As an avid backcountry enthusiast, I have put thousands of km of hiking distance on my Salomon hiking shoes. Starting with the Salomon X Ultra 4 Mid GTX, I was impressed with their lightweight, excellent grip, and overall waterproofness and comfort.

This shoe was my first ‘higher-end’ hiking shoe and I certainly put them to the test (check the YouTube channel between 2020-2022: https://www.youtube.com/@TeslaPrince/videos). Unfortunately, after 1 and 3/4 years of steady hiking and snowshoeing these shoes started to fail (see the video below for details).

I contacted Salomon and received a refund for the full amount of the shoe and decided to apply this to upgrade to the Quest 4 Gore-Tex . I must admit that this upgrade was SUBSTANTIAL! While the weight is heavier than the previous shoes mentioned above, the waterproofness and ankle/foot stability were incredible. I found that scrambling up steep rocky sections could be achieved with a lot more confidence.

Snowshoeing in these shoes kept me drying for longer when trekking through deep snow and crossing creeks. After a multi-day hike to the Blueberry Pass Route (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ut0mogjZ474) both me and Trekking with Taz had failures in these shoes! We contacted Salomon and received a full online credit refund for the amount paid. Both of us decided to give Salomon another try because we LOVE these hiking shoes and are hoping it was a bad production run as both of our shoes came from the same factory from the same date. Watch this website for updates on the 3rd pair (light brown)!

Photos:

Videos: