Shoes I like these days: Inov-8 flyroc 310, Salomon XA, Montrail Hardrock, Montrail Masai.

Typically I start looking very hard at shoes after about 300 miles. I've had failures in the field at anywhere between 350 and sometimes over 500 miles. Some brands and models seem to fail very early for me (Merrel, Nike), while other brands seem to last quite a bit longer (New Balance, Montrail, Hi-Tec). I haven't got very many miles on the Inov-8s yet to tell anyone how they wear, and the Salomons, while comfortable, have a sole that is slippery for me on wet surfaces so I don't really trust them for a long hike.

Typically my trips have 15-25 mile days, usually 4-10 day trips with resupply. Mostly on trails, with probably ten percent of the total distance cross-country. Some trips are almost exclusively on-trail. Quite a variety of terrain so I can't really generalize.

I've noticed that shoes are far more likely to fail in wet conditions. My personal theory is that if you are in soaking wet conditions for a solid week (think the Appalachian Trail in March and April, or the west slopes of the North Cascades in June or early July) your shoes will start to rot. This might be a great argument for sandals, but I've seen sandals rot too.

Other failure modes: usually the uppers develop quite a few holes. I'm okay with that. I've had soles crack all the way through where my feet flex them. The worst failure mode has been for New Balance shoes -- the plastic heel counter usually breaks, leaving two jagged pieces of plastic to entertain your heel. Otherwise I love the New Balance shoes but that failure mode seems fairly common.

Sometimes shoes just seem to stop working. I've had shoes with no visible damage that all of a sudden seemed to generate ankle rools and it seemed like you could feel every pebble underfoot. I've had a theory that this is sometimes due to wearing the same shoes for several weeks, but even if I take a week or two off those shoes, they still hurt when I put them back on.

Hope all that helps.

Edited by david_bonn on 03/03/2006 18:57:09 MST.