My Hiking Boots

I arrived home late on Saturday, June 15 but Lisa left for Texas early on June 8. Serene and her boyfriend were going on a trip together and she asked Lisa to watch the kids while she was gone.

Even though she was in Texas, she still watched our Sacrament meeting and June was my month to conduct. She likes to take pictures of people on zoom.

I served in scouts for ten consecutive years and for most of those years it was Curtis McConnell as scout master and myself as assistant scout master. We were very active in the program and went on many hikes. Early on in the program when I realized how involved I was going to be, I bought a nice pare of hiking boots. This would have been around the turn of the century so more than twenty years ago.

I love those hiking boots, but I haven’t been on a real hike for probably ten years so in preparation for this hike I pulled them out and wore them for a couple days. They looked to be in great shape, and they didn’t hurt my feet, so I was happy.

About halfway up the mountain I noticed that the sole of the boot was starting to separate at the toe. That is when I started to get worried.

It was less than a mile later that the tip of the sole started flapping, making walking difficult and then shortly after that I had to rip the sole completely off.

Much to my relief, beneath the tread of the boot was a nice thick layer of dense plastic foam. I wasn’t sure how long that would last (this was my first day after all) but I could tell it would last for a while. Before we got to camp, I had also removed the second tread but much to my delight the rubber sole was holding up nicely. My footing wasn’t as great as I would have liked but I wasn’t too worried about that.

On our hike to Sykes the next day my confidence waned a bit when I saw that the dense rubber foam was now starting to separate. Thank goodness it was still holding on by the time we got home that night, but I knew it would never make it down the mountain.

Fortunately, Kyle Knaphus brought some duct tape and I figured if I could just keep the toe of the boot from separating then the heel would hold on fine. So that is what I did.

Saturday morning, I wrapped up the toes of my boots with duct tape and they held up just fine. I thought sure I would wear through the duct tape, but it was in good shape even after hiking down seven miles of mountain trail. I am proud of my boots but I’m afraid they have seen their last hike.

--------------------trivia--------------------

Mammoths still walked the earth while the pyramids were being built in egypt

-----------------------------------------------