Mar 19 

Written By Mike Doody

We’re stoked to announce availability of Unparallel rubber!

If you haven’t heard of Unparallel Sports (UP), they are a new company based out of California making climbing, commuting, and mountain biking shoes. Their rubber is engineered and processed in North America, which greatly reduces its supply chain environmental impact.

Despite the fact that UP is new, their knowledge and expertise is not; the company boasts over 20 years experience in the industry. If you’ve been sucked into any of the forums and rumours, you’ll already suspect that many of the designers and engineers from Five Ten stayed in California and helped form UP after Five Ten’s manufacturing was moved off the continent. We have it directly from UP that they aim to honour Charles Cole, the founder of Five Ten, and an innovating climber who had an enormous influence on climbing shoe resoling as well as the climbing industry as a whole.

We have been doing all kinds of testing with this rubber and we were very impressed by its performance. One of two compounds offered is RS, a super soft rubber that comes only in a 3.5 mm thickness; this stuff is extremely sensitive and conforms to just about any surface. The other is RH, a medium hardness compound that is an excellent all-around rubber offered in 3.5 mm and 4.2 mm thicknesses.