The Albany Times Union

No mountain's too high for this hiker's feet
He wants to be the first to tackle the 46 High Peaks of the Adirondacks — barefoot

by Alan Wechsler
Sunday, August 29, 1999

"Barefoot? You're going barefoot?" The hiker with the khaki shorts and 10-gallon hat is amazed. "You're going all the way to the top? Oh, my God!"

Elliot Adams just smiles, and keeps walking up the trail to the summit of Whiteface Mountain. He's wearing a navy-blue, school custodian-type shirt and pants. He's also wearing a metal-frame backpack, a couple decades old, with several pockets cut from old work shirts sewn to the backpack straps.

And no shoes.

Elliot Adams, 52, professional logger, part-time mayor of Sharon Springs, is about to be what he says is the first person to hike the 46 High Peaks of the Adirondacks barefoot. Today, on a 12-mile hike accompanied by his wife, Ann, his friend Sean O'Brien, a reporter and his two dogs, he will climb both Esther and Whiteface mountains, without benefit of even a sock.

"To me the issue is 'Why wear shoes?'" he says. Being barefoot "is better for the feet, better for you ankles. And it's nice to feel the water and the changes in temperature of the soil. It's one more sensory perception."

Adams wears shoes when he has to. The owner of a logging company, he puts on steel-toed, Kevlar-lined work boots for safety when he's on the job. And when he's performing his mayoral duties for Sharon Springs, a Schoharie County village of 545 people, he'll don his wing tips to look official.

But at home, on the trail, even while contra-dancing, Adams stays barefoot. He'll even go out in the snow without shoes, if only for short periods.

"His feet are ironclad, that's what it is," said Travis King of Corinth, a friend who ran into Adams halfway up Whiteface. "He don't limp or nothing."

Around the country, more and more people are throwing away their heavy leather hiking boots. There are 14 barefoot-hiking groups in the United States and Canada, including three in the San Francisco area, according to the Barefoot Hikers Web page. The nearest group is in Orange, Mass. One barefoot hiker said he's heard of a group forming in New York. The idea, apparently, is catching on around the world as well — Australia and England also have their own clubs.

Web pages include scientific studies showing the benefit of walking barefoot. One doctor who studied barefoot rickshaw coolies in India pronounced them some of the healthiest feet he's seen. The pages also include a search engine that can locate, by city, businesses around the country that allow barefoot shopping.

The hardest areas to hike, Adams says, are roads with fresh-crushed gravel. And paths that go through blackberry patches — the thorny vines have a tendency to fall down over the trail, and the darned thorns get stuck in his feet at every other step.

On hikes, Adams carries a pair of 15-year-old sneakers in his ancient backpack, just in case his foot gets cut. But it almost never happens.

"You know what they say," he says as he winds his way up the mountain. "No brains, no pain."

You need a sense of humor if you're going to climb the 46 barefoot. Adams hears comments all the time, sometimes in different languages. And not everyone looks fondly on his bare feet. Adams, a Boy Scout leader, once volunteered to lead trips for a Capital Region chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club. No thanks, the club told him, saying he was a danger to himself. Sometimes, Adams wears shoes just to avoid the controversy.

Pete Fish, a former Adirondack forest ranger legendary for yelling at hikers who are not wearing the proper clothing for the mountains, says he thinks all hikers ought to wear boots. In his decades of patrolling the High Peaks, he says he's seen few barefoot hikers. He watched one slip in a place he said a Vibram-soled boot would grip more confidently.

"In a sense, more power to him," says Fish of Adams. "But I do think they're putting themselves in some jeopardy. And if you're doing that, you're putting rangers at risk for taking part in the rescue."

Adams' barefoot experience began more than 20 years ago, when he was hiking the Northville-Placid trail. It had rained for several days, and Adams' leather boots were wet, clunky and uncomfortable.

So Adams took them off. And found he liked it better without them.

Today, the self-effacing Adams tells people the calluses on his soles are as thick as his skull. They certainly are dense. The skin on his heel is so hard and thick he routinely cuts it with the smallest of the three blades on his pocketknife.

In the summer, his feet pretty much stay the color of tea, says wife Ann Adams. She's understanding of her husband's hobby, but not particularly enthusiastic about the idea herself.

"I'm uncomfortable just going out to the curbside (barefoot)," she says. "I wear shoes in the house if I can help it."

Adams walks easily over any terrain, including mud. In fact, on some hikes, he actively seeks out the mud just so he can leave his odd footprints for others to see. Sometimes hikers will come up to him later and say, "So that's what that print was."

As Adams and his party moves up the mountain, the conversation never stops. An avid birder, he points out specimens he recognizes. Also an expert on flora, he names every plant he passes.

At one point the conversation turns to leeches. It's his new fascination.

"In America there's three orders, four families and about 50-odd types of leeches," he explains, and spends the next ten minutes talking about them.

O'Brien, a shoe-wearing friend now living in Saranac Lake, thinks that's a good idea.

"Has anyone really done that?" he asks. "You don't see anything like 'Field Guide to Leeches East of the Mississippi.'"

Six hours into the hike, Adams has walked over gravel, rocks, dirt, pebbles, roots, sand and mud. The soles of his feet are brown with Adirondack goo. The smallest toe on his left foot glistens with blood from a cut Adams didn't even realize he had.

Finally, the top of Whiteface, elevation 4,867. Adams' last 46 is a summit with a parking lot nearby, a snack bar and an elevator leading to the three-story stone weather station. The view is partially obscured by low clouds.

It's a little anticlimactic, perhaps, but Adams is here. He has completed his barefoot task.

"People act as though it's a hard thing to accomplish," he says later, upon reflection. "You can see it's very comfortable. And very safe."

Adams sits near a sign marking the official summit of Whiteface Mountain, drinking water and petting his dogs. A tourist who drove his car to the top walks over to him.

"You didn't do that in bare feet, didja?" he says. "Woo-ooo!"

Adams just smiles.