Bushwalk Australia

I was watching a clip on youtube and the subject of lightweight hiking shoes was discussed and the presenter stated that he had ditched his full height and heavy weight hiking boots in favor of low cut trail running shoes or similiar because of his thoughts that a gram on the feet is a tonne on the back(I may be exaggerating a bit but I hope you get the point.
My dilemma is that I have 2 pairs of boots,one being a pair of hiking boots weighing 1.6KG and the other being a pair of wading boots that are designed for being constantly wet and able to stand up to rigours of walking/fishing upstream all day weighing in at 2.8KG.I have a walk coming up in a months time and up until this morning all my training walks have been done in the hiking boots as I didn't want to wear out the souls on my wading boots.I don't want to take in 2 pairs of boots so am undecided whether
to wear the hiking boots and face a slip or 2 on the rocky river beds or hike in the wading boots which are much heavier but very suitable for the fishing.
My main purpose of my trip is the fishing with the hiking being used for the isolation and being able to fish new water for me.
It is too late to get a lighter pair of wading boots so any thoughts on my dilemma or the effect of boot weight would be greatly appreciated please.

they are your boots, only you know how safe they feel for given conditions, go with what experience tells you you should wear...

My felt-soled boots that I use for my flyfishing are great in the water but absolute rollerskates on wet grass in particular and certainly using them for hiking-in will wreck the soles pretty quickly. I do a fair bit of backpack-in fly fishing each summer and modified a pair of my older sherpa soled hunting boots to allow me to wet-wade securely in them as well as do the walk-ins that generally are across-country rather than on a track or formed walking trail.

Solution ? Easy enough.....just used my driver drill to screw-in about 20 dome-headed self tapping screws per boot into the soles around the outside on the lugs and a few in the centre and at each end. Screw length was about 12mm I think but obviously choose a length so that the screw tips don't penetrate the inner boot. Don't notice them while walking in the bush and in the water they give great grip on the slippery rocks. As these were older boots I also drilled a few 6mm holes from the outer into the inner boot at the instep to allow accumulated water to get out. I've been using these boots for a few years now for my flyfishing and apart from the odd screw popping out and needing to be replaced they seem to have plenty of life left in them. Got any old walking boots laying about ? Cheers

s358

Hiking boots and some micro spikes maybe http://kahtoola.com/product/microspikes
I'll be using that combo on a gorge exploration soon, so I'll let you know how they go.

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Thanks for the quick replies and please keep the info coming.
For the record my wading boots have vibram aquastealth soles with studs in them.Definately wouldn't wear my felts hiking.
The studs in the hiking boots sounds like a good idea.

Why not get a pair of lightweight trail shoes for the walk in and wear the specialist waders for the fishing?

I did the calcs a couple of months ago and this is what I came up with based on my reading:




In essence, these studies found:
'for each 100 g increase in weight of footwear there is a 0·7-1·0% increase in VO2 (oxygen consumption).

'... it was 6·4 times more expensive (in energy terms) to carry weight on the feet as compared to the back.'

'The VO2 for women wearing boots were significantly higher ... than for shoes for both walking and running, with the exception of the slowest walking speed. The average increment in energy cost was 1·0% per 100-g increase in weight per pair of footwear. These results are similar to those reported for men from other studies which found increments in energy cost of 0·7 to 0·9% per 100-g increase in weight of footwear.'

using this formula a kilo on the feet is equivalent to 6.4kg on the back - which sounds a little extreme to me...but it could be true.


http://www.researchgate.net/publication ... Ergonomics
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 ... ode=terg20
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 ... ode=terg20

ofuros wrote:Hiking boots and some micro spikes maybe http://kahtoola.com/product/microspikes
I'll be using that combo on a gorge exploration soon, so I'll let you know how they go.

I've met people walking on ice with these, very sturdy and will keep you from slipping on almost anything. I don't know how long they'll last used on rock however.

Thanks for the further comments and they certainly add to my knowledge of the topic.Interesting calcs saying 1KG on the feet is 6.4kg on the back.I'm fairly certain I will only use the one pair of boots and at this stage after a few training walks this week I'm leaning towards the heavier wading boots to be on the safe side.