Keeping your feet dry, the ultimate key to avoid undesired problems during your excursions
When you are planning an excursion, most of the time the logistic is focused on tends, food, light, water, and protection against the elements, especially when you will spend some nights out during the cold season.
Some people pay attention to their garments but rarely we think seriously about footwear, a key piece of the puzzle to keep you safe and healthy all along the excursion, or could you enjoy your expedition when your feet hurt?
In fact, feet injury might delay your travel back home and limit your survival skills because of limited mobility, so keeping your feet dry remains paramount not only to enjoy your excursion but also to keep you safe.
In this regard, the most important thing is to keep your feet dry. Wet feet and cold weather, joined together with hours of walking and perhaps an uncomfortable shoe may lead to different feet problems capable to turn your excursion into a nightmare.
From just swollen feet up to wounds and lacerations, your feet are exposed to a myriad of problems during a hiking excursion if you don't pay attention to their protection by a bunch of tips, some of them very easy.
1. Change your socks regularly
When you talk about keeping your feet dry, many people think that keeping away from watercourses and avoiding stepping on puddles is enough to keep your feet dry.
And that's wrong! Your feet will get wet even walking in the middle of a desert! Most of the time due to the natural sweating process.
Yes, your feet get dry not because of external water but due to your own bodily fluids retained in your socks, so changing them regularly it's a good idea to keep your feet dry and healthy.
2. Get sure your socks are dry
Many times hikers change their socks and store the used pair in a bag inside their backpack.
That's a mistake because unless you carry with you several socks pairs, sooner or later you will need to reuse the first, wet pair, and guess what? After being stored for several hours in a closed environment, they will be almost as wet as the moment when entered into the bag, leaving you without replacement socks.
To avoid this undesired situation, find a way to store your used socks in an outer mesh of your backpack to allow proper drying. Perhaps it's not the most glamorous option, but it will help you to have replacement socks, that's sure!
3. Use respirable shoes
Once again, your feet sweat and there's no way out of that liquid, the inner surface of your shoes gets hotter and hotter and your feet continue sweating.
A vicious circle leading to a severe wet overcharge for your feet, after all that sweat has no way out!
The use of respirable shoes will help to limit this effect. Novel materials and designs aim to shoes capable to eliminate extra wetness, keeping your feet dry, and making it possible to extend the socks changing intervals.
However, it's not possible to use this type of shoes all the time, particularly during the cold season or when you are moving on wet or mud terrains, where water ponds are all over the area.
In such cases, it's a good choice not only changing your socks regularly but also to have an extra pair of shoes or boots. This way you will always have an extra pair of dry shoes when necessary.
As you see, keeping your feet dry might imply some extra work during your excursion, but all that effort will pay because your feet will be dry, safe, and healthy to carry all your weight back home!
