Trail running shoes vs hiking boots

This is the reason most people give for buying boots, and it's the one with the least behind it. The Appalachian Mountain Club's position is that a high ankle collar is not a primary source of ankle stability. It helps, they say. It just isn't what does the work. What resists the roll is torsional rigidity, the sole refusing to twist when your foot lands on the edge of a rock, and you can buy that in a low shoe.

The research doesn't come from hiking. Most of it comes from basketball, where high-tops have been standard for decades and there's enough injury data to look at. A 2014 paper in the Journal of Foot and Ankle Research lays out the split: laboratory work finds high-tops restrict how far and how fast the ankle rolls inward, while the epidemiological studies haven't found a clear difference in sprain rates between high-top and low-top shoes.

None of which means boots do nothing. A stiff, supportive boot changes how your foot loads on broken ground, and if you have a history of ankle injuries, the person who knows what helps you is you rather than a study of basketball players. It does mean that buying boots for the ankle support is a weaker reason than it sounds, and a bad reason to stay in a pair you otherwise dislike.

Cam Honan, who has more than 10,000 miles in boots and many times that in lighter footwear, argues the reverse: a lower shoe puts you closer to the ground and lets the ankle do its own work. That's an opinion backed by a lot of miles rather than by a study. Weigh it against what your own feet do on rough ground.

Mesh shoes aren't worse in the wet, which surprises people. They're worse at staying dry and much better at getting dry, and past the first couple of hours the drying is the part you notice.

A waterproof membrane keeps out drizzle, dew and shallow puddles, which is genuinely pleasant on a cold day. What it can't do is keep out water that arrives over the collar, from a creek crossing, a boot-deep bog, or rain running down your leg. After that the membrane is on the wrong side of the problem, holding the water against your foot. Treeline Review's testers found a soaked waterproof shoe took a full day to dry out. A mesh shoe drains while you keep walking.

Wet feet are also how you get blisters. A 2024 study in the International Wound Journal followed 86 hikers who had covered an average of about 456 km and found roughly 62% of them developed blisters, with higher skin hydration on the foot associated with getting them, and wet socks at the end of the day showing up as a risk factor. One study of one group doesn't prove your shoes caused anything, but it points the same direction as the advice the Park Service gives: wicking wool or synthetic socks, a spare pair, and moleskin in the kit.

There's a trail-impact argument too, and it's why I'd rather be in shoes I don't mind soaking. Leave No Trace asks you to walk single file in the middle of the trail, even when it's wet or muddy. Everyone who steps around a puddle instead of through it widens the trail a little, and enough people doing that turns one path into a braid of parallel ones. The rule is much easier to follow in shoes you've already written off as wet.