How to Treat Blisters on your Feet When Hiking

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Kate I’m with Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com and we’re going to be talking about hiking today. When you’re hiking blisters are going to be common thing you’re dealing with. You ideally want to be dealing with your blisters when they start off as hot spots. If there’s any around on your foot that feels hot and slightly burning, you should stop, take your boots off and treat that immediately. You don’t want your blisters to become open and oozing and bloody because that’s just an infection problem. If you have hot spots and your boots fit snuggly, there’s a couple options you can do to remedy it. One is moleskin, this is nice, it takes the friction from the blister and puts it on the outside of this so your boot will be rubbing against this instead of skin, which is what creates blister. You can use duct tape if you don’t have moleskin, that works pretty well. If it turns into a blister that has liquid in the onside, duct tape isn’t a really good option. If you do have a blister that’s bleeding or just a bubble, you’re going to want to take moleskin and you want to cut a ___ to put the moleskin around the blister. Blisters commonly happen on your heels or on your toes and you don’t want them to become bad and gross. So you deal with them early. You want to treat your blisters and take moleskin and clean them out as often as possible whether it’s three times a day or two times a day. If your blisters are infected, you should stop, take a day break, get off the trail, open them up and clean them. There’s also blister band-aids, which are really nice because they’re cushy and jelly, they’re easy to pack and this does the same thing as moleskin except it’s much more patted and it’s specific for blisters. All these things have to fit underneath your shoe or underneath your sandal and ideally you want to make sure your blisters get aired out and healed before you continue on."