Submited By: Pierre Pannetier on 12/01/2012
I bought these shoes a year ago, and decided to wait until I’ve climbed enough with them to write a long term review, so here we are:
- Out of the box: first thing that strikes is the overall quality. You can tell these are hand made: not a single thread loose, no gaps between assembled fabrics, ykk zip: you can feel the attention to detail.
- Comfort: I’ve had shoes from every main manufacturer before, and none of them even get close to these in terms of comfort/size ratio. The pressure is evenly spread on the toes: there is no hard point, which helps keeping the pain to a minimum. There is absolutely no dead space all around the foot, to a point where it make a suction noise when you take them off. The feeling is very similar to wearing a tight diving suit on your feet, a kind of neoprene sock. Inside stitching has been reduced to its bare minimum, so you don’t feel that either.
- Durability: As it happened to the climber who wrote the previous review, the sole of the shoe started to peel away after about 10 grit sessions. So I’ve contacted Andrea Boldrini in France, who kindly replaced the whole sole (not simply a toe area resole) as a guaranteed repair. Since then, they have been perfectly fine.
- Performance: This shoes are semi-rigid, with makes them very versatile: they’re soft enough to smear efficiently, but the slightly aggressive toe box makes them very good for tiny edges as well. The rubber is similar to La Sportiva’s Vibram in term of grip and wear resistance, so it’s very good. The shoes give you a lot of feedback, so you tend to find extra confidence because you can “feel” the grip limit. They do everything with great precision, a lot of sensitivity, and no pain! The only problem I had with them is their heel: it tends to come a bit loose when heel hooking, surely due to the fact that my feet are very narrow, and I've never had slippers that were really good for heel hooks. So for people who use their heel often, I’d go for a pair of Apache: the fit is the same, but the Velcro closure locks the heel at the bottom of the shoe, which the elastic on the top of the Scorpio struggles to do.
- Sizing: I’m between a 8.5UK (42.5) and a 9UK (43) in street shoes, and I use 7.5UK (41) in these. In a year’s time, they hardly stretched: no more than a quarter of a UK size.
For their performance and incredible comfort, I would have given these shoes five stars, but they lost one star due to the sole glue problem, which to be fair has been taken under guarantee by the manufacturer. Enjoy the climb, hope I helped!
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