Five Ten’s Camp Four…sticky rubber and good heel support make a great all-round outdoor shoe.
Hiking with a heavy pack or scrambling over large rocks requires a shoe that offers both ankle support, and traction. But many of us don’t like the bulkiness and weight of ankle high hiking boots. Five Ten’s Camp Four promises to be an answer for those of us who want an all-round shoe that can take on serious hikes, weekend backpacking trips and light climbing and scrambling.
The Camp Four is lightweight, flexible and sticky. Yet it still provides ankle support for day or overnight trekking with a backpack. The reason is its unique design that incorporates an external heel cage for extra support that you can feel when you’re carrying a heavy daypack or backpack.
But the Camp Four isn’t just a beefed up sneaker. It uses durable Nubuck leather uppers and a stiff, yet comfortable, compression molded EVA midsole. Its outer sole consists of the company’s Stealth C4/S1 combination rubber that offers the same high friction compound used in the company’s rock climbing shoes, with increased shock absorption.
Aside from being lightweight and offering good heel support, the Camp Four also looks great, yeilding us a compliment or two while climbing to the top of Angles Landing in Zion National Park. It was here that we really experienced the capabilities of the shoe’s Stealth C4/S1 rubber sole along with the advantages of its light weight.
While people on the Angles Landing trail slipped and hung on to the chain along the steepest portions, we stuck to the rock like Spider Man as the Camp Four shoes allowed us to easily and quickly move upwards with extreme confidence.
On short scrambles over large rocks located in hidden canyons of the park, the Camp Four provided extraordinary traction over regular hiking shoes, even allowing us to take on a couple of class 3 rated scrambles. The low-top design allows for plenty of movement to make precision foot placements on cracks and crevices that a high-top hiking boot would never allow.
While the Camp Four excelled in rocky terrain, it was cumbersome on the trails we encountered with deep sand. It’s narrow footprint was unstable in these conditions and the long lacing that extends to the toe, easily gets sand in the shoe making it heavier while we walked. Nevertheless, the shoe remained comfortable over most of the terrain we put it through.
The Camp Four retails around $115 and if you want only ONE shoe to handle all of your outdoor adventures, fast or slow, you can be assured that the Camp Four is ready for just about any kind of trail or scrambling you can encounter.
By Dan Sanchez
One thought on “Five Ten Camp Four Hiking/Approach Shoe”