Salewa Men's Mountain Trainer Leather Hiking Shoe (Pair)

Likes

I am familiar with Salewa as a brand. I've owned a pair of their backpacking boots for more than 5 year now (time to replace them). I have just started out with this shoe. Here's my initial review. The shoe feels solid all the way around. The lacing system adds two sets of eyelets that have lace locks on them. One at the bottom and one at the upper. These help the laces stay taunt where you want them taunt and a little looser where you don't need such tightness. The grip seems great and the rubber rand all the way around is solid in it's construction which should help it's durability. The boots I own have a very similar rand/ approach toe construction around them and it has shown no signs of separating from the shoe after miles and miles, many years, all kinds of weather, and all over intern mountain west as well as southern Utah desert. Based on my examination of the rand/ approach toe on this shoe, I expect the shame.This is important to me since it is one of the main reasons I bought my first Salewa boot and this shoe. I like how high up they take the toe preventing it from being at a crease where it would otherwise separate. Some say it doesn't look as good this way. I say, you're right. That's why it works better. Because It puts function before form. And still looks good in my opinion.

Dislikes

There are a lot of likes mixed in with my dislikes. The inside of the shoe (yellow portion) is a very soft leather. Excellent in terms of high quality product. It grabs socks as you put your shoe on, so it's not an easy slip in at first buy. I'm a bit concerned as to how this leather will where over time. I intend to put some leather conditioner on it from time to time, every 3 months or so, depending on use, to keep it from wearing out. Though, compared to other fabrics that would be used, if conditioned properly, it shouldn't wear out at all, ever. We'll see. In Europe (Salewa is an Italian brand) the shoe was released in a Gore-Tex version. I haven't been able to find that in the US. Salewa's are hard to find in the US as it is. Try finding one on a shelf at your local REI. Its extremely rare. When it comes to selling people shoes, name recognition matters. So in a store where uneducated shoppers buy shoes, its hard to sell a $200 Salewa that you've never heard of next to a $120 Merrel or Keen that you've seen ads and signs for in every sporting goods store you've been in. But what shoe is going to last through consistent serious use? Not the Merrel, or the keen. But people buy them for their big trip to Estes Park anyway where they take them on a mild hike the first day then proudly use them to window shops the rest of their time there. (Is that a mud stain on your Merrel? Nope, just hot fudge.) All this was to say, it's sad the Gore-Tex Model didn't come to the US. But I needed a waterproof shoe, so here's what I did. Most of the shoe is rubber construction, so it's already good. The leather makes up most of the rest of the shoe, which is a perfect material for weather proofing. I applied Grangers paste wax to it. It did darken the leather to a deep brown color (it looks great, but you should know it's going to happen). The past wax is about $6 and will last you years if you are just using it on this shoe. It's a small tin, but it doesn't take much to waterproof a leather shoe like this. And leather is so good at staying water proof if you wax it every soo often. Every 2-3 months is fine depending on use. The part I'm most nervous about is the tongue of the shoe. It's a fabric. The Gore-tex version has the same fabric on the outside with Gore-tex underneath. So, I treated it with Grangers water proofing spray. This will take Reapplication as well every so often. They say every few months, but I plan to wear these near daily. So, we'll see how long it really lasts. Either way, the spray is also in expensive ~$10 for a bottle, and it takes very little to spray the limited fabric on these shoes. It also doesn't take much time. Do it in 3 minutes in the evening then let dry overnight, they'll be ready in the morning. So, even though they are not Gore-tex, they are a very suitable shoe even in the rain. If we can all let go of our dependency on Gore-tex for a minute and realize that it didn't exist until about the last 2 decades, then I think we'll realize that, wow, there are other ways of staying dry than Gore-tex. Yep. And this Salewa makes it possible. Ah yes, and reviewers have already mentioned to size up. I wanted the smaller shoe I could get. I am on the small size of 10.5 US so I thought I could make a 10.5 work by just feeling like I'm on the large size of it. It was close, very close. But I knew that on a steep decent ,even on an easy trail, I would have suffered toe bang with them. Not good. So I sent them back and got the 11. Thank you to Enwild for making that process so seamless for me just as promised. I recommend this shoe.

Likes

A very well-made shoe looks to be a great shoe for hiking to rock climbing. I needed to get a half size up (from size 11 to 11.5) Very comfortable shoe and it looks great too. P.S. Backcountry Edge made the exchange very easy THANKS

Dislikes

runs small