The Scarpa Generator Mid: A Climbing Shoe Review

The Generator Mid is Scarpa’s shoe specifically designed for trad climbers. Scarpa set out to design the perfect shoe for crack climbs, spending two years of research and testing over 100 prototypes to design the Generator Mid. The shoe aims to balance comfort, protection, support, and performance, feeling at home on a wide range of terrain, including splitter cracks, burly offwidths, and techy faces and slabs.

All-around comfort is one of the biggest highlights of Generator Mid. As the name implies, the Generator Mid is a mid-height shoe, reaching up to the bottom of the ankle for extra support, comfort, and skin protection in cracks. The inside collar of the shoe is lined with squishy neoprene, providing a snug, comfy feel. The shoe’s upper is made of a durable suede lined with a recycled microfiber. This suede is looped around the laces near the toebox to prevent wear and tear in tight jams.

What makes the Generator Mid special is its balance between comfort and performance in trad climbing applications. The shoe features a full midsole and 4mm Vibram XS Edge outsole, providing an incredible amount stiffness and torsional rigidity needed for long pitches of foot jamming. The toebox is wrapped in sticky M70 rubber rand, which adds a lot of confidence in marginal jams.

The shoe also uses Scarpa’s Tri-Tension active rand system, a supportive arch of material that stretches from the tip of the shoe down its sides, distributing weight away from the ends of the toes to the entire foot. This allows for a stiff, high-performance fit without the need to mash your toes or crush your Achilles. Combined with the full-length midsole and outsole, this technology makes the Generator Mid excellent at edging on small foot holds, especially early in its life. As the shoe breaks in, it becomes softer and more flexible, easily handling delicate smears and smedges.

I must admit, I did not enjoy the feel of the Generator Mid when it was brand new, fresh out of the box. It felt incredibly stiff and insensitive, like a block of wood on my foot. However, after wearing it on and off around the house for a few days, the shoe began to mold to my foot and become more supple. I didn’t experience any hot spots or Achilles pain. After a couple days on the rock, the shoe quickly became one of the most comfortable I’ve ever tried for larger-sized cracks and sustained edging.

I also enjoy the Generator Mid for thinner finger and tips cracks; however, it’s not a thin-crack specialist. Its toebox is quite tall, especially when compared to other trad-focused shoes on the market. This relatively large tip of the shoe can make it difficult to push your toes into a thin crack, although the sticky M70 rubber rand does add some stability in precarious jams.

While the Generator Mid suffers a bit in top-end performance in thin cracks, it is arguably one of the best shoes on the market for wide and offwidth cracks. The comfy high top, ultra-sticky rand, incredible stiffness across the midfoot, and overall lateral and torsional rigidity makes the Generator Mid an absolute weapon when things get wide. It excels at a wide range of techniques from the standard foot jam in hand cracks, the platform foot in fist cracks, and offwidth trickery such as twisted foot, banana foot, and frogged foot positions.

Another area of trad climbing where the Generator Mid shines is long multi-pitch routes. The shoe’s comfort and stiffness allows you to climb pitch after pitch without fatiguing. It’s the perfect shoe for keeping calm while placing delicate pieces of gear. We’ve all been in the situation where the feet start to cramp while trying to fiddle in a precarious placement. The Generator Mid provides reliable, all-day comfortable and performance for standing strong on uncomfortable jams, small edges, or powerful smears.