Mammut Obelisk buildering shoes

Shoes for the urban climber

Product

Mammut Obelisk buildering shoes

Promise

The urban spawn of parkour and spiderman, buildering is what it sounds like: bouldering for city folk. And for a new sport, you’ll be needing some new designs of footwear, like these Mammut offerings that boast the performance of climbing slippers with the durability of trainers.

Performance

To wear, these Obelisks feel like all trainer. Nothing too odd about them, apart from the strangely asymmetric design that tends to focus your weight towards the big toes. It’s when you’re up on a wall that the reasons for that are apparent: to try to counter the lack of a crack-wedging pointyness in these shoes, they instead transfer as much force as possible into the general area and hope that a good smear of grip will make up for it. The grips themselves are patented Mammut technology; large flat areas of sticky climbing rubber punctuated by gripping textures along an edge that work well vertically or on the flat.

Verdict

If you’re the kind of climber who can’t resist hopping up a wall just because it’s there, then arming yourself with a pair of these will give you all the extra edge you’ll need to perform some awesome feats of spidy clambering that trainers just can’t give you.