Footwear choice for the rain

[mschoger]

Thoughts? I am heading out north bound from Damascus on Sunday for a week of hiking and it looks like 4 of 6 days will be in rain. I am planning on wearing my trail runners but could opt for my pair of Gortex hiking boots that will give me a little more protection. Any suggestions for managing wet feet? Will have plenty of Body Glide for my feet.

Launcher

[lush242000]

You will have wet feet no matter what. I would rather have wet feet from rain than from sweat. I suggest you bring a small towel and extra socks to switch into at night.


Sent from somewhere.

[HooKooDooKu]

Your feet are going to get wet.

Reference the thread I recently started about having wet feet in the rain after using waterproof boots. (http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/showthread.php?98554-Such-Thing-as-Waterproof-Boots)

[garlic08]

I personally do better, overall, in trail runners than boots, but YMMV, as they say. And it depends on the conditions, and the mileage I plan to make. If I were planning short days in wet snow, I might take my old Vasque Sundowners.

[Zippy Morocco]

I like trail runners for rain and Rocky Gortex socks if it's really cold and wet or snowing.

[DandT40]

Just got back from a trip to the smokies and I wore my Vasque gortex boots and both my kids wore trail runners. Well my feet stunk from sweat my socks were not wet. I had fresh socks to sleep in and the socks I wore during the day dried just fine at night. In the morning my boots were completely dry inside. My kids both had socks that were soaked so through when we got to Leconte Lodge we sat in the office to dry out their socks and I was able to squeeze a few cups of water out of their socks. Their shoes are probably still wet as they were soaked through so badly they never dried out at all on the entire trip. Mornings were miserable for them to put their feet into their soaking shoes. Next time we hike in that wet of an environment we will all be wearing boots.

[Praha4]

IMO you will get a wide variety of opinions on this. I just finished hiking the Long Trail, used Garmont Momentum hiking shoes (non goretex) with Superfeet Green insoles, and Icebreaker Hike-lite Mini... merino wool socks. This combination worked incredibly well for me on this hike. My shoes and socks were just about completely soaked every day from the mud and/or rain/water on the trail. But no foot blisters the entire hike in spite of wet shoes/socks/feet each day. It was a daily routine to expect to wring out water from the socks at midpoint of the day and end of the day. Put on wet socks and shoes every morning. No big deal. What really made the difference for me was using Hydropel every morning on toes, balls of feet and heel area of both feet. Used some Goldbond foot powder occasionally too, and any hot spots were immediately treated with a 2nd skin blister bandaid covered with Kinesio-Tex gold tape. Worked great for me. Yes, feet got cold some times, temps were in the 30s on several days and with wet feet, if you stop, your feet get cold when wet. Just keep hiking to stay warm. If it was ice, snow on the ground, then I would definitely use gore tex boots or some better gaiters. Anyways, HYOH. Good luck!

[SCRUB HIKER]

Assume your feet will get wet no matter what. Your next question should be: how will I get them dry again? At the end of the day, you can always have dry socks to put on. And if you get a patch of sunlight in the middle of the day after you've been wet, it would be nicer to be able to take off trail runners and open them up to evaporate than it would with Gore-Tex and/or leather boots.

Someone recently put up this article in the PCT 2013 facebook page: http://andrewskurka.com/2012/minimizing-the-effects-and-aftermath-of-wet-feet/