Cruising Through the Woods, Good Traction is Important

Cruising Through the Woods, Good Traction is Important.

When cruising through the woods it is important to have Great Traction, smooth wimpy boots will not do.

With good traction you can concentrate on the compass point in front of you and ignore whatever you are stepping on, because your boots will handle it and keep you from slipping, tripping, or breaking an ankle.

One day when I was working for the Forest Service I saw how important a good pair of boots was when I left my good boots back in town and had to wear my cowboy boots out to the woods.  My productivity was about half of what it should have been since I had to pay attention to what I was stepping on rather than just dozing through the woods. 

That night I made the long trip back to town to get my boots rather than endanger my job with another day of poor productivity.

Since that time I have sent Foresters home early many times for showing up in tennis shoes, hiking boots, or cowboy boots.

My son Nick seems to go through boots pretty fast and is sometimes irritates me when he frequently travels half way across the state to buy expensive Forestry boots.

But then I remember what it was like to be young and putting on lots of miles cruising timber.

I once even went so far as to send all the way from New Mexico where I was working to Idaho where a new company was making the premium Forestry Boot, they were expensive, but they were heavy duty and they were also custom made so I could finally have two boots that fit, rather than one too large on my club foot.

This boot company known as Nicks Boots, no relation to my son Nick, catered to the FS Hotshot crews, who were well known to abuse boots with lots of hiking over rock, fire, embers and just about everything in their job as the elite forest fire fighters.

I figured that if they were good enough for hotshots then they had a chance with me.

It took a month after I sent in a paper bag with the tracing of the soles of my feet along with numerous other measurements, and eventually my new pair of Nicks arrived, with a manual on how to break them in.

These boots were pretty impressive, thickest leather I had ever seen, deep vibram lug soles and heels, high tops.

Just what a good forester needs for bulldozing through the woods, staying safe and keeping up peak productivity.

images courtesy of

Woodland Management Service

Nicks Boots