Hiking with microspikes—go easy on the soil erosion, brah.

Kahtoola microspikes have become popular on Hawaiian trails during the last
few years. If you are a visitor, don't worry about it—you don't need it to hike one or two maintained trails. If you are a regular local hiker however, they can improve your traction on steep, muddy sections of advanced trails and offtrail romps; they are well worth the money. Microspikes also take a lot of pressure off your knees on steep or slippery descents; if you have bad knees, microspikes are for you. Where microspikes truly shine however, is where no shoe can, and that's when a slope is covered with leaves and pine needles!

Three things to point out:

1. they should not be worn on rocks; take them off when you transition to hard unweathered rocks, because you can easily slip.
2. DO NOT wear them all the time for an entire trail; only wear them in the most precarious situations where you know your regular shoes won't find adequate traction. The reason for this is because normally your shoes will compact the soil and mud and thus prevent soil erosion. With microspikes, the spikes loosens up the soil which then washes away during rain. If every hiker on our trails wore microspikes all the time, the many deeply eroded ruts (think Poamoho) and narrow, crumbly cliff trails we are familiar with, would be 10 times worse....damaging the trails beyond practical repair. Before microspikes, we all hiked just fine, if a little more covered in mud and more focused.
3. Depending on how hard your outsoles are, the tread on your shoes will wear down faster because of the steel scraping against it. So your shoes might not last as long as they would otherwise

[--March 2015]