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Serious question, why does everyone waterproof their hiking boots before they actually know how they'll get wet?
Honestly I almost ruined a pair of 4 year old leather boots last weekend because I followed the internet and waxed them before a trip to Hocking Hills. A buddy who works at a gear shop in Columbus stopped me and showed me his own boots, which he had never treated once in 2 years of wet Ohio trails. He pulled them out of his pack still damp from the day before and they were totally fine, no cracks, no leaks. The thing people get wrong is buying wax and silicone and all that stuff before they even know if their boots will get soaked through on a normal day hike. I used to reapply leather wax every 3 weeks out of pure paranoia and all it did was clog the leather so it couldn't breathe, my feet were swampy after 5 miles. Now I just rinse mud off with a brush and let them air dry in the shade, no heat, no products. Have any of you actually wrecked a pair of boots by over-treating them, or am I the only one who fell for the wax marketing?
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joel_martinez14h ago
That bit about the wax clogging the leather so it can't breathe is the whole ballgame, and I'd take it a step further, most people slather on way too much product because they think more is protection when really it just seals in moisture from your own sweat on the inside. Once the leather can't pass that sweat out, it stays wet from the inside out, and wet leather is what actually cracks and breaks down over time, not the rain from the outside. I did this exact thing to a pair of Danners, waxed them every few weeks for a whole season, and by the end the leather felt stiff and plastic-y compared to how they came out of the box. Gear shop guy's two year old boots that never got treated probably outlasted mine.
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