It was fine.
The leather on these is stiff enough that I assume they require some sort of break-in period. People may sometimes tell you otherwise, but my experience says that it takes a while for leather boots and feet to get to know one another. I’m doing that by wearing them around, a bit at a time, and eschewing (e.g.) oils (or even water) to speed the break-in. I’m in no particular hurry.
To my surprise, these boots don’t have to fit tightly around the foot, in order to pass the downhill no-toe-cram test. Instead, you can set up the lacing to be (comfortably) relaxed around the foot, as long as the ankle portion of the lacing is pulled tight.
It’s designed this way. The ankle portion of the lacing is the speed laces. Tighten them up, leaving the lacing relatively loose on the foot, and the boot effectively grabs you by the ankle. Firmly, but gently. And that keeps your foot from sliding forward in your shoe, on (modest, so far) downhills.
The upshot is that a) the boots pass the downhill test so far, and b) my feet feel better loosely-laced. But that all works out, because the boot is designed to hold two different tensions, on those two different parts of the lacing.
Comfortable hiking boot? That’s kind of a foreign concept to me, but, these are foreign boots.
I guess it all works out.
