I always use athletic tape. The good sports stuff. Better adhesive than duct tape. Will very slowly come lose but after a few days you can reapply. Would recommend. And thin enough that it doesn’t change the fit of your shoes.
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I always use athletic tape. The good sports stuff. Better adhesive than duct tape. Will very slowly come lose but after a few days you can reapply. Would recommend. And thin enough that it doesn’t change the fit of your shoes.
I’ve had a 100% success rate avoiding blisters with a combination of Leukotape cover roll stretch directly against skin on the heel bone spur and then standard Leukotape (basically athletic tape) on top of the thin cover roll stretch stuff. You have to be a little careful putting on your socks so as to not have the edges of the tape roll up, but once you get it right, it’ll stay for a few days and come off easily when you’re done with it.
The tape seems pricey but I’ve been using the same roll for years, and now the heel bone spurs are basically gone (switching away from the Hawx XTD also helped…)
While touring, do you drag your foot or push off with your toes?
Thinking about it, I'm probably draggin' my foot more often than pushing off with the toes...however, over the course of my 35+ years of ski touring, I've thrown in a lot of approach/deproach hiking, bootpacking up steep coolers, some technical scrambling, summer snow/firn snow hiking/french techniquing, etc.... where all the other techniques involved pushing off with the toes and torquing the foot at more odd angles. Definitely more than just shortened gait shuffling/sliding that I do while ski touring proper.
Have you ever had blisters or hot spots? How often? What liners do you use?
In the past few decades I'd say I've rarely to never had any real blister issues with my ski touring boots. I never tape my heels, just go hundo bareback in thin liner socks. I have kinda protruding heel bones with just a hint of spur, and definitely got/get blisters from hiking in certain hiking boots when moving for longer durations. Ski touring shells that I would have gone through over that time span were Dynafit tourlite 4s, Dynafit all terrain, Garmont cosmos, Garmont megaride, Garmont axon, Garmont delirium, Scarpa maestrale o.g., Dynafit mercury, Dynafit Vulcan, Dynafit hoji free 110, Dynafit hoji, Tecnica zero g tour pro. I recall in the earliest Dynafits with absolutely atrocious stock liners, i had issues with heel bone smashing into heel pocket plastic that caused excruciating bursitis pain on my left heel; but even then there were no blisters. After switching to Intuition liners in the era of my Dynafit all terrain boots and forward, I never experienced that again. I guess going with the thickest foam available for every model I purchased, helped provide both the correct shape of heel pocket and adequate cushioning to prevent bursitis re injury. I've been running the Intuition high volume luxury liners since they appeared on the option block. Before then, I can't remember the model names but i went through a few pairs for sure.
I wore the shit outta my Intuitions and got hundreds of thousands of vertical feet outta each pair. One trick to increase longetivity was cut out all the liner material in the heel pocket area after wear holes and fraying would begin from wearing out....the holes in the fabric would cause some bunching and this ridge would create hot spots, but, realizing what's happening and addressing the issue immediately prevented future blistering. The liners were good for years after the mod.
'Nuther thing is, I've used waffer thin liner socks for eons...dunno if this helps in the 'not getting blisters' department, but they seem to work for me, and, damn are they durable...i'm getting decades of use out of em and though they've lost some elasticity, they haven't worn through anywhere...and I was probably averaging 60 to 80 ski touring days a year since the late 90's.
Just occured to me... my ski touring stride is pretty short compared to others, which works for me cause I typically prefer a steep skin track with short, rest stepping strides (if snow conditions/terrain, etc..allow for it) With the thick, stiff Intuition high volume luxury liners, I biomechanically can't flex the boot rearward enough to capitalize on it's full rear ROM potential...thinking about it, this may cause less flexing and maybe downward pressure micro bunching of the liner foam towards the top of the heel....wonder if this contributes to less blister potential or not?