[pct-l] shoe sizing, cont..... (and boots and other things

[Diane Soini of Santa Barbara Hikes]

Regarding the whole boot/shoe topic, having come up again...

I met a woman under the hugest towering pack I ever saw (it wasn't  
big enough as is, she also had a full-sized daypack strapped on) who  
was hiking the JMT barefoot and flip-flops. I followed her bare  
footprints for a mile. I stopped to talk to her about it.

She said she has been hiking the high Sierra for 35 years barefoot.  
When she was a teen she gave up on wearing shoes because nobody made  
a shoe that fit her foot. She did have a sort of odd-shaped foot. She  
said now that she's older she's gotten soft and puts on the flip- 
flops when the trail gets rocky, but she used to walk over everything  
barefoot back in the day. She said she feels much more stable and  
grounded in bare feet. The only time she ever sprained an ankle she  
was wearing boots.

She was quite an interesting woman. I was glad to have met her. She  
went by the name Little Foot. I'm not saying we should all hike  
barefoot. I know I won't. I just thought she was interesting and in a  
way we were similar. So many people out there were dressed as if they  
were doing some kind of rugged arduous thing, almost a military  
assault on the mountains, not simply going for a walk in the summer,  
which is what both she and I were doing. She in her flip-flops and me  
in my Chacos. I bet she and I had some of the happiest feet on the  
trail that day.