Raichle Women's Mountain Trail GTX

I'm a women's street shoe size 4.5 (US) and have the Mountain Trail GTX labeled as such (sold as a UK size 3).

My uses: heavy backpacking (40+ pound pack, up to 12 miles and 4,000 feet elevation gain per day) and light mountaineering (non-technical climbing; mixed rock and snow; occasional crampon use). I got a great deal on a closeout.

The Good: boot fits phenomenally well for a foot with a narrow heel and high arch, consistent with the preponderance of reviews I read before buying. Utterly true-to size while wearing a wool sock and thin sock liner (I have a wide toe). I retained the factory footbed.

This literally is the most comfortable pair of backpacking boots I have ever worn. Boots required virtually no break-in, essentially just a few days wearing around the house to check fit and a couple of hill walks up a 400-foot vertical in sagebrush-steppe. On glacier and snow fields, worked very well with my SMC traditional strap-on crampons.

The BAD, very bad: soles started to de-laminate on the very first trip (