Durability
The shoe life is impressive (which is good because they aren’t inexpensive at $170). I climb 4-5 days a week both indoors and outside, and I usually only have one pair of shoes at a time.
The Solution has maintained its power and pop despite my abuse. Out of the box the shoes felt pretty stiff, and they took a little getting used to. They have softened up a bit, but not past the point of good performance.
I think this is a good thing because this stiffness is important when it comes to edging stability and precision in holding a toe at the extension of your leg’s reach. Believe me, I’ve been psyched when my feet cut after a dynamic move and I now need the Solution’s toe to deadpoint a tiny jib.
Sizing / Fit
They come small enough to fit me, and they fit me really, really well. I wear a 34.5, and sometimes it’s hard to find shoes that small (as a point of comparison, the 34.5 in a Miura VS fits the same as a Solution). Even though the shoe softened up a little and conformed to my foot, the sizing stayed the same without stretching.
My foot is wide in front and narrow in the back, and the shoe wraps around my foot securely and closes using a Velcro strap known as the “Fast Lace System.” The quick “grip and rip” system is convenient and helps the shoe close around my foot uniformly so that at no one point is there a dead space in the support.
This allows the performance of the shoe to be at all times totally 3D. The shoe provides security without pain while I climb. And where I personally experienced some slippage during heel hooks in the Miura VS, I find the Solution to be completely secure, allowing further study of technical heel hooks in addition to technical toe hooks.
The toe is a bit more aggressive in its downturn than the toe of the Miura VS, and I do sit down and take my heel out of the shoe sometimes to give my toes a break. Standing around during a gym session causes my toes to go to sleep. But the Solution was made for climbing, not standing around.
I had to play around a little to get used to the stiff, aggressive toe when the shoe first came out of the box. At first my toes were popping off holds during drop knees and weighting certain face holds. But once I began to understand the shoe, this ceased to be a problem and became all about operator method.
Bottom Line
I tried this shoe out of convenience. I still love my Miura VS shoes, but I ended up with an opportunity to fine tune my technique in the La Sportiva Solution. No wonder La Sportiva hasn’t changed the shoe once since it debuted in 2007.
This shoe’s ability to help me inspect nuance in my technique is a clue that the shoe is destined to become a classic. This is a shoe with a big presence and personality, and while the shoe itself is not subtle, it allows climbers an opportunity to study nuance in their beta.
It excels on technical, overhanging steep routes and boulder problems, and it holds its own on face. The Solution will probably be best appreciated by people who seek sophistication where their feet are concerned.
As long as I am bouldering often and continue to need heel and toe hooks on a regular basis, I will indeed buy another Solution. If I find I’m climbing primarily technical face, then I would return to the Miura VS.
So there we are, La Sportiva! Here’s to standards, quality, outliving the trend, and a possible place in the climbing classics hall of fame.
You can now read Marci’s review of the Women’s Solution HERE.
Just from looking at the picture, it looks like you are wearing the muira vs in an enormous size, that bump of leather above your toes disappears when you fit them well, and provides support to the top of your toes. I’m surprised that you even like them, or the solutions, at all to be honest. (This was all totally insulting, but forgive me, the internet makes us all act impudently). Have you tried them on smaller?
Hi Adam.
First I want to be clear for everyone out there that the wrinkle in the Miura VS never caused me any trouble until I tried to toe-hook, and the trouble was caused by the wrinkle in combination with the buckle on the first Velcro strap. The Solution fixed this because the rubber extends all the way past my big toe knuckle, allowing for maximum no-fuss contact with rock.
Anyway, I actually think your question is fair if you really are just going from the picture. :) (For your convenience, the top of these reviews always tell you what size climbing shoe we are actually wearing during our tests and what size we usually wear on the street.) The Muira in the picture is a 34.5, which equates to a size 4 in women’s street shoes. I walk around in 5-5.5 and sometimes even size 6. This would mean that I am sizing at least a full size smaller than I would normally wear. Indeed I tried them on in a 34, but found that I couldn’t fit all my piggies in the toe-box. About that wrinkle, I just put them on again and looked at them with a buddy. He and I think it might actually be caused because the shoe is precisely not enormous. The shoe itself is so small that there’s not much space for the leather to stretch between the buckle and the toe-rand (less than an inch), and because there’s so little space, the leather is actually forced to wrinkle up a bit, especially when weighted. Then when the shoe gets worn over time, the wrinkle stays there. As an overall comment on that wrinkle, I would say that everyone’s feet will look different in shoes by virtue of the vast variation in foot shape and volume, and I think you might be absolutely right that for some folks that wrinkle disappears just as you say, especially if there’s a long enough section of leather to actually fill out.
Indeed, though, for what its worth, I quite like these shoes, and mine have no fold on the top or anything like that, but I’m relatively sure its not because of the uniqueness of my foot shape, but because I walk around in a size 8 (41) and wear my vs, in a 4.5 (36). I know that the crease over the toes doesn’t disappear, until when I wear them in at least a 38, at which point they begin to feel like a completely different, a much more precise, powerful and (downturned!) shoe. The solution especially goes from being a clunky insensitive block, to a sensitive, powerful weapon. If you cannot tell, it kind of bothers me to see so many people wearing this shoe like this, instead of a better fitting shoe that doesn’t require you to cram your foot into the front to get the benefit of the intended design. This has now completely turned into a lame internet catharsis so I apologize if you actually read it.
How does the heel fit on you? I have the solutions and there is a bit of dead space in the heel. Do you think I just need a half size smaller?
Yes duke… I have the solutions and they fit well…however only because my heel was pushing down.on a rather comfy dead rat…i had not known it was there…upon removing the dead rat…i too found the solutions have a dead space in the heal area…so I put the dead rat back…all.is good..except.i can’t find a partner to.climb with ….