Your favorite "all around" shoe

Used to be the Kendo(sweet Mother of God I loved the Kendo), now the Miura.

five ten Anasazi moccasyms! They climb well on anything!

katana/miura

pity about sportivas delamination issues

;)

Evolv Bandits aka poor mans Muiras IMO

However please never suggest to my wife that i only need one pair of shoes. Also I refuse to gym climb in $100+ shoes, forget that.

One shoe to do it all means that you don't want to do it all well.

Miura's do seem like the obvious choice except that to have Miura's for everything, you need several pair.

For hard overhanging sport, I want a brand new pair of size 39's.

For difficult edging, I'd want the same pair a couple months later.

For cracks, I'd need a 40 or 40.5 and old.

For multipitch, the 39's might work if they were old enough, otherwise, well broken in 39.5's on their second or third sole.

For smearing, probably the looser ones except I'd want a stealth variant on them rather than the Edge I normally use.

I guess it would look like I've only got one pair of shoes in pictures.

Lots of Miura fans, interesting...

My vote goes to Five Ten Anasazi VCS.

Surprised I do not have more allies! I always thought there was a pretty even split between those two.

TC Pros...but La Sportiva's last and shape always fits my foot so much better than other brands.

nicelegs wrote:One shoe to do it all means that you don't want to do it all well. Miura's do seem like the obvious choice except that to have Miura's for everything, you need several pair. For hard overhanging sport, I want a brand new pair of size 39's. For difficult edging, I'd want the same pair a couple months later. For cracks, I'd need a 40 or 40.5 and old. For multipitch, the 39's might work if they were old enough, otherwise, well broken in 39.5's on their second or third sole. For smearing, probably the looser ones except I'd want a stealth variant

I'm gonna go ahead & say I disagree strongly. While your discernment as to whats best for different facets of climbing for you might be real & make sense but it sounds pretty ridiculous to me. I spent the first two years I climbed in a pair of evolv defy's & climbed in socal, washington,alaska & as hard as 5.11b. I'd rather have one well rounded shoe & more money for a rack than 6 pairs of shoes depending on what you might run into.

I've also climbed in tc pros, technos, madrock mugen techs, anasazi vcs, miura vs, & tenaya rs. I have a pair of anasazi pinks coming in the mail as we speak & am stoked to try them out. But really why wouldnt you rather have a well rounded shoe or two pairs of em. It seems excessive how many pairs of shoes in newish condition people have.

Miura lace. Best shoe if you can only have one pair.

-Edit: The TC Pro's for everything vertical and slab, Solutions for everything overhung.

I'm shocked that no one has mentioned the Mad Rock Phoenix. Best. Shoes. Ever.

nicelegs wrote:One shoe to do it all means that you don't want to do it all well. Miura's do seem like the obvious choice except that to have Miura's for everything, you need several pair. For hard overhanging sport, I want a brand new pair of size 39's. For difficult edging, I'd want the same pair a couple months later. For cracks, I'd need a 40 or 40.5 and old. For multipitch, the 39's might work if they were old enough, otherwise, well broken in 39.5's on their second or third sole. For smearing, probably the looser ones except I'd want a stealth variant on them rather than the Edge I normally use. I guess it would look like I've only got one pair of shoes in pictures.

I think that's a great post. Brings it all together. For the record, the only pair of shoes I have had for the past 6 months have been a pair of mythos with at least 4 resoles. Although, I mostly stick to granite areas at 5.10.

I'll throw in a vote for anasazi verdes (which, yeah, are like five ten miuras). Again, it depends how you size them though. If compromising, go bigger I suppose.

Towering tindall wrote: I spent the first two years I climbed in a pair of evolv defy's & climbed in socal, washington,alaska & as hard as 5.11b.

Which is kind of warm up difficulty for some...shoes do play larger roles as climbing difficulty increases. That said, there are foot intensive 5.11b slabs that would be almost impossible to do w/o a pair of good edging shoes, whereas most anything else you can get by with being stronger and/or have high pain tolerance.

My vote would be TC Pro or Katata Lace (just a single pair, not 5 pairs of different sizes/rubber) in one of the harder rubber compound.

Towering tindall wrote: I'm gonna go ahead & say I disagree strongly. While your discernment as to whats best for different facets of climbing for you might be real & make sense but it sounds pretty ridiculous to me. I spent the first two years I climbed in a pair of evolv defy's & climbed in socal, washington,alaska & as hard as 5.11b. I'd rather have one well rounded shoe & more money for a rack than 6 pairs of shoes depending on what you might run into.

I've owned probably 40 pairs of evolves. I've climbed much harder than 11b in them. The only thing they unequivocally do well is jam into splitter cracks.

I was the biggest Evolve defender or sympathiser you've ever met until I happened upon some "real" brands. I can't hardly describe what a difference there was.

I still have lots of Evolves. One thing that's striking to me is on my Pontas Lace. Smallest shoe I've ever owned. I use it to edge. It's resoled with Edge even. They sent "The Far Reaches" "Brothers in Arms" and they are what I took when I'd go on scary walks like up the "Evictor" or "Jules Verne" I thought they were the tits, I accepted the incredible pain and tightness to get performance out of them. Until I ended up in a pair of Miura's and found them to edge better, be more comfortable, and if you look at your foot while standing up, you can see that the Pontas deform around the toe and the Miura doesn't.

You can keep your Defy. It's cool. It's comfy and fits into cracks. I use them a lot in the creek or when I don't need to climb hard. But if you come here touting them as a performance shoe, I'll jump your shit every time. FWIW, I've climbed 5.13a in my Defy's.

im not touting the defy as a performance shoe, im saying a basic shoe like the defy got me to 11b my first year & I climbed in that area for another year on them. My prerogative is that it would be nicer to have a great performing all around shoe or maybe two than need a pair for cracks, & slab & bouldering & long multi pitch...

I feel like the companies should strive harder for that, then again I imagine patents get in the way of that a bit. To be honest to my nature though if I had the money I would probably buy many unneeded shoes based just on aesthetics!

In the end though depending on these anasazi lace-ups I might stick with them & some miura laces.

reboot wrote: Which is kind of warm up difficulty for some... 5.11b ...

I disagree; 5.11b is not a warm -up grade. It is much too easy to get properly warmed up on.

(just kidding, here...don't get too worked up)

Lots of opinions out there about rock shoes.

I've been slinging rock shoes for awhile now. What I have come to find is that it really isnt the shoe that is Aggressive or all-round its the position the shoes forces your foot into that gives you performance on different types of rock.

The analogy that I give customers is if you are trying to hold a gallon of water out to your side vs. if you bring that gallon of water closer to your body it becomes significantly easier to hold. The mechanics of holding the weight takes less effort. The same idea can be applied to your foot when you are climbing. Our toes are just not strong enough to support our body weight when tyring to stand on tiny little edges.

The ideal climbing shoe fit (IMO) is one that fits like a tight sock, it must be uniformly snug. The shoe should curls your toes into a knuckled up position. How knuckled depends on your experience, foot pain tolerances, and the type of climbing you are looking for performance at. (ie, knuckled but closer to flat for crack climbing or all day trad and alpine, or Fully knuckled-up for a more precise powerful edging shoe)

The second consideration is how soft or how stiff of a shoe you want to get. A softer shoe will give you better sensitivity and feel when on the rock. a stiffer shoe will give you more power and stability when edging. Typically an experienced climber is drawn towards a softer shoe beacuse they can tolerate the tighter fit and have stronger toes and feet, reaping the rewards of having better feel of whats under foot beacuse they dont need the extra support of a stiffer shoe. A stiffer shoe seems to be more popular with beginer climbers because they get the support and power with out a super tight fit, giving there feet time to strengthen. Alpine climbers also seem to be drawn to a stiffer shoe, this typically gives them good performance but in a package that is more comfortable to climb in for multiple pitch climbs. This is all very general, and just born from the experience of fitting thousands of folks with new rock shoes.

Soft shoes(sensitive, require a very tight fit to get performance):
-Futura
-speedster
-instinct slipper
-Team 5.10
-Oasi
-Mythos

Stiff shoes: (less sensitive, more supportive, typically will accommodate a comfier fit):
-TC pros
-Astroman
-Sausolito II
-Boostic
-Nago

Most other shoes fall somewhere in between. trending towards being softer or stiffer. The key in any shoe is getting one that fits correctly, your foot should have an appropriate amount of knuckling but remains snug yet comfortable.

My last opinion to share is happy feet tend to be way more conducive to hard climbing than too tight of a shoe.

JCM wrote: (spray) I disagree; 5.11b is not a warm -up grade. It is much too easy to get properly warmed up on. Sorry, had to go an say it... (/spray)

reboot wrote: for some.

Well said Saylor. I like the notion you presented it certainly makes sense & proves true with designs like slingshot rands & the p3 syste from sportiva...

i think it is pretty hard to just go with one pair of shoes without gravitating towards mediocrity. it's funny that nicelegs mentioned the miuras in different sizes. i had been thinking kind of along the same lines - i might be able to pick one shoe in different sizes for different routes. i would probably go with a galileo or katana velcro.

the analogy i usually make; if you are working on a lawnmower you can probably do everything with a pair of channel locks. if you are working on a beater car, you can probably get by with an adjustable wrench and a hammer. if you working on a 911 turbo, you are going to want a decent set of tools.