UKH

For beginners taking their first steps on the rock, or more experienced climbers looking for a foot-friendly rock shoe for long routes and lower-grade days, a flatter and more neutral model may be preferable to the toe-cramping asymmetry of a downturned peformance shoe. Here we check out seven rock shoes built for comfort.  

I have seen the Kirigami considerably cheaper online too. Looking at £50 for a pair if you look hard enough*

*literally just the first line of google results. 

I'm tempted to get some these for a friend but I'm having a hell of a time trying to find the right size for her. Fiveten have messed up sizing so much. We've currently got her a pair of size 7 anasazi pro's and they're way too small, she is usually size 5.5.

On the Adidas website they have a size chart that states your foot should be 25 cm long (from toe to heel) for size 7. But I just measured the size 7 anasazi's and they are only 23.5 cm long on the outside of the shoe, that's including the rubber on the heel and the extra rubber at the front of the toe. Conversely, my friends foot is 24 cm long, which on the chart is 5.5 (as expected), but her foot would never in a million years get into size 5.5 anasazi's. I'm thinking she needs at least size 8. How crazy is that.

five tens sizing is way small it seems.. i have asym vcs in 11.5 but also have scarpa arpias in 9.5

A great review article.

However let's not forget to do a reality check here. These shoes - they are all far, far superior to a shoe like the Boreal Ninja, released in 1985. There were plenty of very hard routes of all styles in existence by 1985. New Dawn at Malham was climbed in 1984. I think Revelations was 8a+ that year too? So the idea that these are reserved only for low grade climbing or long days out is quite simply not true.

Advertising is powerful - climbing shoe adverts are no exception - a look around your local climbing wall shows most people in £120 super sensitive shoes equipped with just 3mm of rubber to climb on, mostly, very large plastic footholds.

Taking the cheapest shoe in this test at £70 saving £50 versus a £120 pair of high end shoes could save one £1000 in climbing shoe costs over a 40 year climbing career given one pair of shoes every two years. That's almost certainly a vast underestimate as there's way more rubber on cheap shoes so they last longer.

Don't be afraid to buy a pair of these "beginner" shoes and onsight some E4s in them! They're more than good enough! 

I have some skin tight miuras that I loved till I had to wear an old “baggy” pair of katanas. And now they’re my main shoes, I can climb all day and just as hard or harder. 

Noo, don't you realise that you simply must have; one pair for all day, another pair for all day plus socks when it's cold, one pair for hard slabs, one pair for hard walls, one pair for hard steep, and again for medium routes, one pair for hard routes at the wall one pair for easy routes at the wall, one pair for all day wall sessions, repeat this for each created genre of climbing, sport, trad, boulder, ice and then multiply it up by rock type. 

Don't forget that you need a colour coordinated fully logoed out fit to match each pair and the there is your harness. 

It's the future. 

I've not done much rock for a few years and I've returned to find some shoes getting marketed as indoor shoes. I nearly struck a model off the list for that reason because I rarely use the wall these days and then I thought wtf? What difference does it make?! None is the answer.

I'd never heard the term "Greek toes" before but it's what I have and I really struggle to find boots that fit well, especially rock shoes. It's a very useful classification and would be great to see more of it in boot reviews, please. 

A guy in a shop once said to me "you'll climb two grades harder if you're not worrying about how much your feet hurt."  Good advice for most mortals, I think.

I remember Jack Geldard (previous UKC Editor) said something after we started doing more gear reviews on UKC - "the only bit of gear you can buy that will actually make you climb better is climbing shoes".

I did three pairs of shoes in this test. Since finishing the test I haven't touched any of them since I also have a few pairs of more technical shoes. That isn't to say these entry-level shoes are bad but they are simply not as good as the more advance (and expensive) models that you can buy. I may wear them again at the climbing wall for doing laps, and I will definitely choose them if I get back to doing some easy multi-pitch in the Lakes or Wales next year, but for sport and lead climbing at my grade in the Peak I will always grab something better.

I did a few parallel tests during the review on a couple of hard steep slab routes with small edges. The difference was quite remarkable. I easily managed the (6c+) sport route in a pair of Red Chili Mystix (review coming soon) and couldn't do the first move in any of the comfy shoes, nor several of the moves higher up. I could wear the comfy shoes all day without taking them off, and the Mystix (or my old Scarpa Boostix) generally get loosened while lowering off, but entry-level shoes simply don't have the support and precision you get from a pair of aggressive down-turned modern rockshoes.

There is no doubt that a good climber can get up hard routes in cheaper rock shoes. There is also no doubt that the same good climber can get up harder routes in a better pair of rock shoes.

Less supportive rock shoes means that you need bigger handholds.

So buy a pair and try and onsight some E4s, or buy a better pair and try and onsight some E5s.

Alan

I'm curious, do you get a wide range of sizes when reviewing shoes, and are able to find the ones that best fit your foot size/shape, or do you just guess and go with what you get? 

Have to say I welcome manufacturers stating foot length (mm). In my experience, one manufacturer's size 8 is another's size 6  -- and in the case of 5.10 recently, the sizing seems to vary by batch.

This is an issue Jon, and sometimes we have to to-and-fro a bit to get something that fits. The Mystix I have now didn't fit Rob. I had some BD shoes last year that I couldn't get on with but which fitted him fine. So we do chop and change around and try and get the appropriate shoes on the right feet.

Alan

Some of the "indoor shoes" have different rubber on the soles to make them less marking I think. Others have knitted uppers with the idea that your feet get more sweaty inside - a safe assumption for most UK climbers but less so for Spanish, or Aussie or Hong Kong climbers I would have thought!

Some "indoor shoes" seem aimed mainly at the climbing centre "rental fleet" market. I saw a video that Adidas have done a Kirigami model like that. Size printed in big numbers on the outside and a popper on the pull tab so that the pair can be popped together between rentals I guess.

Even in non-Covid times we'll rarely be in a place to try several sizes on. We have to take a guess on sizing, albeit an educated guess based on prior experience of the brand, perhaps talking to others who've worn the shoe, and in consultation with the brand itself.

But all that doesn't always help, and there is usually some to-and-froing in the post with at least a couple of models in a group test.

Some of us have more awkward-to-fit feet than others, and for us rock shoe fitting by post is always an iffy business. 

I first saw these shape classification on Ocun's website. Well worth looking up - there are others, Egyptian I think is one, and so on.

Yes, Ocun are the only ones in this review to provide a guide to foot shape with their shoes. They have three shapes: Cube (all toes the same-ish length), Greek (second toe longer than big toe) and Egyptian (bit toe longest, tapering toward little toe).

It's a useful additional guide to the info on width (always a blunt instrument). Even these divisions are too broad to really get into the nitty gritty of individual foot shapes (says the guy with some kind of a cross between cube and egyptian). But they've got to be better than no info.

I wish other brands would do something similar. Sizing and last shapes are all over the place, which makes choosing a shoe a bit of a minefield unless you can go into a bricks and mortar shop and try loads on. 

Often it is guess, get it wrong, post them back, get the firm to send out a different pair - it's a bit of a pain. This test, Guy - who I think manages 5.10 for Adidas in the UK - back early in the summer happened to be going out to the Peak from 5.10's office, in Rotherham I think, to see customers and my house happens to be on that route. So he came round and we had a socially distanced cup of tea in my back garden and he brought a bunch of kirigamis in different sizes for me to try on. I ended up with a much bigger size than I thought I would need so this helped hugely.

Footwear is particularly tricky in this respect - very rarely will something size medium not fit me (sometimes baggy sometimes a bit tight - but that's a relevant comment for a review), but climbing shoes or mountaineering boots obviously just don't work in the wrong size.

For anyone considering the Tarantula: I saw them wear out incredibly quickly in the toe-rand. They would last about a month as a hire shoe at an indoor wall (which wasn't particularly abrasive by modern standards), and a friend who mostly used them for outside climbing got about 6 months before he had a hole in the toe. The toe-rand seemed to wear through long before the sole was in need of new rubber. I don't know if this is because of the shape of them (being quite flat-footed) or if the production quality and materials are lower. 

Worth taking into consideration when talking about value for money. These may be half the price of another pair of Sportivas but you won't necessarily get double the value. Most Sportivas are made at their factory in Italy but I believe these are made in China. 

That's interesting to hear. I've used them all summer and through autumn with no issue as yet. They feel as well made as any other shoe I've got

Would I be right in saying that with old style shoes you'd have to wear them ultra tight to get performance whereas with more modern designs this isn't (as) necessary

It isn't really as simple as that although what you say does work to an extent. A modern asymmetric shoe with a properly designed rand will transfer the weight from your toe to your leg much more effectively than a softer, flat shoe even if you lash it up super tight.

Yep I love the Jokers and have lead E2, seconded E4 and bouldered f7a in them. At no point have they ever felt like the limiting factor. That’d be my arms.

I was thinking much the same reading that post the other night.

I think all of us reviewing the shoes in this test got them sized to be comfortable to wear all day. That was why I was so impressed with the Kirigami - they are comfy to wear all day without taking them off but I still climbed as hard as I have climbed this year (and I guess about as hard as I've ever been able to climb!) in them.

While I don't doubt the power of advertising, I don't think that most people at any given climbing wall are wearing £120 shoes.

Hi Alan,

Totally agree with everything you and Jack have said there. 

If I'd worn a pair of shoes from this article on a climb like Darkinbad instead of my Five Ten Blancos I may have died by falling off the start and impaling myself on one of the spiky boulders at the base. I still vividly remember standing on the smallish edges near the start in relative comfort and thinking "thank god I'm wearing such a great pair of shoes because this is really scary!".  

Cheers again for the article.

If you are a good enough climber........ 

Some people are good enough to get up E4's in trainers.

Absolutely. The people who deny this have either never worn a really good and well fitting pair of shoes or else their technique is so poor take they would be rubbish wearing anything.

Met a guy in Vietnam who climbed up to 7a in flip flops.

After 7a he goes barefoot.

A pair of the 5.10 shoes have just arrived. Perfect timing for heading down to the wall this evening. 
 

In reply to UKC Gear:

Did he work for Slo Poney on Cat Ba?

Did the first half of the session in Miura VS and then swapped to Kirigami and honestly found them just as capable and good as the far more expensive Miura.  

That's really good to hear Karl. You're never that sure on if a pair of shoes work really well for you just because they're a great fit for your feet, but it's good to hear others find the Kirigami to be good.

I ran mine through the washing machine for the first time a couple of weeks ago - another huge success for them. They were funky smelling before that, but came out smelling sweet!

This is because they are predominantly purchased by beginners with terrible footwork. 

I think I'm convinced.  It's 50/50 whether my relationship with my new Katanas will work out - my feet are just 5.10 shaped - but even if I keep them for technical stuff, I can't see me ever doing anything multipitch in them.  I could wear my old Anasazi velcros all day (they were fine for 20+ pitches in the alps) and your Kirigamis seemed pretty similar, at half the price!

He's called Vu Nguyen?  Worked for the now defunct Asia Outdoors on Cat Ba back then probably the same guy who worked for Slo Poney?

Incredible climber.

You can still get 5.10 Anasazi though I think? It would be interesting to hear from 5.10 why they think they are better than the Kirigami - i.e. worth the extra cost. 

That would make sense but we didn't get the same level of wear on our other hire shoes and my friend is quite a delicate climber. 

No...you just wear them with very thick red socks (cf. Ron F)

I've got Greek toes. So very asymetric shoes are a no-go. But Tenayas work well for me (i.e. the Mundakas). But agree. Reviewers with longer big toes seem to assume everyone else is the same.

I can't recall his name but sounds like the same chap. He soloed up some routes in flip flops to set up top topes.

My toes are the same and find the new Scarpa Vapour Lace is a good fit. Asymmetric but not overly so. The most asymmetric shoe I have that fits well is the La Sportiva Otaki. Scarpa Force are a good comfy shoe, but more symmetric. Maybe my feet are wider though, I find the Tenaya a bit on the narrow side.

I do sometimes wonder about the value of shoe reviews beyond intended use and build quality since fit is so crucial. I'd only class a very small percentage of shoes a good fit. Is it just my feet or do others find the same?

What bugs me about shoes is brands don't spread their range across shoe shapes. 

Scarpa maestro fit me really well, they are medium width with middle toe position. However if I want something softer or more aggressive there isn't much or anything in that shape. I have to now make my foot fit something wider and square. 

If you're going to make 6 different last shapes, wouldn't it make sense to have soft / medium / stiff and flat / intermediate / aggressive across those shapes? 

The ones I was looking at were just bog standard shoes, they'd obviously just decided to target the indoor market.

I guess it's a massive part of the market now! I think it was Red Chili I noticed had a shoe with white rubber for indoor use, interesting idea. 

I guess it's like crampons, for most of us G12s or similar will do everything from hill walking to steep ice but it's nice to have some Petzl Darts!

 >  I saw them wear out incredibly quickly in the toe-rand. They would last about a month as a hire shoe at an indoor wall (which wasn't particularly abrasive by modern standards), and a friend who mostly used them for outside climbing got about 6 months before he had a hole in the toe.

As a counterpoint, I got more than two years of use from mine, and only stopped using them because the toe-box lining partially detached and got too irritating. They perhaps didn't get as much use as a rental shoe would have, but still got a couple of outings each week for warm-ups or easy routes.
As someone already mentioned, footwork makes a big difference; holes in the rand would generally indicate the wearer's could benefit from attention