What Is the Approach Shoe Trend?

Over the last year, approach shoes have become a new wrinkle in the gorpcore cycle.

Fleeces and shells are now well past their precipice in men’s and women’s wear, but outdoor gear has had more staying power in footwear, particularly through trail runners but also to a lesser extent with hiking boots and sneakers. Approach shoes offer some of the same benefits as those categories — durability, grip and often varying levels of water resistance — as well as a distinct look driven by their very specific purpose.

What Is an Approach Shoe?

From a visual standpoint, the standout feature of an approach shoe is the rubberized toe tip, also called a rand, that almost always seems to be rendered in black. Its function is to provide grip in lower-difficulty rock climbing, as well as to protect the toes on the path leading up to a climbing route, hence the word “approach.”

You’ll also see a similar element on out-and-out climbing shoes, but because those fit much narrower and can sometimes even force the toes to point downward, you’re never going to want to wear a purely technical climbing shoe for anything except its stated purpose.

By contrast, with approach shoes, the versatility allows them to work for a hike and to be easily adopted into everyday life.

Ideal weather conditions will render many of the features superfluous for anything other than style points, but bring in rain, sleet or snow and a lugged outsole and water resistance become just as useful on a city street as a rock-packed incline. And no matter what a shoe may be going through, something built for durability is hardly a hard sell.

On top of these elements, approach shoes tend to have longer lacing systems than usual for a tighter fit that in turn leads to a better grip. And the rubber reinforcement at the toe can extend around the rest of the foot and back up the heel for additional protection and greater lockdown in the latter region.

Where Can You Get an Approach Shoe?

A lot of the big brands that have been in the mix for all these other outdoor trends have now seen their approach shoes thrown into the mix, too. The North Face has its Verto, Salomon its X-Alp and Arc’teryx the Konseal. Then you have your established players that still skew more to the outdoor-folks-doing-real-outdoor-things crowd such as Keen with the Jasper, La Sportiva’s TX4 Evo, ROA’s Katharina and Scarpa’s Mojito.

Options don’t end there, though, as the adopters have swept in from different angles. Luxury approach shoes have come from Loewe and Prada. More do-it-all sneaker brands including New Balance and Puma have gotten involved. And Adidas is suddenly broadening the scope for its Five Ten line, which few outside climbers and mountain bikers may have been familiar with, as it just launched a Brain Dead collaboration Friday on its existing approach shoe, the Guide Tennie, alongside an actual climbing model.

Many of the previously mentioned brands have also dropped collaborations of their own, and it’s a safe bet plenty more are on the way from them and yet new entrants.