SCARPA Athlete Angus Kille recently spent 80 Days traveling around the USA – climbing the best that the west has to offer. With a lot of travelling and a lot of climbing to pack in Angus took his packing seriously! Read on for Angus’ shoe choices for his big trip!
One of the biggest challenges of planning a big rock trip is what shoes to pack. If you’re planning several thousand miles of road trip with the odd big wall thrown in, there’s only precious space in your bags beside ropes, jackets and trad rack.
That’s the position I was in ahead of my 80-day trip around the western USA. I planned to climb big walls, cracks, slabs, boulders and sport routes on various rock types in 5 different states. I needed shoes for thin cracks, wide cracks, long days, techy slabs, steep routes and steep boulders. On top of that I needed my shoes to perform well even after some mileage – El Capitan is one kilometre of climbing on its own. I also needed approach shoes to spend my trip in, without them eating into my baggage allowance.
I opted for 5 pairs of climbing shoes and a couple of pairs of approach shoes. Here they are:
Generator Mid – Crack shoes/all-day shoes – Stiff, comfortable and with extra padding around the ankle, these were ideal for long American routes and crack pitches.
I wore mine a whole size bigger than my performance shoes to allow me to keep them on for more than five pitches. I took them up the alpine face of The Diamond on Long’s Peak in Colorado, where 9 pitches and a bunch of scrambling lead you to the 4000m summit.
Keeping these on helped us move faster and I was honestly grateful for the ankle protection keeping me warm. The lower grade pitches in the Black Canyon have a reputation for what locals call ‘working class’ climbing, where wrestling with granite cracks doesn’t earn you big grades but it’s good honest work.
For me these ‘easier’ pitches were always humbling but the Generators were stiff and comfortable throughout. There were also the wide cracks of Indian Creek and Vedauvoo that require endless wriggling and thrutching; I was glad the Generators could handle all of the thrashing and abuse, and small edges whenever I could find one. Of course, I lost a bit of edging power by going up a size, but it’s just what I needed for moving through lots of pitches fast.
View this post on InstagramInstinct S – Performance shoe/face climbing shoe – These were my favourite shoes of the trip. I’ve never used slippers before but wriggling into these from a hanging belay was a pleasure, even if I do wear them tight. After wrestling with cracks for several pitches, wearing these on the faces felt like a dance.
Hallucinogen Wall in the Black Canyon and El Niño on El Capitan both have long, technical vert walls and slabs that these shoes excelled on. The Black Roof of El Niño also had shockingly steep flakes I had to heel- and toe-hook through. It was impressive for these shoes to see me through tricky slab pitches, the 8a+ crux, wandery E5 and then the Black Roof.
There was even a wet compression problem at 800m that was possible thanks to the Instinct heel. If there’s one shoe I would pick to take me through all he hard pitches a big wall will throw at me, it would have to be a pair of Instincts.
View this post on InstagramInstinct VS (resoled) – Performance shoe/longer route shoe – You just can’t wear your brand new shoes for 5/10/20-pitch routes, your feet won’t allow it. I’ve worn Instincts long enough that my feet are Instinct-shaped even when I take them off, so I knew that I could get away with a double-resoled pair on long routes, even in my performance size.
The mistake I made here is that I would really have liked another pair of these – I reached for these shoes often, and I did a lot of climbing over my 80 days in the States! Granite in particular takes its toll on shoe rubber and another pair of these in my bag would have given me good edges for longer. However, they did serve me well and the resoles allowed good performance with relative comfort.
View this post on InstagramChimera – Performance shoe/sport shoe – I just can’t leave these behind. Something makes me uncomfortable about going on a long trip with only stiff shoes. These are just the right balance of stiff and sensitive that I can feel footholds well but still put plenty of power through them.
When I put a newly broken in pair of these on, I just feel like a better climber. They were great on Granite sport routes and some of the techy delicate boulders in Bishop and Joe’s Valley.
Instinct VS larger resole – thin cracks – This might seem like a bit of a wild card, but I took my oldest pair of Instincts that were a size bigger and got them stretched and resoled with a view to sticking them into thin cracks. I’m told it’s a common mistake (especially for us Brits) to turn up in Indian Creek without thin-crack shoes.
A flatter and less aggressive model would do the trick here, but I decided to repurpose my old Instincts. When cracks are narrower than tight hands, you start to notice that your raised big toe doesn’t make it in, and when it gets down to finger cracks the good edges on your shoe rubber really matter too. Bear this in mind when you’re on a crack trip, but if in doubt a pair Generators with good edges will serve you well.
Mescalito Planet – Approach shoes – I was over the moon to learn that there was a light, eco-friendly version of the Mescalito. For me the Mescalito is the ideal big wall shoe, and the ideal shoe for long trips with plenty of adventures involved. It’s a do-it-all shoe that will take you through all of the trails and approaches you have on a big trip and you can wear them for kicking around the rest of the time too.It’s surprising how well you can climb in these, especially on low-angle granite – they were great for easy soloing in Tuolumne. Doing the East Ledges descent from El Cap with fully-laden haul bags wearing anything less substantial just isn’t worth it. Having a lighter Mescalito just makes the deal sweeter, especially when you’ve got to clip these shoes on your harness or haul them up the wall in a haul bag – every gram matters.
View this post on InstagramKalipè – Lifestyle shoes – I learnt long ago that you can’t wear the same shoes for more than a week (let alone two and a half months) without your feet getting a little fed up. The Kalipè are my sport trip shoes – they can handle quite technical approaches and they stick to rock, but they don’t look or feel like super technical footwear. As much as I liked the Mescalito Planet, it was a very sensible decision to compromise a little baggage room for a change of footwear.
You can probably tell I had a fantastic time and my footwear served me well. It’s surprisingly hard to bring all the right shoes for such a long trip and it makes a real difference if you get it wrong (which I did on my previous USA trip). The main thing I learnt is that you’ll use more rubber than you expect on this sort of trip, especially if you’re climbing on granite. Try and bring new shoes if you can or get them resoled before you leave – if it means making the most of your climbing trip, it’s well worth it.
