Blog

DryPointe Shoe Inserts

• June 2014
• Climb Gear Reviews

There’s nothing as good as crisp, fall climbing conditions–but let’s face it, we get about 20 days per year MAX of actual climbing when it’s perfect like that 🙂 The rest of the time we need to deal with conditions, and we still love it, whether it’s a sweaty climbing gym or a greasy day in Yosemite or Rifle. Sweaty feet are a huge problem, partly because shoes get sloppy (and gross) and don’t last as long and also partly because they are a contributor to the pervasive athlete’s foot/toenail fungus that so many of us climbers fall victim to. Anything that can solve this problem is a wonderful thing indeed, and that’s why I am an enormous fan of DryPointe Shoe Inserts!

My friend Margarita Martinez is someone I’ve always enjoyed seeing at the crag over the years: based in the Red with her husband Rene, she often travels to Rifle and Maple and crushes pretty spectacularly. She is also a ballerina and ballet teacher, and has thus been dealing with sweaty shoes in her sports forever. Margarita has started making and selling these amazing and fun little bundles of silica that you put inside your climbing (or ballet or running or hiking or any) shoes after use. The balls themselves never get gross (magically), they are environmentally friendly, and they really keep your shoes from being all wet and sweaty and smelly. A mutual friend of ours gave me a pair at Rifle last year, and I have really grown to love them. For the price ($9.50 for small, $12.50 for medium, $15.00 for large), I plan to get a few more pairs. To me, this is a perfect product: useful, small, inexpensive, colorful and fun, and I can’t think of a better gift for climbers or runners either!

For climbing shoes, I think most people would like small, as they are slightly too large to push all the way up into the toes (though they apparently work well regardless) of my shoes. I think if I had really big rock shoes and was a very sweaty person, I’d get 2 pairs of smalls and push one into the toebox and put the other one in the heel. I’m hoping that DryPointe will add extra small to the line 🙂

You’re able to recharge (dry out) the balls if necessary: since I’m in such a dry climate, I have not yet needed to do that. At first I thought it would be easy to tear the balls when grabbing them and putting them in/taking them out of my shoes (the outside feels like a stretchy mesh, kind of like nylon stockings), but they’ve held up just fine for the past year.

DryPointes get a huge thumbs and toes up from me, and I would be surprised if they didn’t become as common as chalk around gyms and crags in the next several years.