Are you making any footwear or sock changes for these crossings or just wear the same shoes and socks for everything for the day?
No changes- just charging through, the number of fords crossing the Bob in May is staggering and the trails are very often running water in them as well. No possible way to keep footwear dry.
I do insure that at a midday break (and usually supper along the trail) I take my wet shoes/socks off and let them air for the 30 minutes or so we're stopping. Also at night I make sure my feet are bone dry, apply a foot balm (Hydropel) and put on dry socks for sleep.
The majority of the trails look similar to this
That was the Gila in a nutshell, then once we got further north, into the snow, that was the 3 days crossing San Pedro Parks Wilderness.
The Gila was over 180 crossings in about 4 days. The deepest fast crossing was bellybutton deep (on me) and frankly scared the F outta me- there was a rapids with a strainer just below. After I got across Cyn said, yeah that’s not gonna work for me! so we figured out a way for her to do some minor cliff scrambling to get to a better spot (which obviously I could’ve done too).
San Pedro was so wet I don’t think I can describe it in a way folks other than MT will believe or understand. A massive spring snowmelt is bonkers to be in the middle of. There would be running water… UNDER the snow that you’d posthole into. Every wrinkle was a creek, every depression a swamp, every meadow an adventure of icy water and freezing muck, every creek a small river, and if there’s been any actual rivers they would’ve likely stopped us. Plus we crossed during a storm cycle and got hailed, rained, sleeted,, and snowed on all with fierce winds and lightning.
As pertains to this thread in both cases anything leather (or goretex) would be a disaster.
What type of socks are you guys using? I use merino wool but maybe a synthetic material would be better for drying out.
When I’m sheep hunting I will wear my trail shoes for crossing creeks with no socks and then change back into boots. But if I have a lot of crossings to do I will just leave the trail shoes on. My starting pack weight for a sheep hunt is 65-70 lbs and I’m comfortable using my shoes on a decent trail, but I think I’d be uncomfortable in rough terrain carrying a heavy pack, but I’m definitely open to trying them more in different situations.
My sock game was not great and could use improvement. Started with Wright 2-layer socks to hopefully mitigate blisters, and thin REI socks. I was still using the Wright socks in the Gila canyon and beyond (so at about 350 miles) but they were pretty used up by then. They are a consumable…. The REI brand light socks, don’t remember the exact description, are good socks, but I’m sure there’s better. And then I had a pair of slightly heavier REI socks I was using for sleep socks, until I had to press them into regular duty as other things wore out. Had 3 fresh pairs in the Grants resupply box, which was nice. If I was doing the trip over I’d have had more fresh socks in my various resupply boxes, don’t know why I was being miserly as they are mission critical. One thing about NM- no water. So no washing socks in the creek, because there’s no creek. At some times our socks were flat filthy, for days on end. There was nothing to be done about it.
As to wet feet my takeaway was that I had no idea that it was possible to do big miles day after day after in wet shoes…. but you can. I would’ve thought it would make “bad things” happen to my feet, but it didn’t. You get used to squelching along.
![[Linked Image from imgur.com]](https://imgur.com/0IH90gZ.jpg)
