Survival Footwear: Salomon Quest 4D Forces

The Philosophy

Every hiker knows that his boots are the most important part of his gear. Lose your backpack, lose your pants, its all good, but without shoes… your mobility is greatly handicapped and without mobility you have very few options.

Given how important it is to have adequate footwear during an emergency, your daily wear shoes should reflect that. If something happens and today whatever you chose to wear is all you will have to walk several miles, get by for days or even weeks, walk across broken terrain, help people or extract yourself or others across rubble and debris, keep yourself dry when raining. Therefore we are looking for practical, capable footwear.

Salomon Quest and X-Ultra

I’ve been using Salomon footwear for about a year now and have not been disappointed.

Even the low-top hikers X-Ultra have kept my feet dry and provided more than enough foot support and traction.
The Salomon Quest boots are a in a league of their own. Tough, impossibly comfortable once broken in and durable.

The grey ones are the typical hiking boots that made the Quest boots famous. Since these ended up in the feet of military personal nearly as much as in the feet of hikers, they came up with the Quest Forces model. The colours are more militaristic and use leather loops instead of metal eyelets but other than that its mostly the same great boot.

I think they all work very well for all-round footwear. They are comfortable enough for normal, everyday use yet provide serious hiking capability if it’s ever needed. It doesn’t hurt that they look great. The Quest boots are clearly more suited for moderate to cold climates (especially with Goretex models) and the low top do well in very warm climates. These do have goretex as well, which granted, makes it warmer, but then again its great to step on a few inches of water and not have a single drop go in (have done so numerous times already)
Give Salomon a try. You won’t be disappointed.

FerFAL
 Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”.