Mudders, For Walking on Mud

As winter retreated this year, it left us with a rather soggy landscape. It took several weeks after the snow melted before hilltops dried out enough to drive a vehicle on them. And several more weeks before the hillsides were accessible; while the bottomlands were still mushy.

If you have need to walk on saturated soils, especially as the frost is coming out of the ground, perhaps planting a wetland, birdwatching, sampling water quality, building a boardwalk, studying wildlife, etc., there will be times and places when you can sink in halfway to your knees, or lose your Wellingtons, or just get stuck.

A pair of Mudders attached to a pair of boots

Fortunately, there is footwear that will allow you to walk on slurpy mud and only sink in a few inches. The ones I have and use occasionally are called Mudders. They are made to strap on over full-size boots and are made of dense rubbery plastic. Their main feature is a pair of wings on each one, which flares out when you step down and gives you a larger footprint, creating less ground pressure for more support for your weight.

Bottom view of a Mudder with the wings flared out

This is the same concept as a snowshoe, which also spreads your weight out over a larger area and helps prevent you from sinking in very far. Mudders are small enough that you don’t have to modify your stride a lot to accommodate them.

You could just make yourself a pair of oval strap-on pieces of plywood to enlarge your footprint and stay fairly buoyant in mud, but there would still be a problem. When you tried to lift your foot, there would be suction requiring a hard pull to overcome, which is accomplished by pushing down harder on your other foot and sinking deeper there. This is a losing proposition.

The Mudder overcomes this by having its flared wings hinged at the top. As you lift your foot, the wings collapse back to a narrow profile, reducing suction, and as you push down with the other foot, its wings are still flared to prevent excessive sinking.

These devices are best utilized strapped onto boots that will stay on your feet, either the type with a narrow ankle region (shown in the first photo), or the type with a top belt strap (as with hip waders). The easy-on-easy-off slip fit of Wellingtons might just slip off at the wrong time. My one complaint about Mudders is that the strap arrangement is awkward, so I carry a pair of needle nose pliers to reach the strap buckles where my fingers do not fit.

My pair of Mudders is two or three decades old and I’ve kept them out of sunshine when not actually using them. Solar radiation, especially in the UV range, is rather harmful to most plastics and various types of rubber. So mine are in quite good shape and still serve their purpose well.

I do not know whether this product is made anymore. Mine are labeled “Amark Inc Merrimack NH” if you wish to try to track these down.