As Scarpa continues to make a strong push in the North American market, they also continue to impress us with beautifully crafted shoes for climbers who love to get technical with their tools. The Scarpa Furia is a technical climbing shoe designed to maximize feel from plastic to rock. It features a sensitive 3mm rubber with no midsole and an aggressive downturned shape designed for overhanging terrain. We had an opportunity to review the shoe over the last four months and here is what we had to say.
Scarpa’s Furia Climbing Shoe
The Scarpa Furia is one of the most sensitive technical climbing shoes on the market. With only 3.0mm of rubber between your foot and the rock, the Furia allows you to feel every hold as you make your way through slightly overhanging to overhanging terrain and holds enough power to edge well despite the lack of mid-sole support. It also features Active Rand construction that harnesses energy in the rubber and has one rubber strip that connects the toe box and heel to maximize performance.
To guide our review, we have broken the shoe down into its specific components to give you a full summary of its features.
Rand
The first thing you will notice when using the Furia is that there is very minimal rubber between your foot and the rock. The sole of Furia is so thin that out-of-the-box, you can squeeze the toe box together with almost no effort at all. Unlike other shoes, the sensitivity of the Furia is immediate and, after my first session using them, I noticed a substantial difference when feeling out small holds.
Despite its strong technical performance, it should be noted that my feet were much more tired than usual after my first time using them and took a small adjustment period. However, after extended use, I noticed that my feet felt much stronger as a switched back and forth from the Furia to the Booster S.
Because of the malleability of the the rubber, the rubber on the Furia did not wear out as quickly as other shoes. Despite regular use both indoors and outdoors, the Furia showed little wear on the edge of the shoe.
Down-turned Shape
Looking at the Furia, one could assume that it is an aggressively downturned shoe. However, after extended use, we found the Furia was much less downturned that other Scarpa models. Because the Furia lacks a mid-sole, the rubber of the Furia seems to mould to the foot of the user which can result in a less downturned shape depending on the shape of your foot.
The Furia did a great job of pushing into small feet on overhanging terrain, but unlike the Booster S, the Furia required a little more manipulation to keep your feet on the wall. It showed its true strength when pushing into small holds with incut edges or cracks and performed very well on steep terrain with big foot holds.
Toe Box
The toe box of the Furia features a thin design that harnesses the power of the toe well. For such a thin shoe, the Furia finds a strong balance between good edging capabilities and shoe sensitivity. Because of its design, the toe box extends this power to the outer-edge of the shoe and excels during moves that demand a good back step. Although the toe box offers a large amount of power, we would not recommend this shoe to someone who struggles with toe strength. The toe box of the Furia doesn’t provide the support typical of other shoes do for the user who lacks strong foot control.
The Furia also features a rubber toe cap that extends all the way back past the big joint of the toe for those toe hooks that require more than just your toes. The Furia does a great job of toe hooking but it should be noted that, because of the thinness of the rubber, it may not provide that reduced sensitivity for hotspots during extreme situations.
Heel Cup
The heel of the Furia was a good fit and provided the same sensitivity as the toe box for the most technical of heel hooking. The heel features a flat ridgeback rand with ribbed rubber that sits well on a variety of heel hooking surfaces.
As an innovative push, the heel also featured a ‘heel-edge’ on the side of the heel that sticks out from the heel like a fin for technical heel hooking or heel-toe cams. During our field test, we did not find an specific opportunity to use this feature despite extended bouldering outdoors on granite and sandstone and extended use in the gym. However, this experience may have been specific to us, as we checked in with a number of athletes who use the Furia who found this feature rather helpful.
Comfort
During initial and prolonged use, the Furia provided a lot of comfort. Because of its thin nature, the shoes does a great job of moulding to your feet. During our first session session, there was a few hot spots, including the top of the toes and some pressure on the outer edge of the foot, but these areas dissipated rather quickly after the second and third session. When climbing in the gym, the Scarpa Furia soon became our shoe of choice, especially during extended use when keeping my shoes on for long periods of time.
Sizing
One of the greatest things about the Scarpa shoe line is that almost every shoe has been designed to fit the same size in each model. This means that when purchasing, you can almost be certain of a good fit just by ordering your size in other Scarpa shoes. For the Furia, we downsized from a street shoe of size 12 to a size 10.5 or 44 and it was a perfect fit for the Furia. Keep in mind that I often wear my shoes a bit tight for more feel.
Overall
Overall, the Scarpa Furia is a welcomed addition to Scarpa’s long line of technical climbing shoes. Its sensitive nature makes it a top choice for technical bouldering, climbing overhanging terrain and especially when climbing indoors. Although the Furia does well when edging despite the lack of a mid-sole, we would not recommend this shoe for vertical or slightly vertical climbing. Although we would recommend this shoe for the advanced climber as an addition to your climbing shoe inventory, we also checked in with a number of beginner climbers who found this shoe very accommodating when initially learning how to rock climb indoors.
The Scarpa Furia can be purchased special order from Climb On Equipment in Squamish, BC. MSRP $179.00
