Last fall, I spent some time trying the new Tenaya Tanta lace—a $99 pair of climbing shoes and, at that price, stand as just about the cheapest MSRP one can expect to find these day. At a time when I realistically expect to pay double that for a decent pair of climbing shoes, I’d be excited to find a working shoe to add to my gear closet that is so inexpensive. Unfortunately, after testing the Tenaya Tanta on granite boulders and limestone sport routes, my takeaway is that this is an example of getting what you pay for.
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Edging Fail with the Tenaya Tanta Lace
I can hardly remember at this point, but I think the first pair of shoes I ever purchased were made by Tenaya. I bought them off this Spanish climbing-gear website called Barrabes, which was this proto online shop that was undercutting brick and mortar retailers across America with budget-rate prices that drove them all nuts. As a kid aspiring to be a real climber, however, with what little money I had from washing golf carts, Barrabes was a dream rather than a harbinger of late-stage capitalism.
Those Tenayas, if I am remembering correctly, sported a Ron Kauk signature that stoked my romantic fantasies of becoming a Yosemite dirtbag. I wore them through an early formative period of learning how to climb. Until one day, a climbing guide who saw me toproping in the Gunks, casually mentioned the idea that I should look upgrading my footwear. “A better pair of shoes might help you out,” he said. That year, for my birthday, my mom splurged and bought me a pair of Five Ten Anasazi Velcros. The experience of upgrading to a more high-performance shoe was profound—I felt like I could climb two letter grades harder.
That experience stuck with me, and it’s one of the reasons I don’t like thinking about shoes as being “for beginners.” Any beginner, just like any elite pro climber, benefits from higher-performing footwear. Climbing shoes, in fact, are the only piece of gear that can actually makes a difference in your performance.
More than two decades later, I had a similar experience with the Tenaya Tanta lace. The shoe is soft, which is good, but it lacks any support for edging. I had the following experience while bouldering on granite: the rubber repeatedly rolled up and over my toe when I tried to stand on slopey granite smear and my foot kept blowing off the hold. To make sure that I hadn’t sustained a sudden stroke that blighted my climbing proprioception and understanding of all technique and movement, I tried on a different pair of shoes. No problems there.
Again, imagine a beginner, being told to buy $99 beginner shoes, trying these and having an experience in which they find it difficult to use their feet on slopey smears. Of course they’d just blame themselves. But sometimes, gear really does make a difference. And with climbing shoes,
Unfortunately, without a a decent edge, climbing in these shoes feels like pressing too hard with the rubber eraser of a No. 2 Ticonderoga pencil—it just rolls off. You can see in this photo just how unsupportive the Tenaya Tanta is.
I’m curious to know if there is a climbing shoe under $100 MSRP that is worth buying. It would be an interesting exercise to try to find one. But as they say on Twitter, this ain’t it, chief.
Specs
Versatile lace-up climbing shoe for sport, multi-pitch, and gym climbing
Synthetic upper offers minimal stretch with time and use
Slightly down-turned toe balanced by less-aggressive heel
$99.95
Just saw the question at the end of this review: the Butora Endeavor is a great-ish shoe at that 100$ price point. It’s not perfect, but it’s well-made, supremely comfortable, and a great all-rounder. I like it so much I’m resoling and modifying mine with UP RH and a slightly more traditional heel strip. If they had a little more of a downturn (or any downturn) it’d be an incredible shoe.