The Last Steps Done

A story of a legendary pair of hiking boots

“I told you so but you didn’t wanna listen”. Those were the words of my husband once he found out the sole of my hiking shoes wanted to part ways with the rest of the boots.

Yes, he did tell me to buy new ones. But they were still perfectly fine. They were old, but so what? They were comfortable, they still had a good profile and they were still waterproof.

There is no way I’ll buy new clothes, shoes, or bags unless the old ones break. It’s my way of doing my part for the environment. Working against the throwaway society.

I do fix socks, gloves, pants, shirts, and whatever else I can fix with thread and a needle. I also have fixed shoes before. With super glue. I’ve fixed bags. I do fix electronic items if I can. If not, I let them get fixed. Why buy something new if the old one get can be repaired?

You get the point.

The problem was just, I was up on a mountain and had to get down to our mountain cottage for the night plus had one more day of hiking ahead of me. With one broken hiking boot.

Well, then let’s fix it right?

My dad carries always what he calls his “emergency ropes”. And those ropes were used to hold my shoes together to avoid an emergency. I wasn’t carrying any other shoes with me on this trip. Except for a pair of slippers. And they weren’t very appropriate for this terrain.

So I continued, with the semi-repaired pair of shoes.

The next day, I actually found more equipment to prepare my shoes for another 9-hour hiking day back to the valley. I used to play Handball a lot and often had minor injuries on my fingers, wrist, or ankles. Since most of those injuries wouldn’t get treated by doctors except for their words “rest for 3 months”, I stopped going to the doctor, learned to wrap them myself with sports tape, and continued playing.

Even today, I always carry sports tape with me.

And now, I used this tape to wrap my entire shoe in it and then tie it with dad’s best ropes.

The left shoe looked now something like this:

But, my fixing did last. For the entire 9 hours. I sometimes tightened up the ropes again because they stretched out through the moisture but the tape stayed on the shoes for the entire time.

Of course, wrapping tape around the sole of your shoes means you have zero grips but you gotta do some compromises at times.

It worked, the shoes brought me safely down into the valley. Until I swapped them for my slippers for the road into town. But the reason for it was a different one. That’s a story for another day.

This is supposed to be an ode to a pair of hiking shoes that carried me safely through the mountains for almost 15 years. I can’t date back the exact year of purchase but I do know I had the shoe size I have now when I was 14 years old and did stop hiking at 16 (for a few years) when I decided it was not a “cool” activity for a teenager.

Meaning, I bought these shoes somewhere between 2006 and 2009. I asked my dad to look in our old photo books to see when I first had those shoes on but he didn’t really find a good picture.

(I taught them back then already not to cut off the shoes when taking picture of people. But they didn’t listen. Now you know why. Not for composition reasons but so that I know 15 years later when I first wore the shoes.)

In the picture below you can see me wearing a pair of hiking shoes that most likely are the ones I am talking about. They look a bit lighter but that’s because they were new. Over the years my shoes have received a few layers of waterproof protection sprays and got darker.

My mom’s handwriting is letting us know this picture is from August 2008 taken in Austria on a beautiful hike I did together with her.

The next picture I have is fast-forwarded 10 years later. Together with my boyfriend (now husband) and my dad we did an epic alpine hike in early June. The mountains were still covered in snow and my shoes were more often hidden in the white stuff than not.

But they still kept me dry and safe.

In 2021 I was once again on a hiking holiday with my family. This time it was late October/ early November and we encountered the first snow of the season.

See me below celebrating snowflakes falling from the sky.

Once again, my shoes kept me warm and dry.

And now forward to 2022.

The last steps done.

During the final stretch of our hike above the tree line, they carried me 18 hours across rocks, scree slopes, and long downhill parts. 18 hours out of 36. That meant two 9-hour hike days during which one of the shoes broke but still carried on.

All I have left to say is:

Thank you.

Whatever shoes I will purchase next will have a big era to step up to.

“You need special shoes for hiking — and a bit of a special soul as well.” — Terri Guillemets

More about my hiking adventures:

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