THE PROCESS

Step 1

Leave your shoes and contact info in a climbing gym drop box, or email us some photos

Step 2

We call you to discuss options, pricing, and return

Step 3

We let you know when your shoes are ready, and either coordinate a dropoff or ship shoes back to you

THE RESOLE

At a High Level

Our job is to restore rubber thickness lost in the soles and rands due to climbing, while intentionally preserving or augmenting performance characteristics of the shoe. Most shoes will require half-soles. Some will require rand repairs. Others might need something special, and we're happy to evaluate those on a case-by-case basis.

When to Resole

The best time to resole is when sole rubber at the most highly-worn location (usually the tip of the big toe) has zero thickness, but the line where the sole rubber ends has not begun to recede. Think of the sole rubber as a shield protecting the more delicate rand rubber. Alternatively, the sole rubber is like a checking account (intentionally consumable); whereas the rand rubber is like a savings account (you can use it, but it's more consequential). If things are bad enough that you can see seams splitting (or your toes), we may still be able to help, but will quote for the extra work. We'll leave it to you to decide whether it's worth it.

Soles

For shoes with a discontinuous sole (aka 'split sole', fig. 1), the entire forward section of rubber is replaced. For shoes with continuous soles (fig. 2), a joint is created just behind the ball of the foot, and the rubber is replaced forward of that joint. For so-called 'no edge' shoes (fig. 3), the rubber that wraps over the top of the shoe is properly patterned, skived, and replaced as part of the same piece as the sole rubber.

Rands

It's generally not ideal to get a hole in your rand midway through the life of your soles; so even if you don't have a hole, we may still recommend rand repair if they are getting thin. These repairs fall into two categories - toe caps and rand replacements. Most repairs are toe caps, where a joint is created in the existing rand and only the most worn rubber is replaced. Sometimes it's necessary to replace the entire rand, or a large portion of it - these are rand replacements. Since rands are anchored under soles, rand repairs are always an additional operation to sole replacements / half-soles.

Rubber Options

We stock many of the popular rubbers. Contact us to check inventory on anything specific you're looking for. Otherwise, we'll make a selection to match the intended purpose of the shoe.

Custom Work

We welcome customization, modification, prototyping jobs, etc. In these cases what we can warranty is limited, but we're happy to fight monotony and help bring new ideas to life.