Rock Shoes: Scarpa Tifosi
1st Mar 2006
£80.00 | Lace Up | size reviewed 9.5 (foot size 10) | weight 551g | high asymmetry
Certainly one of the most aggressive shoes on review. Virtually useless for smearing as the toes is so downward pointing and hook like, but when you are on overhanging terrain it’s they come into their own! Scarpa have been in the business of making rock shoes as long as anybody and you are definitely paying a bit of a premium for the Scarpa name. That said they make quality kit and their shoes do not fall apart in a hurry. They are very well made, look smart, and perform very well at what they are designed to do. The laces are chunky and plentiful making it really straightforward to tighten things up until your feet go blue - if that rocks your boat. The twin, offset pull loops function well. The unusual Scarpa tongue, which is only affixed to the shoe down one side, can take a little getting used to when putting them on, but once on feels no different to any tongue. We do have one gripe. Although the Vibram rubber is good, the soles are obviously made from cut-out sections of a larger sheet (unlike Five Ten who injection mould theirs individually). The reason this is obvious, and the reason for pointing it out, is that there is a repeating Scarpa logo cut into the rubber at regular intervals. On one shoe this means that there is a miniature Scarpa cut-out directly under the toe which a) holds dirt and chalk, and b) reduces the rubber to rock / resin surface area in the most crucial area of the shoes. Awesome on overhanging ground and edging, but you’d be better bare foot on smeary slabs!
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.