Rock Shoes: Boreal Piranha
1st Mar 2006
£74.95 | Lace Up | size reviewed 10 (foot size 10) | weight 637g | low asymmetry
The Piranha is a nice simple looking shoe. Built on a fairly straight narrow last with the latest Boreal rubber these are a great performer. They have a well padded tongue and excellent well positioned pull-on loops, a small matter, but you might as well be able to get your fingers in comfortably if you are going to have them. It can be downright dangerous hopping around cliff tops with your hands stuck to your boots because you can’t get your fingers out! Given the narrow shape and the lining you’ll want to get them to fit from the off rather than expecting them to stretch to any great extent. The more unusual aspect of these boots is the featured heel, with some form of grip on the bottom coming around to become “hooks” on the back of the heel. The hooks are rigid enough to take a fair amount of weight; in fact they enabled us to cruise a heel-hooking problem we had always struggled with. The fact they are laced means you can get the heel nice and tight. Now the grips on the bottom are a little odd. They are shaped to grip in an uphill direction not down. So they seem a little superfluous and just somewhere to collect mud. Apart from that minor oddity these are great boots and some of the first we would choose for edgy climbing, being comfortable yet very precise. Not the smeariest boot but will probably soften more with time and it also, despite having a funky heel, doesn’t have any of the new additional toe rubber of other boots such as the Crux. For people who like a slightly stiffer boot this is a great all round shoe which you could happily do hard trad in or take bouldering. By the way, as users of previous Boreal boots, we can state that the rubber on these boots is miles better than previous Boreal grades - no longer a stumbling block it might once have been for some.
This review was carried out as part of a massive comparative review of 25 pairs of Performance Rock Shoes. We think that this could be the biggest review of such shoes ever undertaken. You can read the whole review here.