Video: La Sportiva 2018 Women's Solution Review

12/09/2018

The newly rebooted La Sportiva women's Solution climbing shoe is one of Bogong Equipment's high-end, aggressive bouldering and climbing shoes.

When the original La Sportiva Solution was first released in the early 2000s, it was the first shoe to have a fully rubber-encased heel. It's still a fully rubber, very deep heel cup – which makes it super secure when you're heel hooking.

The thing we like most about this shoe is the design of the toe. The rubber that La Sportiva has used is quite thin and quite soft. It's the XS Grip 2, and there's 3.5mm of it. That's not very much rubber relatively speaking, which gives you a lot of sensitivity. Because the shoe is also quite soft, you can really utilise small depressions in the rock with more versatility than, say, a stiffer shoe.

And that's how the Solution stands out from a lot of other shoes in its category: A lot of other high-end, aggressive shoes are extremely rigid, locking your foot into a curved position to help you with those really incut holds on very, very steep terrain.

With the Solution, La Sportiva got the stiffness-to-flex ratio exactly right – despite its softness, this is still a very structured, supportive shoe. The Solution does have a lot of downturn, and a lot of power (thanks to the special rand). But, because of the shoe's flex, it's a little more versatile in the way you can use it, which makes it a powerhouse for very technical problems and routes – the shoe by which many others are judged.

See specs for the La Sportiva 2018 Women's Solution.

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