I was recently on a 5 day leisure trek in the Himalayas. The trek was in the lower Himalayas so it was cold at night (5 degrees celsius) but much warmer in the day (say 22 degrees celsius).
On the second day of trekking, my shoe broke.
The entire sole came off.
Then as luck would have it, the same thing happened to the other shoe as well.
As with many other things in life, this was entirely my fault. I had stored these shoes for a few months in my drawer without touching them. They are heavy leather boots so I only use them for the easy treks.
When you store trekking shoes without using them for months, the moisture gets to the glue used to hold the midsole in place and creates lots of air gaps… i.e. if you don’t use your shoes, they get ruined.
The other mistake I made was not inspecting my shoes properly before I headed out trekking. 100% my own fault.
It was too late for regrets. Without proper shoes I couldn’t continue to go and down the mountain either. Without the grippy sole of a trekking shoe, you will slip on the gravel.
In other words, I was in a bad position.
If you go downhill without a proper grippy shoe, the likely scenario is that you will twist your ankle or break a leg or hand, and the worst case scenario is you could fall off an edge and die.
I’ve heard of plenty of people who’ve broken their spines by falling off mountainsides. It doesn’t take that many meters in depth to be fatal. Just 2-3 meters can be enough.
Roughing it out and going up or down with a broken shoe is a no-go.
So what do you actually do?
IF only the front part of your trekking shoe comes off, you can tie it back with a string as this guy describes:
Of course this assumes that you were wise enough to carry some string or rope, something you should always do.
But what if your ENTIRE sole comes off. That’s what happened to both my shoes.
What do you do then?
No amount of rope will help. After trying a lot of different things (like duct tape) that didn’t work, I finally found a working solution.
You need to put a sock over your shoe.
It will take you 10-20 minutes to do each shoe because it’ll almost feel like you’re forcing your dick inside a very dry and tight girl with no lube. You have to be slow and do it step by step.
You need full length socks for this. Ankle length socks will not do.
If you don’t have full length socks, fortunately, it’s much easier to beg for socks on hiking trails than to beg for shoes, because people have only 1 pair of shoes but many pairs of socks.
Depending on the terrain, each pair of socks will only last you a few kilometers before it completely rips apart. Then you need to replace the sock.
Unless you have a lot of socks and patience, you need to go down.
Don’t continue to climb up on broken shoes.
So there you have it. Now you know what to do if your shoes break on a trek. I figured out this stuff the hard way.
Bonus: Here’s a picture of me playing with a mountain pup. Socks over shoes.
