Best Clothes For Wet Caves!

[Cody JW]

One problem I encounter when dressing for "wet" caves is that most I have seen are not wet the whole way. You may have to negotiate a fair amount of dry stuff before you get to the water. Or maybe you have a wet area near the entrance then you climb up into dry cave for most of the rest of the trip. I have also seen many where you have wet then dry ( up and over large breakdown) then eventually back into the water. I do not know about the rest of you but I can only wear a shorty if I am either swimming or laying in water with only my head sticking up. Any other time I will dehydrate in one of those things. I cannot wear a cave suit unless I am in the water.I get hot very easy. In a cave like Blue Springs Tennessee I wear jeans and a T- shirt and have no regrets or in pit yo yos I just wear jeans as that is what I am comfortable in.In a cave where you walk or crawl in a foot of water or less ( we have lots of those here in Indiana) I wear jeans with single layer poly pro on the bottom only and I stay comfortable. I own a cave suit and NEVER use it. 99 percent of the time I wear old jeans and poly pro, been doing it for over 30 years and I am still very much alive.Never been close to hypothermia.

[Cody JW]

i shoe goo the toe tips brand new and the goo never falls off. I do this because of crawling and toe dragging.

What do you mean by this??

Crawling on cobble, sand, clay, mud, shale, breakdown, will eventually wear holes right through the toes. If you wait till they are starting to get holes, shoe goo wont stick to the leather due to dirt contamination.

When the boot is brand new, out of the box, coat the toe tips with shoe goo before you ever get them dirty, and the shoe goo will protect the toes for the life of the boot. The rest of the boot will trash out long before the shoe goo ever tries to fall apart.

Jeff, I w ouldnt use fiberglass for the simple fact that its not flexible, shoe goo is. and like I said, the boots will wear out eventually. Shoe goo on the toes takes a few minutes, stand them up, let the goo dry and its ready to go. Fiberglass is a bit more in depth, mixing, cutting fabric, lol.

Chad, I have never tried the shoe goo thing on new boots, it does sound simple. I will try it on the next pair I get.

[Chads93GT]

It literally takes a few minutes. I simply make a fake "steel toe" on the tip and tis ready to go. ONce it starts running I just smear the runs down with my finger and wipe off the excess. I use almost a full tube of shoe goo on 1 set of boots. about half per toe. I may apply 1/8" to 3/16" thick and it does a good job leveling its self out. I start out by having them flat on their soles, then i shift them once the goo starts settling so that they are standing up on their heels. I then apply a 2nd coat of goe over the most abrasion prone part of the toe tips on the top while the first layer of goo is still sticky. This bonds both layers together well.

[NZcaver]

Another vote for Shoe Goo. AquaSeal generally lasts longer for more permanent repairs to packs/suits etc, but it's more expensive than Shoe Goo. When I go surveying lava tubes in Hawaii, I buy a new set of boots from Wal Mart each time. With regular applications of Shoe Goo, they usually last me about 2-4 weeks before disintegrating completely. I also use disposable thrift store clothing like long sleeve T shirts and cargo pants, and I pick up hard cap knee and elbow pads. Of course this is mostly dry caving - not wet.

[Bama632]

Thanks

[JR-Orion]

Well, that's it, I'm going to try Shoe Goo.