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Our Thoughts
I packed three pairs of high-performance climbing shoes for a trip to the Red River Gorge this fall: Scarpa’s Mago, La Sportiva’s Miura VS, and the new Vapor S. It was my first time visiting the area and I wanted to be prepared.
I linked up with a longtime local the first day who chuckled at my day pack overflowing with expensive Italian rubber. “Just pick something comfortable,” he told me. “The foot holds here are huge.”
I eyed the Vapor S’s comparatively flat, straight last with the Mago and Miura. It was no contest. I wore the Vapor S on every pitch I climbed during my eight days at the Red. And while the local’s advice was more-or-less correct—many of the steep, classic enduro-fests that the Red is renowned for do indeed have dang big foot holds—what was so great about the Vapor S is that it allowed me to confidently use a variety of foot-hold types, as climbers familiar with the Red will no doubt understand. I stood on sloping ledges and toed-in on pockets. I smeared on 5.10 gloss and on angling finger cracks. I jammed and I toe-hooked. I heel-hooked and I cammed. And there are, in fact, a few positively tiny edges at the Red. The Vapor S stood on those too.
I’ll admit: I shouldn’t have been so dismissive of the Vapor S that first day at the Red. Sure, a flat slipper may look like it’s best suited for padding up 5.6 slabs, but it can handle a variety of expert terrain too. In Rifle, CO, later that autumn, the Vapor S continued to act as my one-shoe-quiver as I learned to smear, hook, and grab on the polished, snot-slick limestone that the canyon is infamous for. The fact that the Vapor S is much softer than, say, the Vapor Lace (which I also love) provided much needed sensitivity on the delicate and insecure terrain. That said, when it came time to edge or kneebar, both instances where a stiffer shoe will serve you better, the Vapor S had passable performance, thanks to a 1.0mm full-length midsole and a Velcro strap to ratchet down the forefoot fit.
My co-tester, Steve Potter, also found the Vapor S to perform across the spectrum. He spent a lot of time training in the gym with it, since the Vapor S could stand on (or grab on to) most any hold type or angle. “It’s also a great all-day sport shoe for terrain that doesn’t rely on sustained thin edging,” he said, citing the Red, Maple Canyon, and Rifle. “That said, the continuous one-piece outsole retains some stiffness which, when sized down, makes the Vapor S a pretty decent edging shoe.”
Alright, that sounds like a contradiction. We know. But Scarpa has done something clever here. Underfoot, the Vapor S’s outsole is slightly hooked at the toe and the midsole is full-length, two characteristics that typically provide edging performance at the expense of softness. But flexible uppers and a softer rubber compound give the Vapor S an overall softness, which contributes to its excellent smearing and grabbing performance.
Fit
We recommend sizing up from your typical Scarpa fit. For example, I am a 42 approach shoe, I wear the Vapor Lace in a 41 for an all-day performance fit (for me, that means multi-pitch 5.12), and I wear the Mago in a 41 for tight redpoint performance. But because I originally planned to crack climb in my Vapor S, I ordered it in a 41.5—which was lucky because I found that it’s actually quite a bit smaller than the 41 Vapor Lace. I’d recommend going up a full size for Indian Creek-style enduro jamming.