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To a modern climber accustomed to sticky rubber shoes, the idea of climbing without high-friction footwear is almost unimaginable. Yet it wasn’t until 1979 that Boreal released the iconic Firé, and with it opened up a new world of technical climbing.
The idea for a sticky-soled shoe came from the Spanish Gallego brothers, who asked Boreal to develop a climbing shoe with better friction on rock than the hard plastic-soled shoes that were standard issue at the time. Jésus García Lopez, Boreal’s founder, worked with engineers to develop a special rubber that could grip, and debuted it on the Firé, named for the reddish rock spires in Las Peñas de Riglos, Spain.
