Your feet do a lot for you and before you start hiking and after you’ve hiked you should treat them well.
Let’s start at your toes:
Trim those daggers!
Yes, you with the impossibly long toenails. Trim them.
Long toenails jab into your sock and worse, the toe box of your boot. Why you might not think that those funky long toenails your sporting cause a problem – they do and not just for the rest of us when you post pictures on your Facebook page.
If you don’t keep it nice and tidy then you are going to start walking oddly to compensate for the discomfort but here is the rub (pun totally intended) you won’t notice because it’s not like the toenails grew that long over night. Think of it like the frog in water. Toss a frog in boiling water and he hops right out. Put him in a pot of warm water and slowly increased the temperature and he stays and gets cooked. (Before you write me saying how horrible I am, it is an analogy for the love of Pete.) Long story short – trim your nails.
Feeling a Callous?
Well stop being so hard and sand those calluses down. I can hear die-hards screaming from here. Yes, sand your calluses but not down to the raw skin — durrr.
If you don’t, you are just asking for a nice big fat blister. You can use a pumice stone but stay away from those sanders that resemble something you might shredded potatoes with.
Massage
At night, give your feet a massage with some cocoa butter lotion — just don’t do this in bear country because the lotion smells just like chocolate.
And, you don’t want a bear snacking on your well-groomed feet.
Prevent Blisters
Here are some great ideas from Backpacker.com