GR20 Questions – shoes, raingear

Joggers and ponchos seem to work fine for many.
There are always dinosaurs around, anti-jogger and anti-poncho.

Cheers

The merrel moab ventilators are basically joggers that go above the ankle. With long pants you should be able to keep out most all dirt/pebbles. The higher ankle can protect your ankles from scraping on brush and sharp rocks. Not a bad option.

The merrel moabs provide no ankle support. You do not want shoes with ankle support, restricting the movement in your ankles can cause a lot of issues. If you really feel like you need ankle support, you should work on strengthening your ankles. Someone with weak ankles should probably not be hiking on rough terrain.

Both work fine (and I've done that trail).

I've been doing a lot of ankle strengthening exercises, I'm not so much concerned about ankle support as ankle protection from rocks & scree getting into the shoe because my understanding is that there is very little "trail" on the GR20 and that it's basically rock-hopping for much of the way.

Depends on what you understand under the word 'trail'.

Oh yes, you know that several weeks ago 7 persons were killed because of a violent thunderstorm and a landslide. The regular path on your day 4 is closed for the moment, but their is an alternative route marked.
September is still far off but you never know

Yes, I read about the 7 people being killed. Horrible accident, what a terrible way to go – very tragic. None of us are telling our wives about that!
Thank you for the map of the alternate route – I read that going up to Monte Cinto is quite spectacular, but very challenging.

Yeah, less technical, but longer in duration (8 to 10 hours I think).

About the accident: it stays horrible, but I've heard stories from people who were there around that time that the weather was that day not really different from the other days and there's a competive atmosphere among hikers and runners, leading to faulty decisions.

I've never understood the "rocks and scree" argument for wearing high cut boots. Its as if they think a sharp rock is always going to come out and slice their ankle off.

I've worn low cut shoes in some pretty crazy places off track, and it never happens.

Just wear gaiters if you are concerned.

Thanks Adam, that makes more sense.
I rolled my ankle mountain biking last year and am probably being overly concerned. Will stick to the ankle strengthening and go with the low cut shoes.

It has nothing to do with high vs. low but it's a mather of stability. You need a good heelcup for that and that means wrapping your ankle and (pretty) stiff. Perhaps that the lesser the cushioning, the lesser the stiffness can be. But you can have both these things in both low cuts and high cuts.
For such a terrain, decent underfootprotection however becomes more important.

Proprioception is also very important in rough terrain.