Hewn in the hills of New Hampshire, legendary Limmer boots go the distance
IF YOU EVER FIND YOURSELF IN INTERVALE, New Hampshire, just down Route 16 from misty Mount Washington, stop by Peter Limmer & Sons boot shop and ask Pete Limmer to trace your feet. You’re probably not on the waiting list—much less at the top—so getting custom hiking boots in the next two years is almost certainly out of the question. But stop in all the same, just to look around. As you wander the shop, Pete, 52, may tell you about the wealthy orchid expert who tried to buy his way to the top of the list. Or the guy who logged 14,000 miles in his Limmers. Or the one who was buried in his. Pete, these men would tell you, is one of the last great American custom bootmakers. His grandfather started the business in the Bavarian Alps in 1921, and Pete, like his father before him, has carried it on here in New Hampshire since the 1970s. You might wonder how this joker with a Russian wrestler’s beard and a small hoop in his ear crafts an indestructible slipper of a boot that really fits. Hold on—you’ll see.
I STOP BY IN EARLY SPRING with a 2,175-mile hike of the Appalachian Trail in the bag, but I’m not wearing Limmers or nearly enough facial hair. Pete shakes his head and throws me an apron. It’s time to craft boots like it’s 1899.Leafing through a pile of foot traces—outlines on college-ruled paper, with five measurements in the margins—Pete points out a “banana foot,” a foot that “shows we came from monkeys,” and one with the makings of a sixth toe. “I like freakish feet,” Pete says. “They appreciate a perfect fit.” Still, most of his customers—he makes about 175 pairs a year—have normal feet. They simply want lasting comfort.
Next to the traces are three-dimensional foot renderings, made of wood and leather, called lasts. There are perhaps 200 lasts in the shop, and about ten times that many hoarded upstairs in the attic. A boot is formed around its last, which acts as a frame. Pete points to the largest, a size-18 quadruple-E that conjures up a young Shaquille O’Neal. “That,” he says, “is a boot I like making. He’ll be a friend for life.”
Pete’s father, Peter Limmer Jr., grew up in the foothills of the Alps, in Peterskirchen, Germany, where his own father was a cordwainer (the proper term for a bootmaker). In 1950, he moved the family and the boot business to New Hampshire’s White Mountains, which resemble the Alps if you squint. The family has operated out of the same dusty 200-year-old barn here ever since.
Pete Sr. firmly believed in overkill, as manifested in every pair of Limmers’ “Norwegian welt” construction. A single piece of top-grain, chrome-tanned cowhide from an 18th-century tannery in Wegberg, Germany, composes the boot’s upper. Four layers of leather and latex, held together by six rows of stitching along the instep (as opposed to the back of the heel, for comfort), attach the upper to an eight-millimeter Vibram sole—two-thirds of the four-pound boot’s weight. Limmers take a month or two to break in, but they can last a lifetime.
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For further evidence of the boot’s quality, I’m shown a photo of a fit young lady—sans clothes—mounting New Hampshire’s Huntington’s Ravine. The caption reads: “All I need to get up Huntington’s are my Limmers.” The shop is covered with such mementos, captured at the South Pole, Kilimanjaro, Lenin’s Tomb, and Everest. Pete actually uses a pseudonym on the trail to hide from his fans: Pierre LeFoote.
Before closing, Will Bindler-Desbiens, a 65-year-old fan and former U.S. National Ski patroller, enters the shop. He’s with his wife, who’s returning a pair of ill-fitting stock boots she ordered from Bavaria. In comparison, Bindler-Desbiens says that his custom Limmers have lasted 48 years, including ascents of all of New England’s 4,000-foot peaks. “I bought them for 60 bucks in 1960 with a summer’s savings,” he says. “One of the best investments I’ve made.”
Pete finally looks at my feet. Apparently, they’re low-volume: “long and slender—not too weird.” He may not delight in making boots for me. But in a few years, he’ll do it all the same. And my feet will finally forgive me. limmercustomboot.com
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