Maria Hikes the North Cascade Mountains in her VFF Sprints

By Justin Owings on Jul 13, 2009 | In User Stories | Leave a comment »

click any image to enlarge!

Maria Coryell-Martin sent in the above photos taken on her recent, two-night backpack in the North Cascade Mountains, which she completed wearing her Vibram fivefinger Sprints (and injinji socks). Maria wrote about her experience on her site, Expeditionary Artist, describing it thusly:

This past week I completed my first backpack wearing only my Vibram FiveFingers Sprint toe shoes on my feet along with a pair of Injinji toe socks. I’ve worn FiveFingers for a couple of years ago and am delighted by how they’ve strengthened my feet. My sweetie Darin Reid and I left Stehekin at the head of Lake Chelan (1200 ft.) in the North Cascade Mountains and completed a two night backpack for 21 miles, climbing up to 7400 ft. My feet felt remarkably good as I scrambled over and around logs in burned regions of the hillside, traversed boulder fields, and crossed snow patches. My shoes did show some extra wear, particularly between the toes from the debris and abrasion, but it did not affect their performance. For up the mountains and down, I had no blisters, no knee pain, and the delight of the world beneath my feet!

Seeing Maria's photos and reading about her experience makes me want to drop everything and get outside. Hiking is a truly humanizing experience. How much more fantastic is it when you get to feel the diversity of the ground beneath your feet!

Be sure to check out Maria's site where you can find some beautiful examples of her artwork such as her watercolor paintings of the North Cascades!.

Thanks for sharing, Maria!

About the Author — I founded BirthdayShoes.com in April 2009 on realizing just how much I enjoyed having "free feet" - I mostly wanted to use them for weights, sprints, and plyometrics (I'm not much of a runner!). I'm a Googler by day and minimalist footwear aficionado by night; you can find me 'round Atlanta. If you want to catch up with what I'm doing outside of the site here, follow me on twitter @bdayshoes or @justinno or check out my personal site JustinOwings.com.
Justin Owings+ has written 754 articles and 302 comments.