La Sportiva Ultra Raptor II Jr Review for Trail Running, Hiking, and Scrambling
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Many, many years ago, I was scrambling in the Indian Peaks Wilderness many years ago. It was a beautiful and cool fall day. The sky was clean and brilliant, like a sapphire. My friends were along side me, bounding over gendarmes along a ridge, chatting with each other and sharing smiles from their exposed positions.
I wasn’t laughing, smiling, or chatting. I was focused on the minutia of each hand and foot placement.
I was gripped.
I couldn’t trust my feet. I had worn hiking boots for their insulation given the temperatures at 13,000 ft (about 4000 meters). The rubber on the bottoms was just fine for a rocky hike. It was not sticky enough for me to trust when a slip could mean a fall of thousands of feet off of the sides of a knifed ridge.
I bought my first approach shoes the next day.
The video gives a quick overview of what makes an “approach shoe,” but one of the main components is stickier rubber using climbing-rubber compounds. And this is the most striking feature of the La Sportiva Ultra Raptor II Jr shoes. They are just far stickier than other kids’ options when it comes to outdoor footwear. It’s that stickiness along with a stiffer midsole that allow my boys to scramble in these as well as they do, having done some class 4 and lower-class-5 climbing in them. Of course, that stickiness comes at a cost, namely durability, as softer rubber won’t handle the miles as well. But, given the rate at which kids’ feet grow, wearing through the soles hasn’t really been a problem.
Of course, we don’t want to buy a shoe for scrambling, a shoe for backpacking, and a shoe for trail running. Three shoes for two kids that will only fit in the shoes for a year or less can get pretty expensive. So, we were happy to discover that the La Sportiva Ultra Raptor II Jr shoes strike a pretty good balance of features that make them quality footwear across all of those disciplines. Sure, the shoes can’t be the best option for all of those activities, because some of the demands run counter to each other (for instance stiffness for climbing but flexibility for running). But do the La Sportiva Ultra Raptor II Jr shoes do well enough? Yes.
In fact, they do more than well enough.
Take a look at the video for more details on the pros and cons of the La Sportiva Ultra Raptor II Jrs for each of the three activities I mentioned (trail running, backpacking/hiking, and scrambling/low-angle rock climbing). I know what it’s like to not be able to trust your feet. I didn’t want my kids to experience that, if we could avoid it.