Most shoes designed for highly technical footwork suffer here, and the Vapor V is no different.
Jamming is solid, but not as comfortable as looser fitting crack shoes. The precision is all there, and they are a great shoe for getting the most out of your footholds on pitches where your options are limited. I took them on cracks of all sizes at the Turkey Perch as well as a few TR laps on Liquid Acrobat, a notoriously technical layback finger crack. They smear very well and they are extremely precise. But after taking them out on the granite cracks and domes in the South Platte region of Colorado, I’m happy to concede the point: I underestimated them.
I will admit that when I first took the Vapor Vs out of the box, I looked at them and thought I’d never get them off the ground on a slab. Dave Alie in the SCARPA Vapor V, dihedral pitch of Outer Space, 10b PG-13, Eldorado Canyon.Īs the crack training ground of the Front Range, the South Platte (and Turkey Rocks, more specifically) is classic granite trad: nothing but cracks and slopers on just-under-vertical granite. After a few more pitches around the canyon, I was ready to take them crack climbing. They stuck to thin face holds well but also stood confidently on some of the smoother, more sloping holds often encountered in Eldo, where some of my other pure-edging shoes might falter.
Looking for a good example of this diversity, I took the shoes up Outer Space on the Bastille, and found myself climbing very confidently in them. Often climbs are protected by cracks while the moves themselves involve unlimited combinations of jams, locks, and face holds. The Vapor V was probably most surprising in this arena due to the soft sole and its ability to smear.Įldorado climbing can be described as funky, and while the park has a very strong traditional climbing ethic, there are scant few “pure” crack climbs. The sandstone at Eldorado Canyon is unique, often ranging from extremely coarse and reminiscent of granite, to very slick and smooth in the same pitch. Happy with the Vapor V’s performance in the sport climbing arena, I moved on to what I saw as their true test: trad climbing in Eldorado and the South Platte.