Reader Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5

The five ten camp four shoe fits into the approach shoe category, a little heavier then a trail runner the camp four excels at getting you there then holding it's own as a climbing shoe.
Internally shanked and fitted with five ten's stealth sticky rubber with lace to toe closure this shoe can be laced normally for hiking and then cinched up for bouldering/climbing. There is also a molded heel cup that provides a snug fit keeping heel lift to a min.
With tons of miles mtn. biking up into the rocks then scrambling around this shoe holds up well showing no sign of heel rollover that I've experienced in the past [heel breakdown]. The internal shank provides decent support for biking [I don't use clipless pedals in the spring] and the toe rand has nothing to catch sliding into a pedal cage or power grips. Though this is not a substitute for a technical climbing shoe I've bouldered and climbed 5.9 in them. $99.00 usd/2# size 10.5.[once again I've used a product shot instead of my shoes on the newly mowed lawn because I couldn't get my image to upload,sorry]

Edited by pyeyo on 05/27/2007 10:30:13 MDT.

Rating: 4 / 5

Pros: great all round three season mountain shoe. Good fit for me (fairly broad size 10). Excellent grip on most surfaces including - not surprisingly - rock.

Cons: Rounded heel not particularly secure on wet grass or snow. Significantly heavier and stiffer than a trail running shoe: if you're not going to be dealing with a lot of rock or steep ground, a lighter running shoe is probably a better bet.

Rating: 4 / 5

I have owned and loved a pair of these and worn them until their current state of having gaping holes in the sides.

Observations: great fit, decent support and cushioning (never any sore feet) and the traction provided by 5.10's proprietary stealth rubber is amazing. I spent over a year using this shoe as my every day shoe, which meant it saw 2-4 miles of mixed pavement and off-road walking almost daily as well as many miles of road cycling (the rubber stuck to the pedals very well), occasional climbing on stuff, and a bit of running. It's not the lightest shoe out there, but the weight was never bothersome.

However, the climate where I live is not particularly dry. The upper material is described as "water resistant" and will indeed hold up to a momentary dunk in a puddle without letting water through. Constant exposure to moisture, on the other hand, will get the material soaked pretty quickly. This doesn't have to be wading a creek, rainy sidewalks or wet snow or even just fields of dewy grass can get this shoe completely soaked through. And that's a problem, because once this shoe gets wet, it stays wet for quite a while. It's almost as bad as wet goretex. This also adds quite a bit of weight to the boot.

Durability: The upper still looks pretty much new, but after a year of daily heavy-duty use the front of the soles began to peel a little and I noticed that the EVA midsole seemed to be dissolving away in spots, resulting in strange pits. The road chemicals our town uses during the winter may have something to do with that, they've had a funny effect on my shoes before. More frustrating was that the stiff foam heel cup that provides stabilization began to come apart from where it meets the rubber sole, and that little gap soon turned into a little hole as chunks of foam kept dissapearing, and that little hole soon enough turned into a big hole. This has happened so far on the inner sides of both boots and the outer side of one.

It's certainly possible that I've simply pushed the shoes far beyond the limits of their natural life. Perhaps I just don't know when to say when. They are pretty durable for the lengths of time most rational people would expect them to last for, I guess.

So I say they're great if you want the traction and support and you're hiking somewhere dry like the rockies or southwest. Anywhere wet, you may want something that dries more quickly.