Vasque Summit GTX

Summary

A well made, good looking yet tough boot that will see you through anything subalpine you wish to put it through. Once broken in, becomes a breeze to wear that will stop you regretting the price tag.

I spent a a good 4-5 hours trying out all the boots from the local store, walking around the CBD looking like a total muppet with all these huge boots on. The result, this boot fits me perfectly. I have long, narrow feet with skinny ankles, which I was surprised to find fitted quite well into the Summits.

The lacing system helps a lot with getting the boot to fit tightly round the ankles, but do watch your laces on the brackets as I found the original laces were gone after two trips. My tip to get round it, just use thin cord; it can be a nightmare to tie with cold fingers but it lasts much longer.

Be warned though, I found these boots took a lot of effort to break in. For the first 3 months, of which I wore these boots for a nearly 30 days, they left my feet blistered and battered. Still not sure how much was my fault and how much was the boots, but I learnt a lot about blister management from those trips. Good news though, I haven't had a blister in the last 21 months of wearing these.

Water resistance wise, they do as good a job as can be expected. If you just expect to be walking through ankle high puddles at most, you're feet will stay dry as a bone no worries. Anything over the ankle and you'll maybe get a few minutes of dry max provided you tied your laces well, but after that the water gets in.

Traction is fine, mine have mostly seen cold nights in the pouring rain and never had a problem keeping my feet in the mud thanks to the good solid Vibram soles.

Had my Summits nearly 2 years now, put them through a lot of New Zealand bush through both summers and winters and they are still in pretty decent knick other than the synthetic capping the toe coming lose about 3 months in. Hasn't gotten any worse since then though, and so haven't bothered fixing but for the nit-picky ones of you out there could be an issue.