[jschwartzi]

Yeah. And in the mountainous areas there's usually a good retailer nearby the local REI flagship. Seattle has like 3 or 4 that I can think of off the top of my head.

I will say that when I went to the local REI here the lady I worked with actually spent about an hour with me fitting a pair of backpacking boots and explaining how and why some of the boots would fail when I wore them. I learned more about my feet from her than from any of the other places I went.

You can get that kind of experience at a lot of the boutique alpine or backpacking stores though.