How To Dry Hiking Boots Quickly

How to Dry Hiking Boots Quickly. One of the most important things to do when hiking is to know how to keep your feet dry while you are on the trails. 

During the cold weather months, or while trekking in snowy terrain or river wading, we will need to keep our boots dry, keep our boots warm, and feel that our feet can stay dry and warm.

When our feet are in wet boots, that moisture is transferred to the socks, and we are more likely to develop painful blisters. That’s why something we need to know is How to Dry Hiking Boots Quickly, and this is what we will talk about in our article.

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How To Dry Hiking Boots Overnight

How To Dry Hiking Boots Overnight. A couple of years ago my husband and I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and although we considered ourselves expert hikers, we learned a few more tricks that were recommended to us at the PCT stops, which really improved our drying time. We’ve updated this article, including what we learned at the PCT about How to Dry Hiking Boots Quickly.

Mother nature, unfortunately, will not always cooperate with you during snowy or rainy weather and near river crossing or river wading. This might lead to waterlogged and damped hiking boots. This would certainly make you wonder how to dry hiking boots quickly (or as quickly as possible) to get back on the trail ASAP.

So, what should a hiker really do when they have a wet set of hiking boots? Well, in this article, we give you some amazing tips and tricks on how to dry hiking boots faster than usual to help you get back on trails with dry and warm boots.

However, it is important to remember that even if your hiking boot dries 60 to 70 percent, it is surely better than wet and waterlogged hiking boots.

If we were at home, we would certainly provide faster drying by using a fan or even a few tumbles in the dryer. However, in the wild, we have to figure out how to continue the trail quickly. Let’s continue with our recommended Step-By-Step How To Dry Hiking Boots Quickly

Step-By-Step How To Dry Hiking Boots Quickly

Now, let’s check out the Step-By-Step How To Dry Hiking Boots Quickly.

1. Prepping Your Hiking Boots For Drying Quickly. Remove the insoles and laces of your hiking boots to help them dry up faster.
2. Let the laces and insoles air dry separately from the boots.
3. Then, use a towel to dry off your hiking boots to remove water from the inside and also dry them on the outside.
4. Set a campfire and find an optimal distance to place your hiking boots to dry them. 
5. If you have a towel that you can use, it will be convenient to place the towel inside the hiking boots and remove all the moisture that your towel can absorb. Once your towel can no longer absorb any more moisture, you will move on to the next step.
6. If you do not have a towel available or if your towel can no longer absorb any more moisture from the inside of your boots, using paper such as newspaper and/or a kitchen roll is a very good option to dry your boots quickly.
7. Filling your boots with any of these materials is a fantastic technique to absorb extra moisture if you have them on hand. Honestly, any material that is absorbent would do the trick. However, the two most popular materials used by hikers nowadays are newspapers and/or kitchen roll paper.
8. Remove sheets of newspaper and roll them into little balls to fill your boots with newspaper. Crumple up newspaper or kitchen roll sheets and start stuffing them inside the boots. Because water may not be absorbed efficiently if the rolls are too tight, they should be relatively slack.
9. Making holes in the newspaper before scrunching it is another approach. Insert the paper or kitchen roll all the way inside the boot’s leg hole. Again, don’t squish it too firmly, since the paper requires some breathing area to absorb the water.
10. Change the kitchen roll or newspaper after a few hours to eliminate the first load of wetness.
11. After removing some water with the towel, newspaper, and/or kitchen roll, place your hiking boots near a campfire or stove, you should be in a good position. However, it may be not possible to set a fire. So, here is the tip I learned when I was on the Pacific Crest Trail: Hand warmers to dry hiking boots.
12. Using hand warmers is another great way to dry your hiking boots. You can place a hand warmer into each of the hiking boots and let them stay in the boots overnight. You would wake up and find dry and warm hiking boots as soon as you wake up in the morning.

Note about drying hiking boots by using a campfire and stoves: If we were not in a hurry, we would recommend not using heat sources to dry the hiking boots. Because when we heat the boots with a high heat source, such as a fireplace, campfire, wood stove, radiator, heater, etc., the adhesives are weakened and the leather and materials such as Gore-Tex age prematurely. However, we are in a hurry, looking to get back on the trail. So, resorting to a stove can be a good idea to ensure quick drying.

The hiking boots can often get damaged due to exposure to the extreme heat coming from the campfire. The heat could potentially melt the rubber sole of the hiking boots. So, it is never a good option to place your boots near the camping fire to dry them. However, consider the situation we have mentioned at the beginning of the article. We are on the trail, we are desperately needing to dry the hiking boots quickly to get back to the trail.

If you were able to do all these steps, your hiking boots were at least 70-80% dry overnight, allowing you to continue on your way the next morning.

For those of you who are attracted to hiking the PCT, also know that once in the PCT resupply stop, you may have access to a boot dryer or change your boots and continue. Although a boot dryer does not make the right fit for every occasion, it is one of the easiest and fastest ways to dry boots.

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