By Jason McCarthy
I've trained, rucked, traveled to three continents and hiked through the most bio-intense tropical rainforest on planet earth in these socks. I wore my first pair routinely for 6 weeks at a time between washes, felt them go from fully submerged in a river to bone dry on the trail countless times, and put their durability to the test over thousands of miles under heavy loads. The rucksack, after all, has a way of finding weakness.
Just like any Green Beret would stress, socks are life or death to us and after a multi-year development process, these merino socks are the best socks of any kind that I’ve ever worn. Think of them as the GR1 of socks — keeping your feet comfortable in any and every environment imaginable. And because talk is cheap, in the off chance that you can wear ‘em out, we’ll send you a free replacement in line with our Scars Lifetime Guarantee.
If I were going to war, I'd take my GORUCK MACV boots and these socks. I’d also train in them pushing sandbags or barbells around and if I were going to run around the airfield in Tallil again (10 mile loop), I’d be wearing these socks, too. I’d barely ever wash them because they don’t take on stink, and the bottom line is they just work and are the best socks I’ve ever worn.
“You will never pass Special Forces training if you don’t learn how to take care of your feet,” a Cadre who had been on the invasion of Afghanistan told us. This was 2004 and my interest in socks, and footcare, became an obsession right then and there.
Let me put the benefits up front of GORUCK’s merino blend socks:
- Socks are life or death to us. These are best in class or we would not be in this business.
- They don’t stretch out excessively like Smartwool and they don’t take on holes like Darn Tough.
- They don’t take on stink easily - I went 6 weeks without washing mine after wearing them every day (no big deal), then had my entire workout crew smell them (hey, they asked). All good.
- They’ll exceed the standard for keeping your feet dry at the highest levels of human performance like Special Forces Selection.
- We’ve reinforced them in the correct places to last forever - wearing boots like MACV-1 or Ballistic Trainers or any kind of training or running shoe. Where they don’t need extra reinforcement, they’re optimized to breathe better so your feet stay dry longer.
- We’ve extensively worn every major sock brand and the only way we wanted to get into the sock business was if we could create something best in class. We started with Darn Tough and got sick of wearing those out especially in the heel, so we developed our own. It took us a couple years and has been worth it.
- Scars Lifetime Guarantee - We proudly build GORUCK socks in the USA and if you’re actually able to wear them out, we’ll send you a new pair and the next time you’re at our HQ in Jax Beach, Florida we’ll buy ya a beer so you can tell us all about how you did the impossible. This is the single best guarantee on the planet.
COTTON WHITE TUBE SOCKS? NEVER.
I grew up with the cool-kid white tube socks. I was trading a few notes with a Green Beret buddy of mine recently who shared my sentiment: “I would NOT wear a white tube sock if it meant commuting a life sentence in prison.” Cotton is rotten, it absorbs everything and then smells horrible. Plus, do a google search for trench foot sometime if you want to see the downfall of keeping wet socks on your feet for too long. It’s horrific.
