I'm hiking a good mountain on monday for a school thing. they tell us we need hiking boots or sturdy shoes I'm going to see if I can stop and take a break and take off my boots about 5 minutes into the hike. I want to hike barefoot so bad. do your feet get more sore than if in boots? I mean, I dont get blisters fro mine. just wondering though.
Good luck and I hope you manage to get the boots off and stay that way. It depends how tough your feet are of course but for sure you will enjoy the hike so much more without the boots and your feet will get toughened by the experience. You'll probably find the boots weren't necessary anyway. I once did a hike on holiday where they advised "hiking boots or sturdy shoes" and they proved not necessary at all. Your biggest challenge will be overcoming those in authority telling you to put your boots back on. Try to have an argument ready like they're giving you blisters or something. Let us know how it goes! Try not to chicken out and remember everyone on here is behind you!
well, I'm new with barefooting, but I've walked on tons of painful stuff.. I walked half a mile down a dirt road with rocks that really hurt... a hike won't be bad.
Best of luck on Monday! In my experience, the harder you treat your feet (within reason) the harder they become, so go for it! No pain, no gain...
I hope they let you go barefoot. Too bad it's for a school thing...do you live in the United States of Liability? If so, you might have a problem going barefoot. I like the blister story...I hope it works!
You'll have lots more chances to go barefoot hiking. I've been hiking barefoot for 20 years. When I lived in a big city I went on Sierra Club hikes and they made me sign a liability waiver so that I wouldn't sue them if I got hurt. As it turns out, a lot of the boot-wearing hikers got hurt because they tried not to get their boots wet by jumping across the rocks in the creek and fell on their butts or wrists. Someone broke their tailbone that way. I just simply walked through the water in my bare feet, and the hike leaders saw how much safer I was. Also, I have never gotten a blister from barefoot hiking, while people wearing boots and other kinds of shoes get them all the time. I have noticed that people who wear shoes and walk around a lot get tired feet but I can walk all day in bare feet and hardly feel tired. So more power to you- hope you'll get to go on a barefoot hike soon.
Eventually I'm going to post pics in a gallery or a thread, something along the lines of "my surfaces" or something, to show how many different surfaces I walk on, EVERY day, both at work and on my hikes. There's a huge range of variety. On any given hike I get the pleasure of pine needles and the pain of hundreds of feet of sharp, broken rocks, and everything in between. I can take it all, but loose, sharp gravel laying on hard surfaces drives me crazy. I've been at this forever, but if I know I've got miles of the sharp gravel it's almost enough to make me put my flops on. Just for the bad stretch. I keep a pair of Chaco flops, not even their hiking sandals on my pack, but have yet to slip into them. Mostly the terrain varies quickly. And it's true. On watery crossings, or here in the far northeast, long pools in the trail cause anguish to the shod hiker. Trails often get rerouted through sensitive vegetation so that one's boots may be kept dry. I just pad on through the water, and amazingly, my feet almost always come out washed, and not muddy. Occasionally there is mud in the trail, and it feels absolutely awesome, but, as any reader of this board knows, I like to get rinsed as soon afterward as possible. I could go on forever about the delicious surfaces of needles, leaves, moss, grass, solid ledge, but you all already know that, or can guess it anyway.
I just climbed Mt. Sentinel in Missoula, MT for the second time this year. Mt. Sentinel is a mountain behind the University of Montana. It has a 3/4 mile switchback trail that leads to a giant concrete "M" with a 624 ft. elevation change. From there, it's another 1.5 miles and 1500 ft to the summit. I wanted to come down the back side of the mountain via Hellgate Canyon Trail, but it's deer season and I didn't want to get shot. Got plenty of comments from people. Most were amazed and even curious. One lady said I should be interviewed by the local paper since she's never seen anyone hike the M-trail bf. If you google Mt. Sentinel, you can see some pictures. The UM website also has some nice pics.
