I’ve never carried camp shoes and swore I never would.  Personally, I never felt the need to wear anything around camp besides the shoes I hike in.  However, we’re staying in two different hostels this year and I figured that it would only be proper to do my part in keeping things as clean as possible.  Having stayed in hostels before, I was fortunate enough to arrive with relatively clean, dry shoes but was sure that stomping around in wet, muddy shoes would not be appreciated.  Since we’ve had so much rain this year and figuring that we could very well see more once we hit the trail, I thought I should come up with something.

Crocs have long been popular and there are various other options such as sandals and water shoes but, generally speaking, you’re looking at somewhere around 8 oz…probably more.  Seemed way too heavy for the limited time I would need them.  If I was thru hiking, it might be a different story.  You have town stays where you might need to do a bit of walking around to resupply, wash clothes, etc. while giving your hiking shoes time to thoroughly dry out.  But carrying 1/2 lb or more for two nights in hostels just didn’t make sense to me.

I’m always amazed at the ingenious things people come up with.  I saw this one on backpackinglight.com and thought I would try it out:  the Foam Camp Shoe!

I guess this idea has been around for quite some time but it seems I’m always behind the times.  Anyway, most people use a chunk of a blue foam sleeping pad like those available at Walmart.  I happened to have a sizable piece of 3/8″ thick shoulder strap foam left from a backpack project (from Quest Outfitters) so I used that.  Loonie traced my feet, leaving a couple of centimeters extra all the way around and added a “wing” to either side.  Fold these over, duct tape them together and “Bam”….camp shoes.  Or whatever you call ’em.  Mine came out to just 1.2 oz for the pair!  Awesome!  They look pretty stupid but who cares. These should do the trick.

More to come…