There are certain things nobody puts in the inspirational thru-hiking montage. Sunrise from a mountain summit. Trail family laughing around a campfire. Walking through fields of wildflowers. Standing triumphantly at the terminus. Then there's the thru-hiker chafe walk.
Spend enough time around long-distance hikers and you'll recognize it immediately. Five steps, butt-cheek grab, ten steps, one leg kicks awkwardly sideways. Then there's the constant tugging and pulling at the shorts. Pull one leg down. Pull the waistband up. Rearrange something. Walk another twenty yards. Repeat.
Sometimes you'll watch someone perform this routine for miles. Nobody needs to ask what's happening. That's chafe. And despite how ridiculous it can look from twenty yards away, chafing can go from mildly annoying to absolutely miserable remarkably quickly. I've seen thru-hikers chafed badly enough that they were bleeding. I've dealt with it myself in places where nobody particularly wants to discuss having a skin problem.
Although thru-hikers will discuss it. Thru-hikers will discuss absolutely anything. Spend enough time together and eventually someone you met three days ago is standing in a hostel explaining the condition of their inner thighs, butt crack or some other normally private piece of anatomy in extraordinary detail. That's trail community.
So let's talk about chafing. Because unlike rain, mosquitoes, rocks, roots and a surprising number of other thru-hiking annoyances, chafing is often something you can actually do something about. And the most important lesson is simple: Deal with it early.
What Is Chafing?
At its simplest, chafing is skin irritation caused by repeated friction. Skin rubs against skin. Skin rubs against clothing. Clothing rubs against skin. Add thousands of repetitive movements and things can get ugly. Now add sweat. Then rain. Then humidity. Then salt from dried sweat. Then the same clothing you wore yesterday. Then walk another 20 miles. Congratulations. You've created an excellent environment for turning a tiny irritated spot into something that makes every step of your day considerably less enjoyable.
And thru-hiking involves quite a few steps. That's why something that might be a minor annoyance during a three-mile run can become a legitimate problem on a long-distance trail. You don't stop using the irritated area. You wake up tomorrow and rub it another 40,000 times.
Thigh Rub Is Real. Very, Very Real.
The butt-cheek grab and weird leg kick can be funny. Severe chafing isn't. I've seen hikers whose inner thighs were chafed badly enough that they were bleeding. Thigh rub is real. Very, very real.
Your thighs rubbing together once isn't the problem. Your thighs rubbing together tens of thousands of times while you walk all day is. Now add sweat. Add salt. Add humidity. Add wet shorts. Add underwear that bunches up or a seam that happens to sit in exactly the wrong place. Then do it again tomorrow. A little irritation in the morning can become raw skin by the afternoon, and once that happens, you still have the unfortunate problem of needing those same two thighs to rub past each other with every step you take.
This is why the early warning signs matter. If you find yourself tugging at your shorts every few minutes, pulling one leg down, changing your stride, kicking a leg sideways or reaching back for the increasingly familiar butt-cheek grab, your body is already telling you something. Don't wait until you're bleeding to listen.
Stop. Figure out what's rubbing. Clean it. Dry it. Reduce the friction. Change your clothing if that's the problem. Deal with the little problem before another 20,000 steps turn it into a big one. Because once thigh rub gets bad enough, there is no clever ultralight solution. Every step hurts. And walking is unfortunately a fairly significant component of thru-hiking.
By Virginia, I Learned What Chafe Actually Meant
By the time I reached Virginia on my Appalachian Trail thru-hike, I was dealing with some pretty severe chafing. And when I say chafing, my butt cheeks were the least of my worries. The problem was considerably more centralized.
Eventually, I confided in a new friend on trail who happened to be a Green Beret on his first thru-hike. He laughed. Then he gave me some of the most useful thru-hiking advice I received on the entire trail. First, he told me I needed to do a better job cleaning the sweat out of my butt crack every night before bed and letting everything dry out. Then came the part I've remembered ever since. In his words, not mine: "Grease your O-ring."
Those are now my words too. We were in town, so I stocked up on baby wipes and Gold Bond Healing Ointment. The Gold Bond would eventually become one of only two items I carry in my entire backpacking first-aid kit. But the bigger lesson wasn't simply to put ointment on chafe. I had misunderstood what was causing it.
It wasn't that I wasn't cleaning myself after playing cat hole putt putt. I was. The problem was everything happening during the other ten or twelve hours of the day. I was hiking. I was sweating. That sweat was accumulating in an area with plenty of moisture, heat and friction and very little airflow. Then I'd get into camp without doing enough to clean it, dry it and give the skin a chance to recover before doing the exact same thing again tomorrow. Day after day. Mile after mile. Eventually my skin had enough.
Once I started cleaning the area thoroughly at the end of the hiking day, letting it dry and, as instructed, greasing the O-ring, the problem became much more manageable. That experience completely changed how I think about chafing. We tend to treat chafe as purely a friction problem. My shorts are rubbing. My thighs are rubbing together. I need some anti-chafe balm. Sometimes that absolutely is the problem.
But on a thru-hike, moisture management and hygiene can be just as important as friction management. You can spend all day sweating into places where sweat has nowhere particularly useful to go. You might hike ten hours before taking those clothes off. Then you wake up and do it again. Eventually, simply adding more lubricant without cleaning and drying the area is missing part of the problem.
So here is the Green Beret chafing protocol, passed down to me somewhere in Virginia and now passed along to you: Clean it. Dry it. Grease your O-ring. There are considerably more sophisticated ways to explain chafe prevention. I'm not convinced there are more memorable ones.
Learn to Recognize the Chafe Dance
That weird walk at the beginning of this article isn't just funny. It's information. The butt-cheek grab. The sideways leg kick. The constant tugging at shorts. The hiker who keeps reaching down and trying to move a seam somewhere else. Something is rubbing. And chances are, that hiker already knows it.
This is where people make the mistake of continuing to walk. Maybe if I pull my shorts down a little. Maybe if I move this seam. Maybe if I walk differently. Maybe it'll stop. Then they walk another five miles while performing increasingly elaborate adjustments every thirty seconds. Stop walking.
Take the backpack off. Figure out what's rubbing. Clean the area if necessary. Dry it. Adjust the clothing. Apply whatever you use to reduce friction. Then start walking again. Five minutes now is better than two days of doing the butt-cheek grab every six steps. Because by the time your hiking gait has changed to accommodate the chafe, your body has been telling you to deal with the problem for quite a while.
Prevention Is Easier Than Treatment
This is probably the single most important practical lesson. You feel something rubbing. You notice a hot spot. Something starts feeling slightly irritated. Your first instinct might be: Eh. It's fine. So you keep walking. Five miles later, it's not fine. Thru-hikers are particularly good at doing this because stopping is annoying. You have momentum. Your hiking partners are moving. You just put your backpack on. The next shelter is only four miles away. You'll deal with it there.
Except those four miles might represent another eight or ten thousand opportunities for the same piece of skin to rub against the same thing causing the problem. Deal with chafe when you first notice it. The earlier you intervene, the easier the problem usually is to manage.
Moisture Changes Everything
Friction gets most of the attention when we talk about chafing. But my Virginia experience taught me how important moisture can be. Thru-hikers produce a lot of it. You sweat for hours. Your clothing gets wet. Maybe it rains. Maybe it's humid enough that nothing really dries. Now damp fabric and damp skin are rubbing together tens of thousands of times.
This is one reason clothing choice matters beyond whether something feels comfortable when you first put it on. How does it perform after six hours? How does it fit when saturated? Does it bunch? Does it sag? Does a seam move into the wrong place? Does it dry? You aren't going to remain perfectly dry during a thru-hike. But you can pay attention to what stays wet, what causes friction and what happens to your skin as a result.
Your Clothing Can Be the Problem
Sometimes the culprit really is your clothing. A pair of shorts can feel fantastic standing in an outfitter. That tells you relatively little about how they'll feel after 25 miles. Fit matters. Seams matter. Fabric matters. Underwear matters. Your body matters. And sometimes a piece of clothing that works perfectly for somebody else simply doesn't work for you.
This is where hikers occasionally make another mistake. They keep wearing the thing causing the problem. Maybe the shorts were expensive. Maybe the internet loves them. Maybe they worked perfectly for the first 300 miles. Maybe they weigh three ounces and scored beautifully on your spreadsheet. Your thighs do not care.
If something repeatedly rubs you raw, you have acquired useful information. Change something. Sometimes that means changing underwear. Sometimes it means changing shorts. Sometimes it means adjusting how something fits. Sometimes it means getting rid of a piece of gear you really wanted to work. Your skin gets the final vote.
Clean It. Dry It. Then Deal With the Friction.
This became my routine. At the end of the hiking day, clean the areas that have spent the previous ten hours marinating in sweat. Then let them dry. Actually dry. That can mean spending a little time at camp allowing air to reach places that have spent the entire day trapped underneath clothing. Thru-hikers tend to lose normal standards of modesty fairly quickly anyway. Use that to your advantage.
Then address the friction. For me, Gold Bond Healing Ointment became the answer. Other hikers use different anti-chafe balms, ointments or products. I'm less interested in declaring a universal winner than in the principle. If you know where you chafe, have a system for dealing with it. And use that system before the problem becomes severe.
The First-Aid Kit Has to Solve Problems You Actually Have
In 5,000 miles, Gold Bond Healing Ointment eventually became one of only two "first aid" items I carry in my entire backpacking first-aid kit. That probably sounds absurdly minimal to some people. But it reflects something experience taught me about backpacking gear in general. Carry things that solve problems you actually encounter.
50% of my first aid kit.
I know I can chafe. I know what happens when I ignore it. I know what works for me. Therefore, the ointment earns its place. That tiny amount of carried weight can prevent a problem capable of making every single step miserable. That's worth its weight.
Your Mileage Goal Does Not Care About Your Crotch
You planned 25 miles. Your inner thighs did not participate in the planning meeting. Neither did your butt crack. If you develop a problem at Mile 14, you now have new information. This is one of the recurring lessons of long-distance hiking. Plans are useful until reality gives you better information. Then you adjust.
Pushing through serious chafing to hit an arbitrary mileage number is a great way to turn one uncomfortable afternoon into several uncomfortable days. The trail will still be there tomorrow. Take care of the equipment you can't replace at the next outfitter. You.
Figure Out Why You're Chafing
Once you get the immediate problem under control, ask the more useful question. Why did I chafe? Was it the shorts? The underwear? Too much sweat and not enough drying time? A seam in the wrong place? Did your body simply respond to the cumulative effects of repeated friction over a long day? Understanding what caused the problem is the first step toward preventing it from happening again.
