1959: Grandma Gatewood tries Hood, walks here from Missouri

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payslee

1959: Grandma Gatewood tries Hood, walks here from Missouri

Post by payslee » October 11th, 2013, 2:06 pm

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1959 Emma Gatewood Hood Climb.jpg
Last edited by payslee on February 9th, 2015, 8:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

raven
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Re: 1959: Grandma Gatewood tries Hood, walks here from Misso

Post by raven » October 11th, 2013, 7:30 pm

About Grandma's boots.

We modern-day hikers are used to using lug-soled boots and shoes. In 1960 and a bit later most hiking boots had flat soles, whether leather or some kind of composite.

Snow mountaineering was done mostly with hobnailed boots into the 1950s -- cleats nailed to the edge of the sole. Crampons were necessary less often that way. Hobnails reputedly worked well on heather, but were dangerous on rock.

The changeover to lugs for mountaineering took place in the late 1950s into the early 1960s, lug soled hiking boots catching on during the 1960s in the form of light mountaineering boots. Because they were built as mountaineering boots, they had tight-fitting lasts, stiff soles and narrow toes.

That narrow toe caught the attention of whoever wrote the article, but the likely deal-breaker was the flat and soft sole that would make kicking steps or edging necessary where today we would be unconcerned, and kicking or edging difficult because the sole would flex too much. The broad toe would not help, but that was probably not a major factor.

Given a dry trail, Grandma Gatewood's boots would have left any mountaineering-booted hiker in blister-ridden dust.

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Waffle Stomper
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Re: 1959: Grandma Gatewood tries Hood, walks here from Misso

Post by Waffle Stomper » October 11th, 2013, 7:41 pm

A little more about Grandma Gatewood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd1uqeL78bw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLJ2ZnM ... dded#t=108
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." - John Muir

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