Until very recently I believed that you couldn’t climb hard without super technical rock shoes. This is a result of staring at too many pictures of Dave Macleod cranked into tiny rock shoes, pushing on a foot hold the size of a quark and thinking, “if I wore shoes like that maybe I could climb that hard, or at least look like I do.” Dave climbs in a different league to me, he needs to sacrifice comfort for that level of performance. I, and the thousands of other VS to E3 climbers who religiously cram their screaming toes into super tight stickies, don’t. Enter the Red Chilli Mescalito, one of several rock shoes available that are super comfy yet still technical enough for ninety percent of British climbers.

The first rock shoes I owned were a pair of blue Scarpa Helix’s. I was around twelve or thirteen and remember being pretty chuffed as I left Needle Sports with my new purchase. During the Helix’s lifetime I began climbing regularly. They were a great shoe, but my shocking footwork and endless lunch hours at Penrith wall, quickly brought about their demise. By this time I was beginning to consider myself a climber, I had started to read the mags and I wanted to climb hard. However, a quick browse through On The Edge, showed that no one who climbed hard wore Scarpa Helix’s. Thus began my somewhat ridiculous belief that I couldn’t climb hard without super technical and often painful rock shoes.