Just under ten kilometres and 1,673 metres of ascent. It rained all night – rained? It absolutely poured – and the forests of the Tamar valley are soaked through. I step off the beaten path and plant my foot in a sopping sponge. Squelch! Soon, though, we'll escape this dripping world, where every branch you push aside – bowed across the path by the weight of its own leaves – sends a shower down your neck. The forest will get lower and lower until there's none at all, and the green carpet of grass will finally give way to bare scree, loose rocks and big white crags – broken here and there by even whiter snowfields, leftovers of a long winter.
Our goal has also chased away the clouds that were still sitting on its shoulders after dawn. Jalovec is sending a positive signal – while the soles of my Asolo Eldo Lth GV approach shoes have been tickling its flanks for quite a while now.
Unless a glacier or other piles of snow block your way, you might well get by in the mountains with low approach or via ferrata shoes. After all, they're made for walking and scrambling on rocky terrain. The only question is how tough they are. That very scree in the Julian Alps, for instance, can be nastily sharp – the edges of the limestone rocks cut into uppers and soles like razor blades.
Asolo Eldo Lth GV are tough enough. The protective rubber rand runs from the toe a good way back. And that's a good thing, because if the rand is shorter, it can:
A) start peeling off where the foot flexes as you walk,
B) and that flex point is where the upper tends to be most vulnerable – without a rand, rocky terrain will damage the material and seams or even rip them open.
The rubber rand on the Asolo Eldo Lth GV* is also high, so you can sink them into abrasive scree or a squelchy forest floor and neither razors nor moisture will reach the leather upper. A slightly lower rand protects the Eldos at the heel too. So they actually have a protective reinforcement all the way round – much like hiking boots for demanding terrain.
Lth in the name stands for leather – the shoes have a leather upper.
GV tells you the shoes come with a Gore-Tex® membrane and a Vibram® sole.
Down in the valley the ground is muddy, higher up it crumbles and at the very top it's solid as a rock. And sometimes pretty slippery too, when you step onto a steep snowfield – a toboggan run ending in the depths. So you need a sole with a tread that won't clog with mud and won't slip on snow, plus a smooth climbing zone at the toe for rock-solid movement on via ferratas and climbing terrain. Asolo Eldo Lth GV has both. On top of that, the sole is made from the Vibram® Megagrip compound. Compared with Vibram®'s older compounds it's fairly soft – meaning nice and grippy – yet still hard-wearing.
And then there's stiffness. In overly stiff shoes (hiking boots) you won't find much confidence on rock – you can't flex them and the toe won't brace securely. Overly soft shoes, on the other hand, won't support you on treacherous ground – like that scree below Jalovec. Getting the stiffness right on approach and via ferrata shoes such as the Asolo Eldo Lth GV isn't easy even for the manufacturer. Here, though, they've struck a pretty good balance. Asolo Eldo are stiffer than Asolo's older approach models (e.g. Apex or Salyan), but still flexible enough for brisk walking – not to mention climbing.
The thin, only lightly padded tongue also adds to the good feel on your feet. And so does the reliable lacing. The lace loops are made of tough cords (really tough), only slightly thinner than the laces themselves. So you tighten your shoes in the morning and don't have to bend down and fiddle with the laces until evening.
It looks like the summit isn't far now. But in the mist that has settled on Jalovec again, I can only guess the distance. My mate waits below the fore-summit – and I carry on alone. I don't want to hold us up – I want to race towards the top. And I can. I can hop lightly and surely from rock to rock – I can trust every step up, and down too – it holds – even in that damned gully on that damned steep snowfield, which ends tens of metres below me, and then there's nothing but hundreds of metres of thin air.
The only thing slowing me down is a slight lack of oxygen – but a gap in the clouds drives me on. And suddenly: Stop! – Not a step further. This is the summit! The top of Jalovec. For the Asolo Eldo Lth GV, though, the high point comes on the way down – during the quick run back. On rock they stick like glue. Because they're really good:
