This is every pair of 5.10 approach shoes I’ve ever owned (except the size 12 Daescents which turned out to be really size 11, and haven’t gotten worn much). The big wall boots (two pairs), the guide shoes (several pairs), half a dozen different pair. All delaminate unexpectedly at some point when you are five miles out on talus, at about 18 months after manufacture, whether you’ve used them or not.
If I was bored (and I am), I could go through and find half-a-dozen other examples.
I stopped wearing their climbing shoes because Charles Cole, bless his heart, must have had weird shaped heels, and every pair of their climbing shoes was impossible to heel-hook with. After I graduated from the beloved Moccasym to more aggressive shoes, I went through about three different 5.10 shoes to try to find something that would stay on while climbing tufas. Most uncomfortable: 5.10 Teams.
Then I discovered Solutions (and Skwamas, and Genius, and Boreal Fusions) and never looked back. We used to wear 5.10s because the Stealth rubber was just way better, but now everyone else’s sticky rubber is within a hair of being just as good.
Why buy shoes that 1) fall apart, and 2) don’t fit, and 3) change sizes randomly between not just models, but the same shoe in different years?
I’ve never had a pair of Boreal or La Sportiva approach shoes fall apart like this. I’ve run thousands, and biked ten-thousands of miles, in 20 different kind of shoes, and not a single pair of shoes except the 5.tennies has ever fallen apart. Delaminated. The others get old and wear out, but they don’t fall apart.
I had these shoes for about a year, and really only started wearing them last November in Kalymnos. They still have all their tread, and aren’t worn out. They just fell apart. Both on the same day, like someone threw a switch.
My go-to running shoe is the Adidas Supernova (which they don’t really make anymore), and none of those have ever fallen apart, after probably 20 pairs. Maybe now that Adidas owns 5.10, they’ll fix this problem. But I’ll never know.
Never Again.
Things that are better than they were part IV in a series
On the list of things that are cool, and/or better than they used to be:
Previously. Previouslier. Previouslier-er.