two weeks with planned wet feet in Alaska last year just drying my feet at night and putting wet socks back on in the morning. Temps were from 40-50 most days and down to 20-30 at night. I didn’t have any real problems but my Salomons were soaked and didn’t dry the whole trip.
Yeah, been there, done that, for 4+ weeks in Europe. Wet feet did not present a problem. After all, right under the thin outer layer of dead skin cells, your feet are quite wet!
BUT: my wife’s shoes had a wide leather trim or top surface. The leather got totally soaked and leached of all conditioning. When we finally hit dry weather the leather dried out and SHRANK. This was sufficiently bad that my wife had bleeding inside her feet from the increased compression and internal friction, with the blood pooling inside the soles, in just one day. Yeah, I’m serious. It was BAD.We were both very very startled.
I stripped all the insides out of the shoes and gave her just thin nylon socks to replace her thick wool Darn Tough Vermonts. That gave her enough room that the next day she could hobble gently to the next town, where we were able to replace her shoes.
Bottom line here: never again will we buy any shoes which have any leather in them, not even trim. We will only buy shoes which are totally synthetic – and won’t shrink.
Sizing: yep, up at least a half size, and check that the shoes are wide enough! Do NOT allow the fit to restrict the blood flow.
As for the GTX socks – we have tried that idea. Seriously bad as well. Utterly soggy prune feet – far, far worse than ordinary wet socks. Steam-cooked feet – ugh. We won’t go there again either. Although we do use GTX shoes when walking in dry snow (or snowshoeing). But our socks stay dry then.
Cheers
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