Five Ten Moccasym Review

The Moccasyms face competition from a a few other slipper designs. All offer superior comfort in hand cracks and a narrow profile for sneaking your toes inside thinner challenges. But for a shoe that you can really push the grade on techier crack climbs, check out the Editors' Choice Award-winning La Sportiva Kataki.

These shoes are very soft. While comfortable, this makes them a poor choice for technical edging.

Performance Comparison

Stealth C4 is still the stickiest rubber we've encountered, and the Moccs will keep you feeling relaxed on featureless, low-angle slabs.

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 floppy mess. At that point, they're 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.

Hand cracks are the ideal habitat for the Mocc. These shoes excel in the hand and fist sizes.

Crack Climbing

When 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 the crags in Indian Creek. Some climbers size their Moccs large and wear them with thick socks for offwidths. We've also seen the Mocc's uppers slathered in freesole for increased durability in hand cracks. We recommend a shoe that can also edge for finger cracks since often you won't be able to get any of your foot in thin cracks, but when it comes to an all-around crack workhorse that can take a serious beating, the Mocc is a solid choice.

Poor edging performance and a wide, blunt toe box make these shoes a bit lacking when it comes to pocket climbing.

Pockets

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. Therefore, we don't recommend the Moccs for your next trip out to Ten Sleep, Lander, or any other limestone pocket pulling paradise.

The easy on and off of this slipper comes at a price. The heel is liking to slip off during aggressive heel hooking.

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, allowing you to feel micro divots and apply a healthy helping of stealth rubber to the rock. Soft shoes are a matter of personal preference, but if you're looking for shoe that is sensitive and offers some edging performance, have a look at the La Sportiva Skwama, or for the narrower footed, the Tenaya Tarifa

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 (ouch!) so that they wouldn't feel too big by the time they were fully stretched out.

Our lead tester cranks out one more lap before the storm.

Value

This comfy slippers can be yours for $125. These once bargain shoes have been steadily creeping up in price over the last decade to the dismay of dirtbags everywhere. 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 Moccasyms feature a classic design that remains popular, even in a world with modern designs that can provide better edging and sensitivity. However, its still hard to best the Mocc in terms of comfort and simplicity. Once you've figured out the sizing its also possible to fit them for a variety of specialized uses in ways that are no longer possible with new synthetic or lined leather shoes.