Archive for the ‘Personal Experiences’ Category

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.

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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.

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I’ve been told on several occasions to be careful how I promote barefoot activity. The concerned persons say I might end up liable if people end up hurting themselves. This is a completely backwards and thoroughly confusing concept to me.

How is it that our society’s collective thinking has gotten so twisted that we now believe that I could be liable if people use their feet as nature intended and that shoe companies are free from liability for weakness, stiffness, skin conditions and other ailments that are caused or exacerbated by their products? Do you see how topsy turvy that thinking is?

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One of the most frustrating things for me as a barefooter is that so many of the claims criticizing barefoot activity are made without the critics giving any thought to what they are actually saying. I know that the following observations are a bit snarky and pointed, but they’re worth thinking about:

Lots of people have told me that they successfully went barefoot “all the time” as a kid, playing on rocks and gravel, in dirt, and around all kinds of dangerous things. Then they insinuate that the flat, smooth surfaces of the adult world (e.g. concrete, asphalt, tile, linolium and carpet) are too dangerous for going barefoot.

Hmm…

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I can’t really say I am an accomplished “winter barefooter” by any account since I’m very much a summer type of guy through and through. However, living in Toronto, Canada, I must endure long and cold winters every year. And, every year, I do at least a minimum amount of barefooting outside to keep both my sanity and my feet in some sort of a decent shape for when the warmer weather comes.

We had our first significant snow fall last night and throughout the day today so I decided I had to go out for a few minutes and enjoy some of the white stuff before it gets all hard, slippery and dirty.

I took two videos with my cellphone and I thought I’d share them here – please excuse the poor lighting on the first video, since it was taken last night at about 1 am. The Sound is not the greatest either – I’m still figuring things out with this new phone.

In both cases the temperature was about -5°C with a windchill factor of about -12°C. Overall, the experience felt good; my only wish is that I could do longer barefoot outings in the winter. I guess, like anything else, I need to get used to it and build some tolerance as I go.

Here are the videos, I hope you enjoy them:

Dec. 6, 2010 – 1:30 am

Dec. 6, 2010 – 2:45 pm

Keep ‘em bare, keep ‘em happy.

Barefoot Moe