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When should you get your climbing shoes resoled?

Jun 30, 2019
This is a question I get asked a lot, but firstly lets cover some shoe anatomy so we get a better overall understanding.

What is the rand of a climbing shoe?
The rand of a climbing shoe is the supporting rubber that is around the sides and toe of your shoe, which the climbing rubber is attached to. This layer of rubber wraps around from the top to the bottom of the shoe to help maintain the shoe shape and characteristics.

I would always prefer not to do a rand repair on any pair of climbing shoes as changing the rand cap has the potential to affect the feel of the shoe and decreases the number of times the shoe can be resoled, thus decreasing the life of the shoe. Additionally, the rand rubber is softer than the climbing rubber and not designed to be climbed on. If you wear through the climbing rubber and don’t get the shoes resoled at that stage, you will then wear through the rand in a much shorter time than fresh climbing rubber. Unfortunately, however, 90% of the shoes I resole require new rand cap because they have been worn too thin.


You can see that the climbing rubber on the sole of these shoes has worn away and the climber has been climbing on the rands. If I was to just repair the sole of these the rand would wear out before the new sole, making them unusable.


If you are unsure, look at the toes of your shoes - if you can see any holes, cracks or tears then you will need a rand repair. You can also feel around the edge of the sole to see how soft, and therefore how thin, the rubber is. This should be nice and even firmness all the way around and if there are any soft spots on the toe then you will need a rand cap repair.
Here you can see this is the perfect time to resole your shoes. The climbing rubber is worn down, exposing the rand rubber but the climber has stopped climbing in them and therefore not worn down the rand. This type of resole is a lot easier and quicker (and cheaper!) and the shoe naturally retains its shape and feel.




These shoes have been worn way too much, wearing the rand down to nothing. Luckily for these shoes the leather hadn’t been damaged too much and all the stitching was still intact, so the shoe could (just!) be resoled, but if this went on much further it wouldn’t be possible to resole it. (Any repair would require work on the inner shoe, which is unlikely to be worthwhile.)




Well, what can I say about these shoes! The climber has continued to climb on the worn-out sole, wearing out the rand rubber and right through the leather. I’m quite impressed the climber was still able to climb on these shoes in this condition! Needless to say, these could not be resoled.
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