I recently sent in my Kenetrek Moutain Extreme boots to be resoled and repaired after two pounding seasons in the mountains. By my estimations I’m have at least 300-400 miles in my boots in mostly VERY steep, often rocky, terrain. It’s easy to tell the steep terrain wear by the toes being the first part of the boots to give in. Other than that they were still very comfortable and waterproof and didn’t look ragged out at all, I just like to take care of my equipment.

The reality of a really good boot is that we will walk the soles off before the rest of the boot is ready to retire. I love my Kenetrek’s for the fact that they can easily be rebuilt. They did the resole on my boots for only $135, and when you see how much work went into that, I’m sure you will be impressed.

The Process to Resole your Kenetrek Boots:

Log onto Kenetrek.com and Click on “Customer Service.” Scroll all the way down to the bottom where it says “To Return Items for Repair” and click on the highlight to pull up this form. Then print it off and follow the instructions. The repair cost for the mountain extremes was $135. I was stoked to be getting back a “brand new pair” of broken in Kenetreks that fit like a glove.

Shipped them off ($19.38) and three weeks later my boots showed up on the door step. I had the Repair Center take pictures of the process so you could see what they do. It was very interesting to review the pictures and I was blown away at how much they actually do to get the boots back up to speed! Here is the condensed version. Bear in mind that they sent me over 100 pictures of the process documenting each step. It’s a ton of work!!

Interesting to note that I was having issues toward the end of season two where my toes were bumping the end of the boots. Come to find out, I must have gotten them too close to a camp fire and shrunk them a bit. See image here of how much before they reshaped them. They reshaped the toe and when I asked the repair tech about it he said that at least 40% of the boots they get back have this issue. The rule of thumb to remember is if it’s too hot for your skin, it’s too hot for your boots.

Then they go through all the rand (rubber part joining the sole to the leather) looking for loose areas and root them out and re-glue and secure them.

Then as the final part of the process they get your back up and oiled, with new laces and new insoles. That comes standard with the price! Pretty cool in my book.

Lastly there are a couple other common issues that they fix and they come with additional costs and are as follows: (All prices posted are 2014 prices)

• Gusset breakdown and repair — $30-$50
  
  
• Rand Repair– $20-$50
  
  
• Heel lining and repair– $50

by Marc Warnke