La Sportiva Miura VS Women’s

Cut to climbing on a piece of slab—limestone, in Kalymnos, Greece. Greece is known for tufas and huge, overhanging cave climbing, but there are also long, vertical walls that look like petrified sticky stuff where something recently got peeled off and left sharp mini peaks and points—like the way a frosted cake always looks in the advertisements. We are talking about slab with serious texture.

So we decided to warm up on this stuff, and, yes, of course the day was beautiful and the sea breeze was in my hair, and the goats were bahhing and tinking the bells around their neck, my husband was like, “Marci, you are the love of my life,” and so I was like, “Sure. I’ll climb that slab.” (OK. He didn’t say that. He said, “Marci. Do you want to warm up here?”) Anyway….

I laced up my Miuras, tied my knot, and I was off. But then I begin to have “slab fears.” You know what I’m talking about. It goes something like this: Oh, jeez. If my foot blows here, it’s going to mega suck, and why are my calves pumped??

My personal mind movie is playing a horrifying cheese grater experience where, after my foot blows, the shredding starts on my chin and next is ripping the skin off my nipples and then my knees. Holy crap, I hope that my toe stays on that little jib the size of my pinky nail. Please not Elvis leg! I’m way too proud to say “take” here! Needless to say, I probably need to read The Rock Warrior’s Way and examine why I have such horrid thoughts on slab, but when I think of why I got to the ground unscathed that day, I give my women’s Miuras a big, fat, wet kiss.

It should be clearly noted that the toe in both the lace-up and the VS is a beautiful thing because, in situations like I had that day in Greece, it just stays where you put it. The sculpted point and edge, as well as the giz-whiz-ology Sportiva calls the “Powerhinge” system (which uses the “Slingshot Rand”), make technical edge climbing exactly what it ought to be—about the technique itself, not about the shoe. Basically, the goal of this technology is to distribute your weight from the heel forward so that when you are on a miserably small hold, your toes stay precisely where you put them. This miracle occurs because the shoe only stretches in the back half, not in the toe. This means that the shoe does its job so you can do your job: concentrate on the technique and movement, not on a shoe failure.

Miuras, VS and lace, are also good for overhanging, I-have-to-reach-for-it-and-stick-it-type moves. I call this the “toe deadpoint,” where your feet inevitably cut and you have only one chance to get that toe on, or else forget about it. It’s the moment when you realize, “All right, all right! I admit that core is important. I should start training harder…” So with the design of the Miura, if you manage to get your toe on the hold, then the shoe manages to stick.

I’m no shoe engineer, but I would suspect that the reason this works is due to the aggressive, down-pointing toe. Basically, it makes grabbing that improbable toe suddenly more possible. This comes in handy for me when I am bouldering and when I am climbing overhanging sport routes.

Now, this toe isn’t the most aggressively down pointing toe ever designed, but I would rather have a shoe that I can use both on technical face as well as on overhangs in the same day. To try to climb on a technical face in a super aggressive toe probably isn’t a good idea—in the same way that it would be stupid to select a Velcro shoe for shoving your foot in a crack, or selecting a powder ski for an icy day.

That said, the Miura, both the VS as well as the lace-up, seems to be able to span a large range of climbing genres and still perform really, really well.