First of all, think about the comparison between hiking sandals and, say, hiking boots or trail-running shoes or shoes that you would wear for going on a hike.
If you’re in boots or shoes and you get those things wet, it’s going to take forever for them to dry out. In fact, it can really, really damage your feet because when your feet are wet and they’re enclosed in something wet, you can get blisters and massive abrasion. If your feet stay wet long enough, your skin can start to slough off. I mean, it’s really, really horrible. So sandals give you the great advantage that you get in and out of the water and your feet dry off almost instantly. So that’s great news.
One question that people ask has to do with traction. “How’s the traction when these get wet?”
We’ve made our Z-Trek and Z-Trail sandals with a nice grippy surface so that you get great traction. Now, there’s nothing that can prevent you from sliding in all situations. In fact, that’s sort of a fantasy people have, is they will have something that sticks in mud and sticks on ice and sticks on everything, but that’s just not reality.
Frankly, the thing that keeps you stable — more than the surface of the shoe — is paying attention to your gait, paying attention to how you move your feet. If you’re placing your foot underneath your center of mass, underneath your body rather than reaching way out in front of your body to grab the ground and then pull towards you, you’re in a more stable position to begin with and you’re going to have less issue with sliding around at all.
Xero Shoes customers include kayakers, paddleboarders, people who raft down rivers, fly fishermen—if you look on our website, you’ll see reviews from all of these people—who are loving the Z-Trek and the Z-Trail. The sport-sandal-style webbing is more secure compared to our huarache-style webbing. FOXes (Friends of Xero) are handling all sorts of terrain, wet and dry, without a problem in our Z-Trek and Z-Trail.
Oh, one other thing about dealing with the water: If you compare the Xero Shoes especially the Z-Trail to, say, one of the familiar sport sandals from other companies like Chaco or Teva or Keen, the Z-Trail floats. If you’re not necessarily wearing the shoes but you have them just lying in a boat or sitting in a pack, you want to make sure they don’t sink to the bottom of whatever kind of water you’re in – river, lake, stream. They’ll just happily float which comes in really, really handy sometimes.
