Gear

Amelia Island is a gear puzzle. You’ve got firm-packed sand at low tide, soft sugary sand up near the dunes, rooted singletrack through Fort Clinch, pavement on the parkway, crushed shell paths, and a few stretches of boardwalk — all within a few miles of each other. No single shoe handles all of it well, and I’ve made every mistake in the book trying to simplify. At one point I was running everything in one trail shoe. It worked okay on the Fort Clinch singletrack but felt clunky on the roads and wore down faster than expected from the pavement sections. Then I went the other direction — lightweight road shoe for everything — and spent a week with blisters from sand infiltration and zero grip on the wet roots near the fort. ...