disjoint thoughts

I love my red chili spirits. They perform very well, and I can wear them all day on a multi-pitch without worrying about comfort. The only problem I had with them was in the toe.

The problem
For some reason, red chili decided to put a sort of toe liner in the spirit. I’ve yet to see anything like this in any other shoe, including other red chili’s. The liner feels like its made of some sort of fast wicking fabric (like many shirts are) probably in an attempt to keep the toe area from getting sweaty and slick. This sounds like a good idea. The toe box of climbing shoes tend to be the hottest area with the least breathability because of the extra rubber that goes over the TOP of the toes to allow for better toe hooking.

It may have been a good idea on paper, but in reality the liner just makes things worse. When your feet sweat (which happens to me a lot here in Arizona), the liner acts like a sock around your toes. The sock just acts as another surface that you have to worry about slowly slipping as you try to keep your toe on a tiny crip. I found myself curling in my toes and lifting up my heel in desperate tempts to keep my toe in place.

The solution
Instead of ditching the spirit and finding another shoe, I decided to fix the problem: I removed the toe liner. The result was almost perfect. The toe stills feels a little sloppy when wet, but nowhere near as bad as it was before.

How-to
Disclaimer! If you mess up your shoes doing this, don’t blame me. Proceed at your own risk!

Here’s what you need to do this to your spirits: sharp scissors and pliers. The general idea is to cut the toe liner as close to where it is stitched to the shoe as possible, then rip out the pieces with the pliers.

The liner is sewn only partially to the top and sides of the shoe, so start by cutting the liner off in those areas. Once you have this done, the liner should flop down to the bottom of the shoe. The next step is to cut the liner along the bottom stitching. The best technique I found was to make small cuts along the stitching and rip/tear the liner out with the pliers. Here’s a pic of the bottom stitching:

This is a pretty slow process. Once you have the majority of the liner out you probably will need to go back and do some cleanup. I was working with size 6 shoes, obviously larger shoes will be easier to work with and smaller shoes maybe impossible. Here’s the left overs from the liner:

For me, the result of doing this little mod was amazing. It went from contemplating getting new shoes to using my spirits for all of my outdoor climbing. However, if you don’t experience any of the problems I described then this modification isn’t for you.