Body Glide is the best kept secret to prevent chafing while hiking

4 Easy Ways to Prevent CHAFING While Hiking

Backpacking and spending time in the outdoors can be some of the best weekends of your life - or some of the worst. In this post, we are going to tackle one of the problems bigger problems I and other bigger guys have which is chaffing.

Chafing, as defined by by WebMD is “annoying and often painful result of skin rubbing against skin or clothing. Chafing can occur anywhere on your body, but the thighs, groin, underarms, and nipples are particularly vulnerable.”

Especially on linger hikes, there is nothing that can turn a hike from heaven to hell faster than chub rub. In my experience with trying to solve this problem, I have found 4 tactics that combined have nearly eliminated the chaffing I had experienced.

1

The first step you need to take is to remove all cotton from you active backpacking clothes that you plan on sweating and moving in while wearing. ALL. OF. IT. Cotton as clothing material is soft, comfortable, lightweight, breathable…until it gets wet and starts rubbing on your skin. Unlike synthetic fabrics and wool, once wet, cotton takes a long time to dry and does not wick moisture well. What this means for skin is a damp, abrasive fabrics rubbing on over and over again in the same spot. This, in additional to being uncomfortable from staying damp from sweat/rain, will exacerbate and accelerate chaffing you are prone to.

Sid note: Another reason to ditch cotton is that is loses its insulating properties when it gets wet making warmer weather trips uncomfortable and colder weather trips deadly. More posts to come on staying warm here.

Don’t get excited about looking for a single magic bullet, there are no perfect fabrics and skin – on – skin isn’t pleasant either, but we’ll get to those next.

Once you have banished all your cotton backing clothes to yard work duty, you will need to replace them with synthetic fabrics and/or wool. In order from bottom to top I would recommend the following:

Socks – Darn Tough or Smartwool

Shorts – Patagonia Nine Trails 8”

Underwear – Under Armour HeatGear Armour 2.0 6-inch Compression Shorts

Shirt – Patagonia Capilene Cool Lightweight Shirt

Base Layers - Patagonia Capilene Air Base Layer Bottoms; Patagonia Capilene Thermal Weight Zip-Neck Top

Pants - REI Co-op Classic Sahara Convertible Pants

2

This leads us to our second BGB top tip – wear compression shorts or similar as your bottom base layer. If you are unfamiliar, compression shorts are a bottom base layer similar in shape to boxer briefs that is usually made of synthetic fabrics and elastics so that it wears tight against the body and in some cases compresses the muscles in the upper legs to offer athletic benefits as fatigue sets in. In solving this specific problem, I am going to ignore these other benefits for now. Compression shorts that abide by the first rule (not made of cotton) will help with wicking moisture away from the skin and drying out quickly. They improve upon this benefit by acting as a barrier, like socks for your thighs, to prevent anything rubbing on your skin directly between your legs. Previously, I listed my preferred shorts but I recommend trying out several on shorter day hikes before committing. I have also tried other brands of hiking/sports underwear and compression shorts that did not work out before landing on these.

I recently also started incorporating 2-in-1 options that are hiking shorts with integrated liners that act as compression shorts. The benefits of these are that there is less of a chance you will get irritated around your waist or having either bottom garment ride up. The downside is that they can be more expensive shorts that have less use cases outside backpacking. For instance, I usually also work out in my Under Armour shorts and compression shorts so I can afford to have fewer clothing items in my wardrobe.

3

No piece of clothing or fabric is perfect. In order to fully defend yourself against chafing, I can not recommend using Body Glide highly enough. It comes in deodorant like sticks that make applying to any area you are concerned about very easy. Thighs, heels, toes, nipples - rub it everywhere. It combines the drying aspects of Gold Bold/talc powder with the staying power of stick to combine into one of the best products I have used ever. I would rather forget my entire food bag for a hike than my body glide. It really helps that much. I would recommend going with the 1.5 oz options (even though they do come in smaller versions) as the ideal size to weight ratio for any 2+ day backpacking trip.

4

Lastly, once you get chafing, you have already lost the game. There are no real solutions to healing chafing once it has started and even a small amount can ruin your hike. Don’t be shy about re-applying Body Glide on problem areas through the day when you take lunch or a short break as well as every morning before getting back on the trail. We are trying to prevent chafing with these tactics, not treat it once it comes up.

I hope you enjoyed this post – if you did check out some others or head over to YouTube for additional content.

If you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to reach out.

Lastly – if you have any hiker buddies who might find this helpful or anyone you are trying to get into backpacking, I would really appreciate it if you send them my way.

Summary

1 - Don’t wear cotton

2 - Wear compression shorts or something similar

3 - Use Body Glide

4 - Always stay ahead of the game

Disclaimer: Big Guy Backpacking uses affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links.