Injuries While Barefoot: The Elephant in the Room
Okay, everybody. Bring it back in for a minute. We need to talk candidly about something.
For as much as many others and I promote the barefoot lifestyle and talk about how low-risk it is, a very real possibility is that we willactually get hurt because we’re not wearing protective shoes.
We can even get hurt wearing minimalist footwear when something might have protected us better. The general public believes that catastrophic injuries to bare feet are waiting in every aisle of every store and under every table of every restaurant. We know that’s not true, but injury risks still exist. It sucks.
Trapped barefoot in Collins Inlet
The concept of Collins Inlet Expedition was fantastic.
Collins Inlet was the North Shore of Phillip Edward Island in Georgian Bay, Ontario Canada. The area has a rich history which just begs to be explored.
The inlet itself was frequented by some of the founders of modern Canada. It was major canoe route used by barefoot First Nations peoples, and then was host to pirates. (Yarr!)
The guide books and blogs on the internet had phenomenal photographs. The area is supposed to have remnants of this forgotten era. This includes Petroglyphs, shipwrecks, old docks, and even a ghost town!
Arriving into Killarney Provincial Park, I paid the extremely high parking fees ($100.00 to leave my Jeep in the parking lot for 7 days, not including camping fees!) and drove to where I drop off the Jeep.
Mohawk Island adventure
Mohawk Island is a small, mysterious island which lay 2km off the coast of Lake Erie.
I visited this island for the first time in 2008 after staring in wonder at the island from the shore for many years.
One beautiful, calm morning I set-sail in my old aluminium canoe in hopes to make the 2km paddle from shore to the island, which was shrouded in morning fog.
The trip down from the car to the shore was fairly simple. Hard, cool asphalt stood between myself and the steep bank. The asphalt was very rocky as it is on country roads. The stones were fairly sharp, but easy to navigate with my tough, weathered feet.
A visit to Kettle Cave
The Kettle Cave video was filmed in early April of 2010. It was a cold day and the snow had just melted. If you look carefully at the barefoot walking scenes around 0:55 you can see ice and frost on the ground still.
My goal was to find this cave known as “Kettle Cave” located in Niagara-on-the-lake. I filmed a good percentage of this video barefoot, but if you look closely around 1:38 of the video, you will see me descend the rock face wearing black Vibram Fivefingers. The reason I was wearing them was because there were ice deposits in the leaves still from winter. The Fiverfingers did not last long before I threw them in my back and went the rest of the day barefoot.
A visit to Frosting Cave
A visit to Frosting Cave
Along the Niagara Escarpments lies dozens if not hundreds of caves. Most of these caves are small, and uncharted.
This was the first of my barefoot adventure videos. I teamed up with Jeff from Ontario Caves.com and found the entrance to the cave quite easily.
It was a cold day in the Niagara Region, I was fairly new at shooting adventure videos. The largest challenge I had with this video was the cold.
April in Ontario, Canada can be a very challenging time for barefooters. The ground may have looked warm and dry, but it was quite cold and wet. It was sunny out, but still very cold.
