Wet Feet, Sore Knees, Six-Year-Old Boots: Your Footwear Questions Answered

A closer look at footwear, terrain and the trade-offs nobody quite agrees on.

Here's a number that stopped us in our tracks.

Say one pair of hiking shoes weighs 500g more than another - that's an extra 250g on each foot.

Over a 12km hiking day, roughly 18,000 steps, you lift that extra 250g around 9,000 times with each foot. Add it all together and you get about 4.5 tonnes.

Walk 15km, roughly 22,000 steps, and it's about 5.5 tonnes.

Walk 18km, roughly 27,000 steps, and you're getting close to 6.75 tonnes.

Now, before you picture yourself carrying six tonnes up a hill: that's not what this number means.

Weight on your feet and weight in your backpack are very different things.

We're simply adding up that extra 250g every time you lift a foot.

But it does make you look at those extra 500g rather differently.

Our last newsletter asked whether there's a single "best" hiking shoe. There isn't. But it clearly touched a nerve, because the questions kept coming in - and not just "which shoe is best". Much more specific ones.

Do heavier boots really matter on a multi-day walk, or only on the first day?

If I cross a few streams, will wet shoes give me blisters - and will heavy boots ever actually dry out again? Do light shoes really protect me less if I roll an ankle?

And if it's my knees or my hips giving me trouble, does any of this even apply the same way?

Good questions, every one of them - and weight is genuinely only the start of it. Fit, terrain, weather, your joints, even where you first learned to hike, all shape the right answer too.

So, does lighter really make a difference?

Over thousands of steps, yes, it does.

Anyone who has finished a long walking day with tired legs probably doesn't need a scientific paper to tell them that lifting less weight with every step is likely to feel easier. The calculation above simply gives us a way to picture how often we're lifting that little bit of extra weight.

And on a multi-day walk it becomes more relevant, not because the weight somehow gets heavier from one day to the next, but because you are asking your feet and legs to do it all again tomorrow. And the day after that.

That helps explain why so many experienced long-distance hikers have moved towards lighter footwear over the years. But this is also where the simple argument for lightweight shoes ends.

Because the lightest shoe is no use to you if it doesn't fit properly, doesn't give you enough grip or simply isn't right for the terrain you're walking on.

Before anything else, your shoes have to fit

Whatever you choose to wear, fit matters enormously.

Blisters aren't caused by one thing alone. Friction, pressure, heat and moisture can all play a part, and a shoe that moves too much in one place or presses too hard in another can turn a small irritation into a very sore foot surprisingly quickly.

Feet also tend to swell during a long walking day. That's why it's worth trying new hiking shoes later in the day, wearing the socks you actually intend to walk in, and making sure your toes have enough room, particularly for long descents.

And an old, comfortable pair isn't automatically a problem. If you've had the same boots for years, they fit beautifully and they're still in good condition, there may be no reason at all to replace them just because lighter footwear is now available.

The opposite is true too. An old, well-worn pair can still give you blisters if the fit isn't right or your feet stay wet for long enough.

But don't boots protect your ankles?

This was one of the questions we particularly wanted to look into, because most of us grew up with a fairly simple rule: a hiking boot comes up over your ankle, therefore it supports and protects your ankle better. It sounds logical.

But when we started looking into the research, the answer wasn't nearly as clear as we expected.

Higher boots do restrict some movement around the ankle, and studies have shown that they can reduce how far and how quickly the ankle rolls under certain test conditions. What isn't nearly as clear is whether that actually translates into fewer ankle sprains when people are out walking.

In other words, we can't really say that boots don't support your ankles. But neither can we say that choosing a high boot automatically gives you better protection from an ankle injury.

There are simply too many other things involved: the grip and stability of the shoe, the terrain you're walking over, how tired you are, your own balance and strength, and whether you've injured that ankle before.

If you already have an ankle problem, that's different, and worth discussing with your physio rather than choosing footwear on a general rule. For the rest of us, it means we probably shouldn't choose a heavy boot simply because we've always believed that anything lower is unsafe.

There are certainly places where a substantial boot earns its keep. Carrying a heavy pack over scree, boulders or rough off-track country is very different from walking a formed trail with a light daypack. A stiffer sole can protect your feet from sharp rocks and rough ground, and a more substantial boot may simply feel more secure.

But on many of the tracks we walk, good grip, a stable sole and a shoe that fits properly may matter far more than whether it finishes below or above your ankle.

What if it's your knees or hips?

This one genuinely surprised us, and it doesn't have a tidy answer.

We expected lighter, more flexible shoes to come out fairly clearly ahead here. They didn't.

Research looking at knee joints has found that flatter, more flexible shoes can reduce the load going through the knee compared with stiffer, more supportive shoes. One study measured a difference of around 9%. That sounds like a clear argument for flexible shoes, particularly if you have knee osteoarthritis.

Except another, larger study followed more than 160 people with knee osteoarthritis for six months and found something rather interesting. The people wearing supportive, stable shoes actually reported less knee pain than those wearing flat, flexible shoes.

So a shoe can place less mechanical load through the knee without necessarily feeling better to the person wearing it.

Hips appear to complicate the picture again. Research suggests that stiffer, more structured footwear can increase loading through the hip compared with more flexible footwear.

The useful lesson for us isn't that one type of shoe is good and another bad. It's that lighter doesn't automatically mean kinder to your joints.

If knee or hip pain is already part of your walking life, what feels right for you may matter much more than a general recommendation about shoe weight. And that's one situation where advice from a physio or podiatrist who knows your particular problem makes far more sense than following somebody else's footwear rule.

What changes on a multi-day walk?

A single day out forgives a lot. Several days in a row don't.

Your feet can swell during a long day. Muscles tire. A small pressure point you barely noticed at lunchtime can feel very different by late afternoon.

Then you get up the next morning and walk again.

That's where small differences in weight, fit and comfort can start to matter much more. Not because your feet necessarily swell a little more with every passing day, but because they don't get several days to recover from a shoe that isn't quite right.

The exception to the argument for lighter footwear is still rough terrain and a genuinely heavy pack. There, the protection of a stiffer sole and a more substantial shoe may be worth the extra weight.

Most of our Sidetracks Women hiking tours are a rather different proposition. You're generally walking with a daypack, not carrying everything you need for a week on your back. That changes what you need from your footwear too.

Wet feet: not all water is the same

You've asked us this one directly: do wet shoes give you blisters, and do heavy boots ever actually dry out on the trail?

Wet feet can certainly increase the risk of blisters. Skin that stays damp for a long time becomes softer and more vulnerable to friction. But there's another part of the question that is easy to miss: how is the water getting into your shoes?

If you're crossing a stream and the water comes over the top of a waterproof boot, the waterproof membrane isn't much help any more. The water is already inside, and a substantial waterproof boot will generally drain and dry more slowly than a light, non-waterproof shoe.

If you know you're going to be crossing streams repeatedly, a light shoe that lets the water out again can therefore make a lot of sense.

Rain is different. If you're walking through rain without water pouring over the top of your boots, waterproof footwear can do exactly what it was designed to do.

And then there's wet grass. Anyone who has walked through long, soaking New Zealand grass for a few hours will probably know exactly what we mean. From our experience, wet grass can soak footwear remarkably quickly - sometimes more effectively than rain. Instead of occasional drops landing on the shoe, wet vegetation is brushing against it with every single step.

That's particularly relevant on some of the farm tracks we use. A forecast that doesn't look particularly wet doesn't necessarily mean your feet will stay dry if the grass is still soaked from overnight rain.

So a few stream crossings and several hours through wet farm grass are both "wet walks", but they can call for quite different footwear.

And this is where socks really do matter

Whatever shoes you choose, keeping your feet comfortable when they're damp isn't just about the shoe.

Cotton socks hold onto moisture and stay damp against your skin. Merino or other good hiking socks manage moisture much better.

A spare dry pair in your daypack is one of the simplest things you can carry. Whether it's worth changing immediately depends on what's ahead. If you've just crossed the last stream for the day, lovely. If you're going to wade through another one in twenty minutes, there's probably not much point.

The dry pair that really matters is often the one you can put on at the end of the day.

Blisters aren't only a wet-foot problem either. If you feel a hot spot developing, deal with it early rather than hoping it will disappear. Hiker's wool can work very well for some people, and a thin liner sock under a thicker hiking sock is another old trick that does have some evidence behind it.

Neither will rescue a badly fitting shoe, but small things can make a big difference when you still have three walking days ahead of you.

Why perfectly good boots can suddenly fall apart

Here's something that catches a lot of people out, and it has nothing to do with how many kilometres the boots have walked. Many hiking boots use polyurethane (PU) in the midsole - including some substantial, high-quality leather boots that you might expect to last for many years.

The catch is that polyurethane can slowly break down through a chemical process called hydrolysis - even when the boots aren't being used. And often you can't see it happening.

The tread can still look fine. The leather can still be in excellent condition. Then the midsole starts to crumble or the sole suddenly separates from the boot. This can be particularly frustrating with an expensive pair of leather boots that otherwise looks as though it has years of life left in it.

There isn't a magic number of years after which this happens. It depends on the materials, how the boots have been stored and the conditions they've been exposed to. Heat and moisture can speed the process up.

So if you have a pair of boots that has been sitting in the wardrobe for several years, don't assume they're ready for a multi-day walk just because they still look good. Take them out for a decent walk close to home first. It's a much better place to discover a problem than halfway along a farm track.

Where you learned to hike shapes what feels "normal"

This is worth mentioning because it probably explains quite a lot of the disagreement around hiking footwear. If you grew up hiking in Germany, Austria or Switzerland, there's a good chance that a substantial hiking boot is simply what hiking footwear looks like to you. There's a long tradition there of sturdy leather boots, often designed to be repaired and resoled and kept for years.

Meindl is a good example. The Meindl family has been making shoes in a Bavarian village for more than 300 years, and the company is now run by the ninth generation of the family. For generations of German hikers, names such as Meindl became almost synonymous with a proper hiking boot: substantial, made to last and something you expected to own for many years.

So it isn't surprising that, for many of us who grew up hiking in that tradition, a lightweight shoe can still somehow feel as though it isn't quite a "real" hiking shoe.

New Zealand has its own traditions. Serious tramping has long been associated with substantial boots too - hardly surprising when you think about some of our backcountry, river crossings and muddy terrain.

But lightweight hiking shoes and trail runners have become much more common.

Footwear traditions differ between countries because terrain, climate, hiking culture and what people grew up using differ.

None of this is right or wrong. It simply means that what feels like a "proper hiking shoe" to you may have as much to do with where you first learned to hike as with the walk you're about to do.

The other side of lightweight: how long will it last?

There's one more thing worth thinking about, particularly if sustainability matters to you.

A well-made leather boot that can be resoled and repaired may stay in use for many years. Many lightweight shoes simply aren't made to be repaired in the same way. Once the sole or cushioning has reached the end of its life, the whole shoe is often replaced.

And good lightweight hiking shoes aren't exactly cheap either. If you're replacing the whole shoe rather than repairing or resoling it, that's worth thinking about - not only from a sustainability point of view, but also for your wallet.

That doesn't mean a heavy leather boot is automatically the more sustainable choice. How long footwear lasts depends enormously on how much you use it, where you walk, how it's made and how you look after it. But durability and repairability deserve a place in the decision alongside weight and comfort.

The answer isn't to buy heavy boots you don't need. It's simply another reminder that there is a trade-off whichever way you go.

So what would we actually wear?

Take a well-formed section of the Banks Peninsula Track or the Island Hill Station Track on a settled summer day. Firm ground, a light daypack and nothing nasty in the forecast. A good trail shoe, or even a sturdy walking shoe, may be absolutely fine.

Now imagine the same track after overnight rain. You're walking through wet grass, greasy farm mud, slippery roots and loose stones. Suddenly grip matters enormously and some water resistance starts looking very attractive.

Put several stream crossings into the day and the equation changes again. If water is repeatedly coming over the top of your shoes, quick drainage may become more useful than waterproofing.

And if instead you're heading into genuinely rough country with a heavy pack, we'd make a different choice again. That's why there isn't one "best" hiking shoe.

Fit matters. Weight matters. Grip matters. Weather matters. The terrain matters. Your own feet and joints matter. And what works beautifully on one walk may be quite wrong for another.

The goal was never to buy the lightest shoes you can find.

It's to choose the lightest shoes that are still right for the walk you're actually doing.

That's also where we can help. We know the tracks on our tours, the surfaces you'll be walking on and the sort of conditions you may encounter. Sometimes we'll tell you a light hiking shoe is perfectly adequate. Sometimes we'll suggest something more substantial.

If you're unsure what to bring for one of our tours, just ask us. We'd much rather talk about it before you arrive than have you spend several days wishing you'd brought different shoes.