Five Ten

Crawe Climbing Shoe

Great shoe

I've been using these shoes in the gym for over 6 months now. They're perfect for everything in the gym. I can stand on small slab feet without thinking about it, smear, stand on volumes, edge... They're great! They're so comfortable that I forget to take them off when I'm sitting around in the gym. I use them for warming up all the way through to most of my gym projecting, although if I need to do something really techie, with maybe some hard heel hooks, I'll swap out to different shoes. They also seem really durable. I haven't noticed any wear, and I've been wearing them a lot. The sizing is weird- I put that it's true to size, but I need to explain that: I'm used to downsizing most climbing shoes pretty aggressively, but I wouldn't do that with these. These are my street shoe size and while I could have gone down maybe 1 or .5 size, I wouldn't go much more than that. They did not stretch very much. So I guess these are pretty close to true to my street shoe size, that just is not how I would normally size my climbing shoes. It took me some time to get used to the feeling of the sole inside the shoe, which is weird. It feels plasticy and can feel slippery. Once I got used to it, it doesn't bother me at all. I have not used these outside very much. I did not like the way the shoes felt on real rock as much as in the gym. Like I said, the interior of the shoe feels kind of plasticy and slippery, I had a hard time trusting it on small technical feet on granite. I think in the correct conditions these shoes would be just fine: steep overhangs where you don't need to do a ton of technical footwork. Overall: love these shoes for almost all my gym climbing needs. Not as good for me in terms of outdoor climbing. Sizing is weird: they stretch a little, but not much, so be conservative when downsizing.

Crawe is so close...

Familiarity:

I've put it through the wringer

I so much wanted these shoes to be Five Ten's answer to La Sportiva's Solutions, but they are just too different. For my foot, out of the box, they were unbearably tight, but still somehow felt loose in the toe box. And, out of the box, the sole extends a bit out from the rand, making it hard to get my weight precisely over my toe; on tiny edges, the shoe would roll a bit. These problems go away when the shoes are properly broken in, which I did by wearing them in the gym for several weeks. You absolutely can't beat this rubber. And the craftsmanship (so far for me) seems really solid. One criticism is getting these on--the elastic that goes over the top of your foot is pretty tight, and lacks a thumb loop, so it's really hard to get on, especially when my foot is damp or sweaty. Another thing to watch for...for my feet, I size Solutions at 43. For the Crawe, the 45.3 size seems tight.