I've been wearing trainers for about 20 years, and have never had a blister since. About 5 years ago I also started wearing 1000 mile socks, which improve matters still further.
Yes, your feet tend to get wet, but I've walked 40km plus in a day with wet feet and, with 1000 mile socks, have had no blisters.
I've tried everything from very expensive trainers to Karrimors, and haven't really found a great difference - the expensive ones fall apart under heavy wear in approximately the same time as the cheap ones.
As Gill says, you do need boots, though, in winter, if you expect you might have to use crampons.
The other point is that if you're going to do a fair bit of descent, make sure that your shoes are big enough - if anything oversized - so that you don't get black nails from descending steep hills. And you need to lace them reasonably tight at the top so that your toes don't get cramped up into the toe box. I had one pair of Salomons once in the early days that had a very hard toe box, as a result of which I lost many toe nails
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