For years, maybe from '99 until about 2 years ago, I wore Montrail Vitesse trail shoes. Yeah they were sortof clunky, but they were not that heavy, were comfortable, but mostly protected my feet over the rocks at Massanutten and scree at Hardrock.
Last winter while living in NM, I was in search of a new trail shoe because I had heard that Montrail was planning on discontinuing the Vitesse (I was wrong). In the meantime I was running down in the canyons below Los Alamos in my road shoes, which most are made of mesh uppers to keep your feet cool. These shoes wore out in about 6 weeks! I can usually get 3 months or about 600 miles at least on a pair of trail shoes, but because of the fine grit that all the trails out there are made of, it acted like sandpaper and soon my toes were poking out of the shoes.
I started a search for a trail shoe that did not have a mesh upper. The two shoes I found were the Brooks ASR's and a pair of Adidas. I never wore Adidas, but have worn Brooks as my road shoes off and on over the years. As a matter of fact my very first pair of running shoes were the Brooks Villanovas that I bought back in the mid 70's at a small store in Harvard Sq in Cambridge, Ma.
These shoes really fit the bill...not only did they not wear out in 6 weeks, but they kept the grit out of my shoes completely! They provided me with a roomy toebox, a grippy outsole and some control, which I like. I used these same exact pair as my screwed shoes this winter because they still had plenty of life in them. I'll bet I put over 1500 miles on these shoes and they are still in my "might wear" pile under the bed. I just ordered my 2nd pair about a month ago, have only put about 20 miles on them and wore them in a 50K trail race a couple of weekends ago down near Boston with no problems.
The other great thing is they are not "$100." running shoes, I got these for 75 bucks with free shipping ;-)
Just my input....hope it helps someone somewhere...
