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Footloose in the High Peaks
This guy puts his heart and soles into hiking
By Alan Wechsler Explorer Correspondent

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 toward the summit of Whiteface Mountain. He's wearing a navy-blue, school custodian-type shirt and pants, and on top of that a metal-frame backpack, a couple decades old. Several pockets cut from worn-out work shirts have been sewn to the backpack straps to hold maps and a compass.
The eyes of most hikers skip over this oddly assembled hiking outfit and go right to his bare feet. After all, 12 miles of rugged Adirondack trail is a long way to walk without the benefit of Vibram soles--or even a pair of flip-flops. Adams, 52, professional logger, part-time mayor of Sharon Springs, is about to become the first person to hike barefoot the 46 High Peaks--all but four of which top 4,000 feet. On this August day, accompanied by his wife, Ann, his friend Sean O'Brien, a reporter, and two dogs, Adams will hike to the tops of both Esther and Whiteface mountains without even putting on a sock. "To me the issue is ÔWhy wear shoes?'" he says. "If I don't need them, why should I? Walking barefoot is better for the feet, better for your 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. When at work as a lumberjack, he wears steel-toed, Kevlar-lined work boots--sensory perception is all well and good, but when you're handling a chainsaw and knocking over half-ton trees, it takes a back seat to safety.

Adams also puts on wing tips while wearing his mayoral hat in Sharon Springs, a rural village of 545 people about 40 miles west of Albany. After all, no one expects to see a mayor prancing around Village Hall in bare feet.

But at home, on the trail, even while contra dancing, Adams remains unshod. He also drives without shoes--contrary to popular opinion, Adams says, there is no law prohibiting barefoot driving. Nor is there one prohibiting bare feet in stores--although that doesn't stop some people from getting angry when they see his piggies in the market.

"Some people really are offended," he remarks. "I don't know what the problem is."

Around the country, more and more hikers are throwing away their 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 group nearest the Adirondacks 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.

It's a trend that might be slow to catch on in the Adirondacks. Beginning barefoot hikers prefer smooth trails of soft sand or cool dirt, whereas the typical Adirondack trail is full of roots and rocks that are not kind to unprotected soles.

Adams, though, seems immune to all but the sharpest protrusion. He does try to avoid roads with fresh-crushed gravel, which contains as many sharp edges as toy jacks, and paths through blackberry patches, whose thorny vines often fall across the trail. "You stop, pull out the thorns, take three more steps, stop, pull them out," he complains.

Adams always carries a pair of 15-year-old sneakers in his ancient backpack, just in case his foot gets cut. But usually the only time he puts them on is when he goes into restaurants at the end of the trip. "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, an active Boy Scout leader, once volunteered to lead trips for a chapter of the Adirondack Mountain Club. No thanks, the club told him, saying he was a danger to himself by not wearing shoes.

Pete Fish, a retired forest ranger legendary for admonishing hikers for 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 saw only a few barefoot hikers. "In a sense, more power to him," he says. "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's barefoot experience began more than 20 years ago, when he was hiking the Northville-Placid trail. It had rained for several days, and his leather boots were wet, clunky and uncomfortable. "I kept thinking, 'Gee, my feet would dry out between these puddles, but my boots won't,'" he recalls. "So I took them off." And he discovered that he liked hiking better without them. Today, the self-effacing Adams tells people the calluses on his soles are as thick as his skull. In summer, his feet pretty much stay the color of tea, says Ann Adams, his wife of 30 years. She humors her husband, but she's not enthusiastic about following in his footsteps. "I'm uncomfortable just going out to the curbside barefoot," she says.

Often, Adams seeks out mud on his hikes just so he can leave his odd footprints for others to see. Sometimes a hiker will come up to him and say, "So that's what that print was from." Others take pictures. One French speaker just said, "Oh, mon Dieu," and kept walking.

As Adams and his party moves up the mountain, the conversation never stops. An avid birder, he points out species he recognizes. Also an expert in 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 10 minutes talking about them.

Sean O'Brien, his shoe-wearing friend from Saranac Lake, encourages him to write a book on the subject. "Has anyone really done that?" he asks. "You don't see anything likeField Guide to Leeches East of the Mississippi." Six hours into the hike, Adams has tramped 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.

At last he reaches his destination: the top of Whiteface, elevation 4,867, the last of his 46 peaks. It's the only High Peak with a highway winding up it. Not far from the summit are a parking lot, 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 quest. And he's not sure what will happen next. Perhaps a backpacking trip in the Finger Lakes region. Right now, though, it's time for lunch. And then a six-mile hike back to the car. The sneakers, of course, will stay in the pack.

As Adams sits on the summit, drinking water and petting his dog, a tourist who drove his car up the mountain ambles over to him. "You didn't do that in bare feet, didja?" he says. "Woo-ooo!" Adams just smiles.

n Thinking about kicking off your shoes before hitting the trail? You might want to get your hands on The Barefoot Hiker by Richard K. Frazine (1993, Ten Speed Press, $7.95). There also are several relevant Web sites. Start with www.barefooters.org/hikers/