I'm going to take a wild guess and blindly state that you must be a gym rat, sport wanker who spends more time wrestling pebbles than actually climbing... and most of your routes are only 1 pitch.
And you would be correct in assuming that I'm a ground up trad climber who can be an asshole at times.

I'm going to take a wild guess and blindly state that you've never pulled a move harder than v2 - oh wait, based on your profile I'm probably being generous. But I welcome the fact that you're a self-proclaimed asshole. Less work for me.

Seriously though, you might tout the benefits of a high top, and there are some. But I strongly doubt that those benefits were the genesis of its development. If you were going to make an evolution of the climbing shoe diagram similar to the common one seen of man - see below - then for the shoe it would go: hiking boot, high top climbing shoe, low-top lace up, slipper/velcro. This evolution begins with a path dependency - hiking evolved into climbing. But once climbing evolved as its own sport, the needs of climbing necessitated new innovations. Judging by your response we can see what part of the evolution chain you stopped at and, hence, why you cover your fragile ego by lashing out about simple comments regarding shoes that you don't understand in the first place.

I'm going to take a wild guess and blindly state that you've never pulled a move harder than v2 - oh wait, based on your profile I'm probably being generous. But I welcome the fact that you're a self-proclaimed asshole. Less work for me.

Seriously though, you might tout the benefits of a high top, and there are some. But I strongly doubt that those benefits were the genesis of its development. If you were going to make an evolution of the climbing shoe diagram similar to the common one seen of man - see below - then for the shoe it would go: hiking boot, high top climbing shoe, low-top lace up, slipper/velcro. This evolution begins with a path dependency - hiking evolved into climbing. But once climbing evolved as its own sport, the needs of climbing necessitated new innovations. Judging by your response we can see what part of the evolution chain you stopped at and, hence, why you cover your fragile ego by lashing out about simple comments regarding shoes that you don't understand in the first place.

[image]http://www.latrobe.edu.au/podiatry/Images/1%20Biomech%20pics/EVOLUTIONpics/evolution.GIF [/image]

La sportiva plans to release a lace-up version of the Katana later this year. You might want to wait for that.

I'm going to take a wild guess and blindly state that you've never pulled a move harder than v2 - oh wait, based on your profile I'm probably being generous. But I welcome the fact that you're a self-proclaimed asshole. Less work for me.

Seriously though, you might tout the benefits of a high top, and there are some. But I strongly doubt that those benefits were the genesis of its development. If you were going to make an evolution of the climbing shoe diagram similar to the common one seen of man - see below - then for the shoe it would go: hiking boot, high top climbing shoe, low-top lace up, slipper/velcro. This evolution begins with a path dependency - hiking evolved into climbing. But once climbing evolved as its own sport, the needs of climbing necessitated new innovations. Judging by your response we can see what part of the evolution chain you stopped at and, hence, why you cover your fragile ego by lashing out about simple comments regarding shoes that you don't understand in the first place.

[image]http://www.latrobe.edu.au/podiatry/Images/1%20Biomech%20pics/EVOLUTIONpics/evolution.GIF [/image]

La sportiva plans to release a lace-up version of the Katana later this year. You might want to wait for that.

I may have downsized mine too much for this, but Katanas seem like they'd hurt in cracks. The shape has too much downturn, I think.

I may have downsized mine too much for this, but Katanas seem like they'd hurt in cracks. The shape has too much downturn, I think.

Actually slippers came first. Or rather, slippers-- with felt or rope soles --were the first dedicated rock shoes in the Alps back in the late 19th century. The early tennis shoes that showed up on crags in Edwardian Britain were also low-cut.

The high-top climbing shoe appears to date from the 1920s. Bootmakers in Austria began to produce a light, high-topped mountain shoe with felt soles. (After the war, the same shoes, including models like the Kronhofer and Zillertal, adapted the new Vibram rubber.)

And in the 1930s Pierre Allain and Edouard Bourdonneau teamed up replace the standard gum soles of canvas high-top gym shoes with truck tire rubber, specifically for climbing at Fontainebleau.

Now a specifically down-turned and asymmetric commercial last didn't appear until the late 1980s, when Heinz Mariacher at La Sportiva began designing shoes for the new, overhanging face climbs that were starting to go up on Euro limestone.

So yes, the resurgence of interest in softer shoes was tied to sport climbing. Just as the return of high-tops is tied to a resurgence in hard trad climbing, especially on granite.

Caldwell developed the TC Pro specifically for the new 5.14 FFAs he's been doing on El Cap.

I thought the Maximus filled that hole (giggidy) a few years back?

There's more to it then just 'some experience' and some foot muscles. Both my partner and I use hightop shoes for most of our climbing in the Canadian Rockies, Squamish, and the Bugaboos. Combined we have over half a century of experience and abusing our feet while climbing. Do we climb in low cut shoes? Sure, when the route calls for it. Most of our climbing tends to be on obscure routes and new ground... largely on new ground, where cleaning a route ground up, drilling from natural stances, and time consuming leads are the norm. That said, we find ourselves using the hightop shoes for the majority of our climbing. Often we are leaving the low cut shoes at home, even on casual cragging days. An exception for me are thin cracks where a narrow toe profile is a quality most hightops lack, not to mention thin cracks are not my best discipline. Comes down to personal opinion, physique, and the types of routes you are climbing in most situations. I leave grades out of that list for a reason. The average climber doesn't actually climb hard enough to out do the ability of their shoes.

That's an awesome shot!

I hear where you are coming from and I certainly have an each-to-their-own attitude. The particular grade doesn't matter but I was trying to counteract the "you need support on long trad routes" argument. If you only ever wear soft, low-cut shoes. Foot endurance will keep up like everything else.

I may not be able to out do the ability of my shoes (I'm sure there are plenty of hotshots who could outclimb me in tennis shoes). But I can still climb better in a sensitive shoe than a stiff one and get a better sense of how much weight I can get on the foothold before the foot slips off (although I realize that if I spent more time climbing in a stiff shoe, I would get better at it). For an alpine route that is as much hiking as climbing, I might wear a stiffer shoe. Otherwise, I just don't find any upside (for me at least) to choosing a stiff hightop over a softer low top.

Yea, granite doesn't tear you up as much. But I'll wear mythos for an all day desert tower route also. I don't find that the soft, low cut shoe causes my feet any problems. Now I do find that the desert sandstone causes the mythos a big problem, but all that does is up my replacement cost a bit.

cheers

I'm probably going to be beaten here, but I think pre-modern rockshoe Yosemite climbers used chuck taylors (high and low tops) and low top deck shoes as climb shoes, in addition to whatever mountaineering-type boots were available before. The development of climbing shoes therefore probably doesn't go:

hiking boot -> high top rock shoe -> low top rock shoe

but rather:

hiking boots, deck shoes, whatever tennis shoes/sneakers worked -> high and low topped rock shoes -> modern climbing shoes with both designs.

Someone with actual knowledge of these developments, beyond your entirely-unbacked postulation, and my mostly-unbacked postulation, should come in and show us, one way or another.

All or almost all of the reasons given to you about high tops in this thread do not pass muster. They're simply preferences. What you said they do, hinder performance, is correct.

Sidepull, climbing and the evolution of climbing shoes has far more routes in Europe that Yosemite. Even the initial use of chockstones has more routes in the British and Euopean scene. I'll be the first to agree that Yosemite is the center piece of "American" climbing. However, it should not be used as the example for world climbing.

The use of felt and rope soled low cut shoe for hard climbing predates climbing in Yosemite. If you want a specific example of low cut shoes being used pre EB's, Conrad Kain used a felt soled shoe to climb the gendarme on the south ridge (Kain route) of Bugaboo Spire in 1916, a route that went unrepeated for many years. Even in Yosemite the “evolution”, as you call it, is closer to Hiking boot (as with all climbing), to a variety of lighter weight shoes both high and low top, to moccasins (some with a pine sap-charcoal sole applied for better traction), to cheep Japanese tennis shoe (predominantly low cut), to… All this happened before the appearance of high top EB’s with vibram rubber soles.
Even the beloved EB’s were European made.


Thread drift, yes, but a good one.

Just a few points:

1) My example pre-dates yours a bit - Muir was in Yosemite in 1868.

2) You're right, Yosemite is not the center of the universe and my example is entirely too narrow. That said, it was meant to show how slim the anecdotal evidence of the other poster was.

3) As I mentioned, my model of the evolution is by nature a simplification just as the image I originally posted is a simplification. If one were to account for all the different little innovations over the last 200 years or so of climbing and then average them I think my description would still be fairly accurate. It's an issue of forest v. trees.

I'm glad that people like high top shoes and I'm glad that there is a use for them. I still stand by original point that they're a pretty specialized tool and therefore their use is similarly context-specific. You'll also note that in saying that I'm slandering anyone or any style of climbing - you're the one that decided that was an appropriate tact.

To limit the flexibility of your foot and thereby make routes/problems seem harder than they should. Honestly, I can't think of a rockclimbing purpose (please correct me) that is better achieved by limiting ankle mobility. It seems that this sort of design had more to do with the evolution from hiking boot to climbing shoe rather than any technical/physiological advantage.