Five Ten Moccasym Review

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The Five Ten Moccasym faces some competition from a few other slipper designs. All offer excellent comfort in hand cracks and a narrow profile for sneaking your toes inside thinner challenges. The best choice for you will likely come down to fit, price, and availability.

Performance Comparison

Edging

The Moccasym is notoriously bad for edging. If you size them super tight, they do ok, but eventually, the unlined leather uppers stretch into a sloppy mess. At that point, they stay super comfortable for all-day scrambling, but unless you've got toes of steel, you'll be whimpering and over gripping when it comes time to stand on tiny edges.

Crack Climbing

When the Moccs are sized to let your toes lay flat in the shoe, they are comfortable crack climbing machines. We've seen folks carry a quiver of these things up to the crag in Indian Creek, each one sized for a different sized crack. Some climbers size their Moccs large and wear them with thick socks for offwidths. Others wear them tight for better precision. We've also seen the Mocc's uppers slathered in supplemental freesole rubber for increased durability in hand cracks.

Steep Terrain

Shoes that excel in pocketed terrain have great edging abilities and possess a pointy toe, and are typically built on an asymmetric last. The Moccasyms don't edge very well, have a relatively blunt toe box, and are a comfy, symmetrical shape. In other words, they're not great for pockets. When it comes to steep terrain, the slipper design also undermines security, causing our testers to whimper during aggressive heel hooks.

Sensitivity

Right out of the box, the Moccs feel a bit clunky, but once the shoes start to soften up (often quicker than you want them to), they're great for slab climbing and ensure you can feel micro divots and apply a healthy helping of stealth rubber to the rock. Soft shoes are a matter of personal preference, but if it's your preference, these are some of the better soft shoes you can get for crack climbing.

Comfort

The Moccs stretch a lot, and if you size them for performance, they don't feel great until they've stretched to your foot. When our lead tester climbed exclusively in these shoes, he would size them down from his street shoe size of a US men's 9.5 to a 7.5 in the Moccs so that they wouldn't feel too big by the time they were fully stretched out.

Value

These once bargain shoes have been steadily creeping up in price over the last decade to the dismay of dirtbags everywhere. However, they remain affordable compared to their high-end competitors. Remember, size these shoes tight. They'll stretch out fast, leaving you with a shoe that's very difficult to edge in.

Conclusion

The Five Ten Moccasym features a classic design that remains popular, even in a world with modern designs that can supply better edging and sensitivity. However, it's still hard to beat the Mocc in terms of comfort and simplicity. Once you've figured out the sizing, it's also possible to fit them for a variety of specialized uses in ways that are not possible with new synthetic or lined leather shoes.