When blisters happen on the Camino: the ten worst descents

By August Frederik Kramer, who has walked the Camino twice · Last updated 8 September 2026

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Every page about Camino blisters tells you the same four things. Buy shoes that fit. Wear proper socks. Lubricate. Treat a hot spot before it becomes a blister. It is good advice, all of it, and you can find it in a hundred places written by people who know feet better than we do.

None of them tells you when you are going to need it.

That is a question about the ground, and the ground is the thing we measure. Blisters do not come from distance and they do not come from climbing. They come from descending: hours of your toes being driven into the front of the shoe and your heel sliding inside it. So below is the worst descent on each of the ten routes, measured off the same tracks the app navigates by, with the day it falls on.

The ten worst days for your feet

One per route, the single biggest drop on each, worst first. The climb column is the same stage's ascent, and it is there to show how rarely the two line up.

The steepest of them is the Camino Primitivo, day 6 of 14: down 1,189 m in 21.6 km, from Montefurado to El Campín de Segundo Plano. There is no longer sustained descent on any Camino we measure.

The day that tires you is not the day that hurts you

This is the part worth taking away, and it is why a training plan built on climbing misses it. Climbing loads your legs and your lungs. Descending works on your feet, and it does it for hours at a time.

On the Camino Francés the hardest climb is day one, over the Pyrenees. The hardest descent is day 26, twenty-five days later. They are not the same problem, they do not arrive together, and preparing for one does nothing for the other.

Across the ten routes, the biggest climb and the biggest drop fall on different days on 7 of them. The exceptions are the short routes, where there are so few stages that the same day ends up holding both.

The three the Camino Francés is known for

Most people reading this are walking the Francés, and it is also the route where this measurement can be checked against something outside our own data. Ask on any pilgrim forum which descents wreck people and you get the same three names. Here is what our accumulator ranks highest on that route, without being told to look for them:

• Day 26, Santa Marina de Somoza to Molinaseca: 982 m down over 27.4 km.
• Day 30, La Laguna de Castilla to Triacastela: 850 m down over 23.2 km.
• Day 2, Orreaga / Roncesvalles to Zubiri: 668 m down over 21.3 km.

Molinaseca, Triacastela and Zubiri. Those are the three, in that order, and they are the three the forums argue about. We did not choose them and we did not weight anything to produce them. An elevation model and twenty years of complaining independently picked out the same stages, which is the best evidence we can offer that descent is the right thing to be measuring.

The Vía de la Plata is not as flat as its reputation

The Vía de la Plata gets described as the flat one, and on a profile it looks it. It has the second most total descent of any route we measure, at 11,478 m, behind only the Camino del Norte at 14,192 m.

Its worst day is the more interesting figure. Day 38 drops 829 m into Laza while climbing only 239 m: the most one-sided day on the list. A long gentle route ending in Galicia still has to come down off the Galician hills, and it does that on your feet.

Every stage that drops 600 m or more

The table above takes the worst day per route. Widening it to every stage on every route that loses 600 m gives 16 days in total. That threshold is not arbitrary: it sits just under the smallest of the three Francés descents above, so it is anchored to stages people already complain about rather than picked to make a table look tidy.

What to actually do about it

Not our subject, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. We measure ground, not people. Blister prevention is fit, socks, lubrication and catching a hot spot before it becomes a wound, and there are people far better qualified to write about that than a company that makes a vocabulary app.

Two that are worth reading: REI's guide to preventing and treating blisters and the American Hiking Society on blisters. If a blister is already infected, that is a pharmacy or a doctor, and Spanish pharmacies on the Camino deal with this daily.

What this page adds is the other half of the question. Whatever you carry and whatever you do at the end of each day, the table above tells you which mornings to do it carefully, and which stage to consider splitting rather than pushing through.

How these figures were measured

Descent is accumulated the same way ascent is, along the route's own track against sampled elevation, banking a falling run only once it clears a noise floor. Without that floor, small wobbles in the elevation data would add up into hundreds of metres of descent that does not exist. It is the same function that produces the climb figures everywhere else on this site, with the sign reversed, so the two are directly comparable.

Ascent and descent are both method-dependent: sampling interval and smoothing move them, and any page that presents either as the one true figure is overselling it. What makes the tables above worth reading is that all ten routes went through the same function, so the differences between them are real even where you could argue with an individual number.

Common questions

When do blisters typically occur on the Camino de Santiago?

On the long descents, and they are predictable. The worst single drop on the Camino Francés is day 26 of 36, Santa Marina de Somoza down to Molinaseca, losing 982 m. The other two that hurt on that route are day 30 into Triacastela and day 2 into Zubiri. Across all ten routes, 16 individual stages drop 600 m or more.

Why does descending cause blisters rather than climbing?

Climbing loads your calves and lungs. Descending drives your toes into the front of the shoe with every step and shears the skin across your heel, and it does that for hours. That is why the day that leaves you most tired and the day that ruins your feet are usually not the same day, and on seven of the ten routes they are demonstrably different days.

Which Camino route is hardest on your feet?

By the biggest single drop, the Camino Primitivo: day 6 descends 1,189 m in 21.6 km, the steepest sustained descent on any of the ten. By total descending over the whole route it is the Camino del Norte, at 14,192 m. Those are two different questions and they have two different answers.

Is the Vía de la Plata easy on the feet because it is flat?

It is not as flat as its reputation. The Vía de la Plata has the second most total descent of any route we measure, 11,478 m, and its worst day drops 829 m into Laza while climbing only 239 m. A route can be gentle in profile and still hand you a very one-sided day.

How do I actually prevent blisters?

This page does not answer that, on purpose. We measure the ground, not people, and blister prevention is a mix of fit, socks, lubrication and treating hot spots early that other people are genuinely qualified to write about. REI and the American Hiking Society both publish good guidance. What we can tell you is which day you will need it on.

How accurate are these descent figures?

They are accumulated along our own tracks against sampled elevation, banking a falling run only once it clears a noise floor, so small wobbles in the data cannot become imaginary descent. Like all ascent and descent figures they are method-dependent: sampling interval and smoothing move them. All ten routes were measured the same way, which is what makes comparing them meaningful.

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