Hiking Boot Maintenance: A Quick How To

Regular hiking boot maintenance will make your footwear last longer, perform better and save you money.

Like any piece of camping gear or hiking equipment keeping your footwear as clean as possible will help it to last longer. By nature dirt and mud are abrasive like sandpaper. So it makes sense that keeping things clean will go a long way towards basic hiking boot maintenance.

Besides the daily upkeep it's also a good idea to do periodic maintenance. How often you decide to care for your foot gear will depend on what type of hiking you do. Obviously the harder you are on your boots the more often you're going to want to perform routine maintenance.

Here are a few questions to get you started. Do you hike in dirty or wet places? How often do you hike? How far do you hike? Are you usually hard on most of your footwear?

Obviously an Appalachian Trail through-hiker with a heavy backpack is going to have to perform more upkeep on their boots than is an occasional weekend day-hiker. But your maintenance schedule should be set based on how much you use and abuse your boots. Once they need some attention here are some tips...

1. When cleaning fabric footwear, try to use mild soap and water for hiking boot maintenance. With leather avoid the soap and go with plain water, otherwise it will slowly remove the natural oils and weaken it. Once they're clean...

2. Allow your footwear to dry completely. How long this takes will depend on how wet your boots are, current humidity, temperature, type and density of the material your boots are made from, etc. Avoid drying wet boots by the fire as intense heat can age the leather, rubber and adhesives more quickly.

Instead let them air dry, or if you're in a hurry consider using a dehumidifier or fan. Once home I've found a dehumidifier to be extremely helpful in regards to camping, especially when I've wanted to dry a wet camping tent before storage.

Not allowing leather to dry completely and then adding a treatment will only serve to trap moisture, dirt, fungus and bacteria underneath the treatment. This in turn will deteriorate your investment.

4. When your boots are completely clean and dry, it's time to condition them. Apply the conditioner/water repellant according to directions.

Recommendations

It's a good idea to avoid leather softening products in your hiking boot maintenance plan because they defeat one of the purposes of wearing a boot... providing support.

Instead look at Nikwax Fabric and Leather Treatment and Nikwax's Waterproof Paste Wax to repel water.

I usually don't like the term waterproof because at some point the waterproofing is going to fail. But some products are good enough they deserve a mention whether I like the terminology or not.

Making Nikwax waterproofing paste wax a part of your hiking boot maintenance will help to keep you dry. Though it may do a great job, just realize it's not a substitute for gear that's designed to be waterproof from the start. After all good quality waterproof hiking boots usually have a lower number of seams, and those seams are sealed. Not to mention specialized stitching and attached liners that all contribute toward a waterproof boot. That said, people swear by the two Nikwax's products above, especially the Waterproof Paste Wax.

Now that you've read about hiking boot maintenance, you may want to have a look at the page on hiking boots.