AKU Pilgrim GTX Hiking Boots Review by Rudolf Abraham
The AKU Pilgrim – or AKU Pilgrim GTX Combat, to give its full title – is a mid-height outdoor boot, generally marketed as being for ‘tactical’ or military use (they’re worn by the British Armed Forces among others) – but as I’ve found out, they are also a stellar hiking and trekking boot, in many ways one of the most comfortable pairs of boots I’ve ever hiked in.
But first, a little background. I wouldn’t normally gravitate towards a boot designed and marketed as one for tactical, military or hunting use – I had actually been looking at the AKU GTX Trekker Lite III, when an offer to try the Pilgrims came along. Also, I’d moved away from mid-height boots around 10 years ago, opting for lighter-weight hiking shoes in all but winter conditions. However, having been offered a pair of the Pilgrims to test, just at a time when my previous boots had literally disintegrated on a two-week trek in one of the most remote mountain ranges in the Balkans (not AKU, another brand, and a story in itself), I pretty much jumped at the chance to try the Pilgrims. They’ve now become my most used hiking boot – rugged, breathable and waterproof, while providing excellent support.
Photo: AKU Pilgrim boots on Day 5 of the Tour des Combins – taking a breather above the Val d’Aosta in Italy (Also pictured, Osprey Exos 55 Pro which is reviewed here and LifeStraw Peak Series Filter, reviewed here)
The Pilgrims are extremely comfortable. I’m now well in to the second year of owning mine, and during this time I’ve worn them on a range of trips, in various terrain. I started off by using them on the 100km Tour des Combins in Switzerland and Italy – a fabulously beautiful, much less busy and many would say slightly tougher alternative to the famed Tour de Mont Blanc – for which I wore them pretty much straight out of the box, with no breaking in. I’ve worn them on the Peaks of the Balkans, a just under 200km route through the Accursed Mountains on the borders of Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo, which I first hiked around a decade ago but returned to in the autumn last year while working on a new edition of my guidebook to the trail. And I’ve also worn them on a number of shorter hikes, from the South Downs Way in February after what seemed like an eternity of wet weather, to winter conditions in Slovenia, wading through knee-deep snow on Velika planina.
One of the big selling points of the Pilgrims is how breathable they are, and how fast they dry out – the logic being, that in military use the wearer won’t be in a position to stop to take their boots off before fording a river or when crossing a stream. On several occasions I made a point of sloshing through shallow streams on the Tour des Combins, rather than using a footbridge, just to see how the boots coped, as well as walking through plenty of long wet grass during and after rain – and was pleased to find that my feet stayed dry (the water in the streams wasn’t above the collar of the boots), and the fabric dried out rapidly.
The Pilgrims have a full grain leather upper, with side panels (these are quite extensive) made from Air 8000 2.0mm – a material developed and patented by AKU in 1991, which I can confirm is both highly breathable and remarkably abrasion resistant. The EVA foam midsole has good arch support, and the Gore-Tex lining is as efficient and breathable as expected (you can also get a non Gore-Tex version of the Pilgrims, the Pilgrim DS Combat). The lacing system is excellent, and makes it possible to get a very precise fit – I didn’t feel that my feet moved around inside the boot even on very steep and uneven terrain.
Photo: AKU Pilgrims hiking through deep snow in Slovenia
The soles are Vibram Fourà (Vibram introduced the Fourà back in 1991, and it remains one of the most widely used soles in trekking boots), which I’ve found have a good grip on wet or rocky paths, and maintain a good balance between traction and flexibility. The soles also show noticeably less wear than other non-Vibram boots I’ve used, so I’m expecting the Pilgrims to last considerably longer than some of the other hiking footwear I’ve burned through in recent years.
I do find the Pilgrims a little narrow around the toes for my feet, which are quite wide – the boots I have are standard width, since the wide fitting version wasn’t available in my size at the time I got them (I’m a size 15 UK / EU 50, and at least according to the information on the AKU website you can get a wide fitting in the Pilgrims up to this size). However having said all that, I’ve been surprised how comfortable I’ve still found them regardless of this – no rubbing or blisters, even on days with long (1,000m+) descents in the Swiss and Italian Alps. I wear them with Darn Tough socks, by which I now swear.
They’re relatively lightweight – 600g for a UK size 8 – are available in brown or black, and come in half sizes, from a UK 3 up to a UK 15 (EU 50). Kudos to any outdoor footwear maker who gets that, amazingly enough, some people do actually have feet larger than a size UK 13.
Overall I’ve found the balance between comfort, weight, dexterity, support, breathability and waterproofing of the AKU Pilgrims to be pretty much spot on.
Find out more about the AKU Pilgrims here (Note: anyone requiring larger sizes of AKU boots beyond the Pilgrims should look to AKU’s international site, as the UK site – for some reason entirely beyond me but in common with many other UK footwear sites – only sells up to a size 13, aside from the Pilgrims.)
AKU is one of Italy’s top hiking boot manufacturers – a small, family-run company founded in the early 1990s in Montebelluna, in Italy’s Veneto region, at the foot of the sublime Dolomites. And the name, in case you were wondering? Aku-Aku are spirits from the mythology of Rapa Nui (Easter Island).
Review date: February 2025 | Back to reviews