Great all rounder for the intermediate-advanced climber

Posted by Felicity on 22nd Mar 2011

I absolutely love these shoes! I'm on my fourth pair of them and already have the next ones bought as I really don't feel the need to try others anymore.

I came to these from comfy velcro shoes from a different brand, which had served me well on long multipitch routes and days out, but I hadn't realised how much difference a better-fitting, slightly more technical shoe could make.

Climbing: I use these for indoors, sport and trad and they do the job wonderfully. When they're brand new, they're excellent for edging, and I feel like I can be very precise feeling holds with my toes. They're not the best for heel hooks and they're not the stiffest, but if you're only getting one shoe to cover all situations, you really couldn't do much better. I can get up 6c indoors and outside in them without any problem and they stick well to slopey grit and to tiny slate edges.

Fit: I have narrow feet and these are the best-fitting shoes I've found. A few of my friends with similar feet also swear by them. They come with laces and elastic with a toggle, but I've always used the laces. However, they do stretch, probably from half a size to a full size. I buy them a size smaller than my shoe size and can only wear them for a route at a time for the first few uses (but I climb so well in them those first few times!), and eventually they're fine for all-day multipitch and still work on technical things when I lace them up tightly. They rub every so slightly on the tops of my toes when they're done up very tightly for a long time, but that's easily solved by loosening them when belaying.

Cons: They do stretch, so it takes a bit of playing around to get the right size. I usually have 2 pairs on the go: one older pair for most climbing, and one brand new pair for very technical, edgey routes.
They are also prone to being a bit smelly!