Interval hill, hiking in Herron Park.

My new shoes.  Very nice.  Notice the remarkable sight that is my low volume feet not barely filling up the shoes, with most shoes I have the laces cinched almost all the way.  Notice also my moderate-wide forefoot just having enough room.  If you’ve got paddle feet, don’t ever bother.

The level of support, stiffness, lack of a defined arch (which I’ve grown to find intolerably painful), and killer grip make for a dreamy shoe.  The carbide studs in the sole are fantastic in wet, rough, icy terrain, but are loud as hell on rock and I can feel them as pressure points on pavement (but not even the hardest of dirt roads).  So long as you’re not doing extended road walks, you’re fine, but these really excel off trail.

One of the emerging stars of my bikepacking pack review is this one, the Lowe Alpine Lightflite 25.  The largest pack in the review (by a little bit), and almost the lightest, it is also by far the cleanest design.  Admirable simplicity in a category that tends to go far towards the opposite.  Bonus: the fabric of the main body is some sort of impregnated ripstop that seems to have excellent waterproofing.

The shoulder straps epitomize the design philosophy, with some nice dense foam placed in just the right spot, almost no foam elsewhere, and the nifty narrowing near the top which does seem to isolate the pack weight from shoulder movement.

Definitely worth looking at, especially for the very weight conscious.