I have difficult feet. I use custom insoles and require high volume shoes. I don't do a lot of trail running, but I've read good things about the new line of Golite shoes and decided to give these a try as light hikers. Upon inspection the first thing I noticed, as I'm sure most people will, are the unorthodox lugged soles. These look much bigger when you're actually holding the shoe in your hand versus looking at pictures. The overall quality of the shoe was excellent. I can't speak to the other styles in the Golite line, but the Spike Tails come with a pretty trick little fitting system. The shoes are only available in whole sizes. Once you get the shoe you can customize the insoles with supplied shims to get a tailored fit. There are 2 shims for each foot to adjust for low, medium and high volumes. While this idea sounds great in theory, it is ultimately the reason the shoes did not work for me. My custom insoles would not fit in these shoes. When I tried them the fit never felt natural. I felt as if my foot was sitting too high in the shoe. The insoles that come with the shoe are fairly decent, so I decided to give them a try and I found the fit to be much better. However, even after messing with the shims I could only get an okay, but not great fit. The problem with using whole sizing in conjunction with shims to adjust the volume of the shoe had one flaw with my feet. Being that I wear a size 10 and the shoes are actually a 10-1/2 I got excessive heal slip which led to quick hot spots no matter what variation of shims I used. Another feature which I originally really liked about this shoe was its neoprene "sleeve" collar. Although this did do an excellent job of keeping out debris, the neoprene is so thin it lacks any decent tongue padding. Tightening the laces gets real painful on the top of the foot real quick. This augmented the fact my heal was slipping, because I couldn't tighten the laces down hard enough to lock my foot down without the feeling of the laces cutting into my foot. I did find the lugged soles to work wonderfully. These shoes gave me better stability over rough terrain than any other shoe I've ever used. I have weak ankles and often tweak them out in low cut shoes. These are the only low cuts in which I did not have that problem. My ankle didn't slip once while wearing these. I was worried that I would feel the lugs on the bottom of my feet, but I never did. Grip on steep inclines was excellent, but only fair going down hill. I wouldn't feel entirely comfortable going down hill at any kind of speed with these shoes on. Grip on wet slick rock was also very good. Ventilation was excellent. My feet never got too hot in these Foot support was fair. Even though the Spike Tails are the beefiest in the Golite line they are still tagged as trail runners. Don't expect them to give the same support as light hikers. I gave these shoes 3 stars over 2, because of my particular problems with the sizing. Other people may not have this problem. Particularly those with feet that fall in the 1/2 size range. Points also get taken off for the poor design and lack of padding on the neoprene sleeve which I think will be a problem regardless of how well the shoe fits. That being said, I believe these shoes could be gold if someone had the proper foot which eliminated the need to crank the laces down. Even then, I would have to assume those laces would start to be a problem after long miles.

First off, I have really difficult feet. I wear custom insoles, so I need a shoe with a lot of volume. The other Keen shoes and sandals I own fit the bill perfectly, but I just couldn't get these shoes to fit comfortably. In my experience all Keen shoes run small. These are no exception. I buy all Keen shoes a 1/2 size larger than what I normally wear and the Targhee IIs were still just a tad small. I possibly could have used them, but in my experience, it's always better when you're dealing with footwear to go bigger versus smaller. At that size the shoes would not have allowed any room for my feet to swell after a long hike. I decided to send them back and get a full size larger than what I would normally wear. These were much better, but I just couldn't get the laces cranked down hard enough to keep my heels from slipping. Something that would certainly cause hot spots and blisters on long ascents. I love Keen footwear and I'm just bummed that I couldn't get these to work. On a more positive side, I found them to be surprisingly light. Their appearance makes them look like they would weigh much more than they actually do. They were also very stiff and supportive. Much more so than other light hikers I've tried. This may, or may not be a plus for some people. I personally like that feature in a shoe. They also appeared to be very well built. I would expect these shoes to log on many miles before any significant signs of wear. The tongue was well padded and I didn't notice any pinching even when really cranking down the laces. I can't speak to the waterproofness of these shoes as I didn't try them in any wet environments. The Event liner did make them rather warm, but not anymore so than any other Gore-Tex lined shoe I've worn. If you don't have odd shaped feet like I do these shoes will probably work for you like a champ.