Minnesota Star #29 - Dry Feet? Traditional Cache
Minnesota Star #29 - Dry Feet?
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(regular)
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Your feet might get wet while trying to find this geocache! 
Keeping your feet dry while geocaching is important. Wet feet can be cold, lead to blisters, or even trench foot in extreme cases. Appropriate footwear is vital! Start by choosing the right type of footwear; boots with high sides will help keep water out. Waterproof boots are a good idea too, if you know you are going to be in an area likely to be wet. Gaiters are another good option to keeping your whole foot dry. They attach to your boot, go up over your pants and some are waterproof. If your socks do get wet, having a spare pair to change into can be the difference between finding more caches, and going home.
What can happen if you don't keep your feet dry?
"Trench foot is a medical condition caused by prolonged exposure of the feet to damp, unsanitary, and cold conditions. It is one of many immersion foot syndromes. The use of the word trench in the name of this condition is a reference to trench warfare, mainly associated with World War I. Unlike frostbite, trench foot does not require freezing temperatures and can occur in temperatures up to 60° Fahrenheit (about 16° Celsius). The condition can occur with as little as thirteen hours' exposure. The mechanism of tissue damage is not fully understood. Excessive sweating or hyperhidrosis has long been regarded as a contributory cause.
Trench foot can be prevented by keeping the feet clean, warm and dry. It was also discovered in World War I that a key preventive measure was regular foot inspections. Soldiers would be paired and each made responsible for the feet of the other. They would generally apply whale oil to prevent trench foot. If left to their own devices, soldiers might neglect to take off their own boots and socks to dry their feet each day, but if it were the responsibility of another this became less likely. Later on in the war soldiers were fighting less and less in trenches, which began to decrease instances of trench foot.
Trench foot was first noted in Napoleon's army in 1812. It was during the retreat from Russia that it became prevalent, and was first described by French army surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey. It was a particular problem for soldiers in trench warfare during the winters of World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. Trench foot made a reappearance in the British Army during the Falklands War in 1982. The causes were the cold, wet conditions and insufficiently waterproof DMS boots. Some people were even reported to have developed trench foot at the 1998 and 2007 Glastonbury Festivals, the 2009 and 2013 Leeds Festivals as well as the 2012 Download Festival, as a result of the sustained cold, wet, and muddy conditions at the events." ~Wikipedia
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Additional Hints
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