by: Dave D’Abate
GoLite Lime Lite
GoLite Footwear’s Limelite hiker features their proprietary Soft-Against-The-Ground Technology. A traditional shoe’s construction is layered with the thick foam midsole attached to a stiff plate followed by the rubber outsole. GoLite Footwear literally flips this system over and places the stiff plate under foot and the soft foam against the ground. The idea being that while hiking along a rocky trail, instead of stepping on a rock and letting your ankle tilt to the shape of the rock, the Soft-Against-The-Ground Technology allows the Lime Lite to squish and form around the rock thus allowing for greatly improved ankle and foot stability that doesn’t throw you off balance.
GoLite Lime Lite PreciseFit
The second major feature of the Lime Lite is the PreciseFit™ insole. The idea behind PreciseFit™ is that during the course of the day when hiking along, feet swell and I’m sure everyone knows that shoes get uncomfortable after a long day. A series of different sized inserts allow the hiker to customize the insole fit on the fly out on the trail. Just take out the insole and swap in or out one of the different sized inserts.
The Lime Lite is a solid leather hiker with deep lugs on the sole at the scientifically determined angle of 45 degrees for maximum grip (at least that’s what I was told). I found that the Soft-Against-The-Ground system works very well on moderately rocky terrain. The location of the soft midsole forms the shoe around obstacles and significantly cushioning the foot’s impact against the ground. This leads to less chance of an ankle roll using this type of hiker that is not designed to provide the same level of ankle support as a boot.
Getting a bit soggy on the trail
The Lime Lite felt pretty stable on my feet as I took them around hiking up the Beus Canyon Trail in Ogden, UT. The Beus Canyon trail is considered one of the most difficult trails to hike up the east side of the Wasatch range. There was still a considerable amount of snow on the trail which caused a few issues regarding the water repellency of the shoe. Snow is not a friend of the Lime Lite. The leather kept my feet dry for the majority of the eight mile hike but as I got higher up the mountain valley and the snow got deeper, my feet eventually got fairly wet.
As I started hiking back down after post-holing through knee-deep snow I quickly became aware of how wet my feet actually were as I started seeing water squishing out from the edge of the tongue with every step. Once I got back I had to let the Lime Lite dry out for a few days because of their leather construction. Once they dried I didn’t see any cracking or damage to the leather thanks to the soft and flexible worn in feeling to the leather when they were brand new. So the moral of the story is the Lime Lite don’t agree well with very wet conditions but this is where a leather waterproofer would come in very handy, in which case I applied Nikwax’s Waterproof Wax for Leather. The Waterproof Wax made a huge difference causing droplets to bead on the surface instead of soaking in.
The best part of the Lime Lite is they are just so darn comfortable even with the sole flipped over I wore them nearly everywhere. The styling of the stitching on the shoe looks great on the trail or on the sidewalk and quite a few people mentioned how much they liked how the Lime Lite look. I must admit I am a bit biased since orange is my favorite color but that fact just made me want to wear them that much more.
Beus Canyon Trail
After a solid three months of testing in every condition I could get them into, the Lime Lite were showing slightly higher than normal wear but this is easily explained by the softer sole of the shoe which makes it very comfortable so the trade-off is more than worth it. The upper construction of the shoe is solid. None of the stitching design has started to pull out, which was an initial concern. Minor details such as the construction of the toe bumper is something I always criticize in every pair of shoes I wear since the toe bumper starts to peel away from the upper all to quickly in many shoes I have used in the past. The stitching holding the Lime Lite’s toe bumper to the upper is as rock solid three months later as it was on day one, a nice detail I really enjoy about them. Another design feature I really like is the naked eyelets at the toe of the shoe. The lack of a metal ring to reinforce the lacing on the toe lets the shoe flex more smoothly and also a nice aesthetic feature that sets the design apart from other shoes.
Overall, GoLite’s Lime Lite mid-weight hiker is a solid shoe through and through. It’s also one of the few shoes I’ve worn where I didn’t immediately throw out the insole it came with for a third party solution. The PreciseFit™ system works very well and is a great relief to be able to swap out for a wider insole at the end of a long day hiking through the great outdoors. I was very impressed with the Lime Lite as my first testing I have done for GoLite Footwear. They have a solid hiker that can take the miles of abuse I put it through and enabled me to head out on my next great adventures.
GoLite Footwear’s Lime Lite – $109 - golite-footwear.com
