Sorry to beat a dead horse with this one.

My Salomons XT Wings have served me well over the last two years but alas, NJ's Tough Mudder race final put them down. Very sad indeed.

Looking for another pair of Salomons. Love the fit and the lace system.

Any recommendations on the certain model I might check out??

Lightweight packer (base around 9lbs) in the NE, and March through December is my season for packing.

Thoughts and suggestions. Thanks guys and gals.


"May the road rise to meet you"

Edited by Sixguns01 on 02/09/2012 17:33:08 MST.

Hi Mark,

What is wrong with the Salomons? I recently managed to resole a pair of mine and they are working great again!

Another little tip, if you get other shoes, it is often buying a spare pair of salomon laces, which you can retrofit to quite a few shoes. I did this for the Inov-8 195 Flite's I replaced the salomons with.

Mesh torn in a couple of spots on both shoes, hte sole is barely hanging on, three loops for the laces have torn off, and parts of the fabric are flapping in the wind...

Funny thing, they made it through Tough Mudder in better condition than I did!!!

i've been happy with my XA comps i got on clearance. hoping to find a pair .5 size smaller cheap to replace them once they wear out.

love my XA pro 3d 2 wides(M+)

I went from the xt wings to them. same lace system. the wides are good for my feet. they are a little lower profile.






http://www.backcountry.com/salomon-xa-pro-3d-ultra-2-m-trail-running-shoe-mens

I learned a couple of very important lesson on my PCT hike. I went thru 5 pairs of shoes:
2 pair of size 12 LaSportiva Wildcats
2 pairs size 12.5 LaSportiva Wildcats
1 pair of Salomon XA Pros

Did I like the LaSportivas? Did they wear well? This is funny, the size 12's were great but the 12.5's wore through on both the inside and outside uppers. And the funny part was that the toughest section on the shoes were when I was wearing the 12's. Also I had problems with blisters on the 12's where the insole folded and formed a small crease and bump. I had to put a v shaped slice to cut out the bump. This was not needed on the 12.5's. Conclussion: There will big differences with even a given model in how they wear.

Second, there can be some variations year to year that will make a big difference. For example I wore through 3 pairs of XA pros in training and another during the trip. All of them had wear issues just below the first "eyelet" and on the ouside edge of the front of the shoe. The funny thing was that this wear occurred within 200 miles and I saw it on nearly every pair of this model on the trail. BUT, I just bought another pair of these after seeing that this years model beefed up some of the wear areas. Conclussion: Year to year variation will make a big difference.

Also on the XA Pros. I had a couple pairs wear holes on the inside padding. Didn't see this at all with the first pair I had which were Gortex. Conclussion: Wear on GTX vs traditional models may be very difference.

Finally since everyone fit and walk is different there will be huge differences in the wear experience of a particular shoe.

I would have never have picked up on these difference in normal years when I go through maybe two pairs of trail shoes a year. Thru hiking was an easy way to know exactly how many miles you have on the shoes and exactly the conditions they went through.

And of coarse YMMV

Edited by gg-man on 02/09/2012 20:24:42 MST.

On my AT thru I used 3 pairs of shoes.
Keens that lasted ~400 miles
Merrells (salomon knockoffs) that lasted ~400 miles
Salomons that lasted ~1200

I prefer the XA pros over the XT wings b/c they seem to have a lower heel, I was never conscious of that before but i usually wear flat soled shoes and find the XAs far more comfortable.

Make sure you get the asymmetrical laces, they make a world of difference. I bought SpeedComps on sale and they are symmetrical and its just like tightening regular laces, vs the one pull of the asymms.


The clymb or Leftlane (i cant remember which) had salomons about 50% off recently. PM me if you need an invite.

For you XA Pro lovers out there I've got a lightly used pair of the S-Lab version from a few years back. These are the red ones with the integrated gaiters. I ended up cutting the gaiters off though. They are size 9.5 and I've found they are too short for my feet on long hikes, so I haven't really used them. The fit feels more snug than the regular XA comps, but that is comparing these to a size 10. If anyone is looking for a 9.5 shoot me a PM.

Excellent insight from Greg.

My main shoe for the past two years has been a pair of XA Pro 3D, although I do a lot of "fast" trips with XC flats, and have worn out at least 6 pairs of these in the past 3 years.

I find the Salomons are a pretty good all around shoe for me; not great for any specific use, but they do a lot of things well. I have 3 pair.

XA 3D Pro size 11.5 for most of my trips.
XA 3D Pro size 13.0 for winter snow.

I also have a pair of XA Comp 4 GTX that I use in really sandy deserts in winter, where daytime highs are 50F or less.

But the one thing I hate about them is that they are slippery on steep elevations where there is a fine covering of dirt, sand, or crushed granite on the hard packed sections or a lot of larger rocks/boulders.

The past two months I have been doing these kinds of trails in Saucony Perigrines. These are the best gripping trail runners I have used. Not super light, but lighter than my Salomon's and they seem to be well constructed and tough. But time will tell.

As Greg stated, each shoe fits each person differently.