Nicolas tested for us the Kataki bootie from La Sportiva.

Let's set the scene: Amateur climber with a passion for climbing for 27 years (ouch!), I have to my credit a few dozen 8a after work, 7c on sight, big sees up to obligatory 7a and 7a on wedges, and many, many trips...In short, a passion of a lifetime. My style of predilection are the vertical faces with light arched rumps. Besides, I don't quite have the morphotype of the standard climber: 1m78 for 77 kg.

I am particularly attentive to my foot weapons, so after a few detours to different equipment manufacturers I finally came to be faithful to The Sportiva...which rarely satisfied me completely, but more importantly, rarely disappointed me.

To complete the picture of my vertical-orthopaedic needs, I need precise, sensitive and, above all, narrow shoes! My foot is long (44 2/3) and very thin...I swim easily in my pumps.

To target the shoes that suit me I use this document of The Sportiva giving the shoe trend and directing me to the thinnest models. I've done a lot of filming with Katana velcro, Katana velcro Miura and Futuras for my meager indoor practice. But these two models lacked a bit of stiffness and camber for my taste. So I jumped on this new model Kataki as soon as I could.

Overall, I am very satisfied with it.

Because of the greater rigidity than usual I was able to take the boots half a size bigger. (39.5 versus 39)

Since there is quite a lot of material (rubber, leather thickness, tongue), it seems to me that we can take them a little larger and that they take a little more time than usual to "get done" and become comfortable.

After a month (about ten uses), I could fully taste their precision/feeling/comfort ratio and they kindly allowed me to climb a new vertical 8a.

And then I find them beautiful, but this is very subjective.

The P3 system keeps this diving tip pretty stable over time. Even if it collapses a little bit it's out of proportion with Katana aging, for example.

As I am not a great fan of this technique, I will not comment on the quality of their heel-holding.

In short, an excellent falaisite shoe adept of the vertical / slightslope.