Rock climbing is a gear-intensive sport. You’ll be wearing rock shoes and a harness, dragging a rope and quickdraws, perhaps toting trad gear, wearing a helmet and chalkbag – phew! But of all this gear, only rock shoes (and chalk, arguably) will actually improve your performance; the rest is there to keep you alive.

Today’s rock climbing shoes evolved from mountaineering boots and have, over the last few decades, become so specialized that many serious climbers carry several different pairs to the crag. I always bring at least two pairs: a stiff shoe for edging and a soft downturned shoe for steep climbing.

The first climbing shoes date back to Victorian times and were essentially smooth-soled boots. Soft iron nails were added to increase friction, forming a pattern around the edge and interior of the sole. Eventually, the nails were replaced with rubber lugs that mimicked the pattern of the nails. Modern climbing shoes with rubber soles evolved from these rugged, Vibram (derived from Vitale Bramani, one of its inventors) soles, first produced in the mid-1930s.

In the 1960s, Frenchmen Rene Desmaison and Pierre Allain re-invented smooth-soled climbing shoes with a friction rubber that quickly made the lugged soles of alpine boots obsolete for pure rock climbing. These shoes were dubbed RDs and PAs respectively; beginning the tradition of naming climbing shoes after their designer’s initials. The hightop PAs became the most popular climbing shoe until the famous American climber Royal Robbins designed a shoe (RRs, naturally) to rival, if not surpass PAs. By the end of the 1960s, Edouard Bourdineau invented shoes with a softer composition sole that was superior to the hard composition of previous rock shoes. EBs dominated the market for more than a decade, and pointed the way toward the next design breakthrough.

Perhaps the greatest innovation in climbing shoes happened in 1982 when the Spanish company Boreal introduced the Fire (pronounced fee-ray), the first climbing shoe with ‘sticky’ rubber. The Fire allowed climbers to grip smooth rock with their feet and use previously too-small footholds. Fires offered such an advantage that, for a time, many climbers considered them flat-out cheating. The Fire’s rubber revolutionized climbing shoes and became the standard for all future shoe designs.

There were additional shoe advancements throughout the ‘80s and early ‘90s including even stickier rubber, pointier toe-boxes for more precise footwork, and tensioned rands that force the foot forward in the shoe. Additionally, in an effort to use the tiniest features, climbers began to downsize their shoes two or three sizes smaller than their street shoes (ouch!). As shoe models became climbing style specific – like slabs, faces, overhangs – the R & D team of the Italian shoe company La Sportiva, most notably Giuliano Jellici and Heinz Mariacher, recognized a hole in the market. The hardest climbs in the world had begun to literally turn upside down, from vertical faces in the 1980s to steep, even horizontal caves in the ‘90s. Thus was born the next radical climbing shoe design: the La Sportiva Mirage, produced in 1995.

The Mirage was the world’s first asymmetric, downturned climbing shoe. Not only was it shaped like a banana, the toe-box was bent so far forward it appeared deformed. Jonathan Lantz, current president of La Sportiva N.A. said, “Out of the box, the Mirage just looked like a torture device for the feet.” Not surprisingly, the Mirage didn’t sell well because climbers were turned off by the radical shape, but according to Lantz, “The people who actually tried it really loved the shoe.”

Asymmetric shoe designs, combined with a downturned last, force a climber’s big toe into a curled position at the front of the shoe. The latent power this tension provides is utilized when the climber stands on footholds; it almost feels like having a spring in your big toe. This design also makes heel-hooking and toe-hooking – two techniques necessary for steep climbing – far easier, in part because of the extra rubber the Mirage had on the heel and top of the toe. The Mirage set a new standard for high-performance climbing shoes that future models evolved from, much like the Fire’s did more than a decade earlier.

Climbing shoes have had some crazy designs since 1995: ribbed heels for better hooking, a tight band of rubber connecting just the toe and the heel (that ostensibly channels more power to the toe), floppy slippers that feel like foot condoms, and many more. However, the asymmetry and downturned toe of the Mirage was the last monumental advancement in climbing shoes. Meanwhile, climbers like me are still awaiting the next rock shoe design that will help us all climb a little harder.

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