My old boots are dying. Sadly it took me quite some time to find them, and the particular brand is not made anymore. I have wide feet, like 4E wide, but some 2E boots will fit fine. Unfortunately most hiking footwear I find is way too narrow. For instance when trying to find good wet shoes for river hiking, I had to try 16 different shoes and 5 different brands.
What brands are well known for wider sizes?
I wear Keen for my everyday shoes. The main reason I like them is the wide toe pocket. I've found that their sole isn't has hard wearing as (for instance) vibram soles I've had on other shoes, so I'm not sure how hard wearing their hiking boots are. Their Erickson PCT boot has the same shape toe though, so it might be worth trying on.
Scarpa have the widest fit I have found. I have particularly wide feet so always struggle to find something comfortable, but my last two pairs have been Scarpa SLs and have both fitted great, and performed excellently.
Finally ran into another article on this
New Balance, when you can find them, are definitely sized properly. My clouds are even still on amazon (I was told by the NB store near here that they are no longer made).
Asolo should be sized correctly based on my reading, but sadly they have no distributors in the US, according to their site. ( Oddly, if you select USA, the only city they list is in Lebanon O.o ) They can be had on Amazon, and they do carry 2E widths in some models
Merrels have supposedly fixed their notoriously narrow frame in the last year. I'll check some out at REI and report back. (Update: Merrels have become pretty good on width and are my go-to for wider shoes that fit well)
LL Bean "duck" boots worked for me. I had initially ordered a different pair of LL Bean boots but I had to return them because they never "broke in" but I was able to exchange them for their duck boots and I've never looked back (had 'em 4 years already, no issues). I thought they looked a bit 'odd' when I first saw them, but I've forgotten about that now.
There's a website called Run Repeat that bills itself as "#1 Sports Shoe Review Site". It does meta analyses of shoe reviews.
In the search rankings-of-wide-hiking-boots is a list of high ranking models of hiking boots that are available in standard and wide widths. It is "based on reviews from 195 experts and 9,986 users" (as of Oct 2018). The brands that appear in the top 20 models are as follows:
If you search for hiking shoes or sandals on the same site, these brands appear on the top 12 models list:
Note that when asking for wide-fitting boots/shoes in a store (or on an outdoors advice site) one often hears comments such as "brand_x tends to have wider models". While some of those brands may have boots that exist in wider versions you will often find that only the standard widths are actually available and that, while they may be slightly wider than average, the offerings are simply not wide enough for those of us who have wide feet.
If you have very difficult-to-fit feet, and can afford it, you have the option to get custom-made boots.
The first two offer hand-made leather boots while Tecnica offers customizable liners (like some ski boot brands).
