"I bought a few pairs, thinking to my self, aren't socks just socks? Well needless to say, I was very wrong..."
I am the owner of Moab Canyon Tours, where we primarily focus on guiding some of the hardest canyoneering routes in southern Utah. For the past few years one of the biggest issues we have had for our guides is the incredible amount of wear and tear that canyoneering puts on your body as well as its gear. One of the major issues is the fact that you are constantly transitioning between hiking, climbing, scrambling, and traversing through water and mud, and this can quite literally destroy your feet in a very short time. Last year, in an attempt to combat the amount of rest days that the guides were needing to take in order to let their bodies repair themselves, we decided that we had to figure out an answer.
Years ago, I decided to hike the Appalachian trail, and when doing so, as many through-hikers know, keeping your feet happy is one of the most important things that you need to focus on. After a few weeks and a couple hundred miles in, I learned the importance of this, and was forced to take 2 weeks off to allow the golf ball sized blisters on my feet to properly heal. While doing so, I started looking into what would be the best way to prevent this from happening again, and set out to find the answer. Luckily for me there was a major outdoor store in the town that I was staying in. After just a few min speaking with one of the people who worked there, he told me that the answer was a brand of socks that I personally knew little about, yet many through-hikers swore by, FITS Socks. In trusting his judgement, I bought a few pairs, thinking to my self, aren't socks just socks? Well needless to say, I was very wrong, from the time I started back on the trail until the time I finished, I do not believe I had a SINGLE actual blister, and needless to say, I was convinced.
Coming full circle now, seeing the issue that had been going on with my guides getting destroyed in these canyons day in and day out, I bought them all a few pairs to see if it would help combat the problem. Some of my guides were a little skeptical at first as I was years ago, some even told me that they already wore wool socks, and that that was not the cure. Well, needless to say, they were wrong. From the time some of my guides even put the socks on (without even putting their shoes on yet) they started telling me that they fit better than any other sock they had ever tried on, and how amazed they were that socks could even be that comfortable.
Now days, I regularly see my guides in FITS socks, especially when they come in knowing that they are going to have a long, hard day, or be in a difficult canyon that will put them through their paces. They seem as convinced now as I was years ago that FITS Socks are the best socks on the market.