Luis Rivera 6/27/21 Luis Rivera 6/27/21

TX Guide VS TX Guide Leather

I’ve had the pleasure of walking, hiking, approaching and climbing in both of these La Sportiva approach shoes. So I thought I’d share my experience. I honestly loved them both for different reasons and quickly realized that even though they hold the same name apart from one being leather they are vastly different shoes. I typically put all my shoes through a special kind of abuse, the terrain I travel across can vary from sand to sharp crystals. At times I’ll climb entire rock routes in my approach shoes and of course mountain scrambles as well. Sometimes its a matter of going light and only carrying one shoe, other times it comes down to all day comfort. Recently I’ve used my approach shoes on big-walls while hauling and jumaring and both TX Guides work well for this too. You usually want a semi-stiff shoe for standing in aiders and some sort of toe protection which both of the TX Guides have.

My experience with the TX Guide out of the box was that they were snug fitting. During their break in period I found my toe box so snug that often my toes would hurt a bit after walking a lot in them. I loosened the laces and that seemed to help with the initial break in period. After about a week or so of wearing the shoes on mostly trails with a bit of cross country they broke into nicely. I found this particular model to be super durable and climb super well. Both shoes come with a sticky Vibram Dual compound Mega-Grip sole which sticks really well to all surfaces including wet rock. I’ve done easy boulder problems in them and handle well on climbs where friction is key. The synthetic material seemed to hold up a bit better while foot jamming compared to the leather pair but that may have been due to the fact that the leathers held water longer and therefore became soft. When I wasn’t climbing in them I would loosen the laces to the point where I could use them as slip ons and thats mostly how I wore them around town or while doing really short approaches. I found them to be pretty convenient this way.

When the Leather TX Guides came out I was pretty excited to check them out. Typically leather shoes don’t hold odor like synthetic shoes do. I found this out long ago with climbing shoes. If your foot is going to sweat or you’ll be doing long approaches its important to have an extra pair of socks, preferably wool. This will keep your shoes and feet fresher for longer. Both shoes synthetic and leather breath quite well but always good to have on fresh socks especially if you’ll be walking through any type of moisture like creek crossings or snow patches. The lacing system on the Leather TX Guides is really well thought out. You can get them really snug or loosen them up a lot. I found this to be super helpful for using them as climbing shoes on easier rock scrambles or when carrying a heavy pack. The laces are also protected really well on the leather version. The only reason I would say the synthetic shoes is slightly more precise as a climbing shoe is because of the pointier toe box design. The leather version is a bit more squared at the toe box where as the synthetic has more of a point. Its really a matter of your foot shape as well. Everyones foot is different so I would say go with what fits the shape of your foot if you plan on using your approach shoes as climbing shoes like I sometimes do. Another advantage of the leather version is you can apply some sort of waterproofing to the leather and have a mostly water resistant shoe. Less absorption of moisture will help with the longevity of the leather.

TX Guide Leather after about 5 months of use - TX Guide after about 1 year of use

Hope this review helps you decide between the Synthetic and Leather versions of the TX Guides. I thought they were both excellent shoes. As you can see from the photos I put them through the ultimate test and they still do what I need them to do. Get me to the climb or scramble some easy stuff.

Click on any of the photos above to visit La Sportiva’s website with specs on each shoe, pricing and availability.

Luis Rivera 3/24/21 Luis Rivera 3/24/21

Return of the blog

and a few things I’ve learned along the way

I started a blog around the beginning of 2011 but didn’t really keep up with it after about a year or so. I shared what I was comfortable with at the time and now looking back to my very first blog post it wasn’t much. Other than a few climbing pictures and some captions about a route I did in Hetch Hetchy. There wasn’t much information on that particular route. I guess I preferred to keep my routes a secret from most people.

Looking back now, I realize it doesn’t make a lot of sense. It was probably the influences I had during my early years of Yosemite climbing, where some preferred to stay anonymous and under the radar. While I still find that way of thinking admirable; I feel a lot of great stories have been lost to time in that way. A lot of these stories are our communities history and I feel I need to do my part so it is properly documented. I’ve always wanted others to enjoy my routes. I want people to repeat them and letting guidebook authors know about them was enough for me for the longest time. I also wanted to take a more humble approach, which was something I admired about a lot of the climbers I looked up to in my early years. The idea of “spray” is something I had to adapt to over the years as a climber. With the rise of smartphones and social media it was an inevitable part of our culture.

I’ve done a lot of climbing since that last blog post and before I go forgetting all the details I feel its necessary to get these stories out. I have so many great memories from my early years in Yosemite I’d love to write down and share with the community. My hope is to preserve a lot of those memories while inspiring others to get out and climb some of my routes or check out some of the incredible routes I’ve been on. A few of these stories can be found in their condensed version on my instagram as captions to a photo but my goal is to go into further detail by telling the full uninhibited story. I’d like to write more about the climbs I’m doing these days, my latest first ascents (along the coast and in Yosemite), where I spend my seasons, and some of my rebolting efforts of some classic routes. I’d also love to share some insight on climbing gear, what I like about it, where to find it and why I choose the gear I do.

Lastly I’d love to use this platform to reflect on my past years as a climber and pass on all that I’ve learned since I last posted a blog. I’ve realized I’ve changed my approach as to how I put up first ascents; what I keep in mind when searching for the best climbable path, anchor and/or bolt placements and what keeps me psyched after all these years. I’ve learned a lot from my elders and peers and I’d be lying if I claimed to have it all “figured out” but I feel like I’m closer to taking a more artistic and thoughtful approach to route creation than I have in the past. My friends and mentors have taught me to make routes safe, fun and accessible to all. I’ve learned theres a lot more to a good first ascent than just rock quality and movement. The way a route is equipped, the amount of time spent cleaning and figuring out the best path can go a long way. Some of these climbs are pretty hard already, there’s no need in modern free climbing to let something be extra dangerous or unpleasant.

Luis "Lucho" Rivera 11/8/12 Luis "Lucho" Rivera 11/8/12

Romulan Warbird 5.12c

Fifi Buttress, Yosemite Valley

One of the really special things about a place like Yosemite is the history and legends that are still present in this magical place. To me, its rad to be able to ask the first ascensionist about a classic Yosemite route that they did 30 years ago, when they were not much older than I am now. And what is most special is when I get the opportunity to rope up with some of these climbing legends. Dan Mcdevitt is one of those guys; he's super nice, psyched, experienced, and motivated. Personally always an honor to climb with him. Since my first couple of years of climbing in Yosemite I've been involved in first ascents. Some of the first routes I put up were chossy and adventurous; I probably would not recommend them for a repeat, but others are definitely worth climbing. Through this practice I learned quite a bit and in the past few years have established some of what I think are some pretty good rock climbs.

Last summer Dan told me about a big-wall aid route on Fifi Buttress he had done. He described his route as having "big black jugs up high off the deck, steep clean cracks and really fun wild climbing". Dan having put up mega classics like the Silver Bullet at Tioga Cliff and The Great Escape at the Chapel Wall; I knew it would be a good route. Having recently established or climbed other "hidden gems" myself the previous year in Hetch Hetchy, Tuolumne, and the High Sierra. I knew good lines were still out there waiting for the picking.

In early Spring 2012 I went to Yosemite with rain in the forecast. I was tired of being in the city and tired of the noise pollution. I had to get away; I wanted to try something new. Something to build my psych back up. I made a plan to walk up to Fifi with Dan rain or shine to get a closer look at his route.

The approach to the climb follows a gully up to a giant slab that sits just west of Fifi Buttress. On the way up to the cliff it started to rain. With the heavy rains the gully had turned into a funnel and had become a raging creek near the top. Dan and I hid behind a giant boulder wedged in the upper part of the approach gully and waited for the downpour to let up. Eventually the rain stopped and we made it the last few hundred feet to the base of the route. It was hard for me to tell exactly where the route went past the second pitch but I was excited to find out. Looking up my mind ran wild with all the steep cracks and corners above. I fully pictured myself climbing one of the corners, glorious and exposed. We came back the next day with his friend Gabe and started up the climb.

Kenny getting his first glimpse of the laser cut seam on the 6th pitch

Gabe cleaning the first pitch of Romulan Warbird

Enjoying a real snack after the last crux of the route

First Pitch 5.12b

Over the next month Gabe and Dan went back and did some work to clean some of the cracks to get them set up for free climbing. My friend Kenny and I came and pushed the route higher as well as checked out certain parts of the wall that were going to be obvious cruxes for the free climb. Dan had freed the majority of the route years ago so most of the "homework" had been done. Kenny and I also had to see if it was even possible for us to climb it free.

Toproping a variation on the 6th pitch

After over two weeks of work spread out over a five month period I came back to lead the entire route with Dan holding the rope.

I could not have asked for a more perfect day of rock climbing in Yosemite. Many thanks goes out to Dan and the Mcdevitts for their support and for discovering such spectacular rock climbs. Gabe for helping us with the route early on. Kenny for his support on those overnight missions. James for jugging the water up. And of course my love Mecia for hiking up there practically every time just to hang at the base and watch it all go down.

The first free ascent of the Romulan Warbird V 5.12b/c or now the Romulan Freebird as we're calling it is an incredible rock climb. To quote a recent second ascensionist "Its as good as the Rostrum". I couldn’t agree more, in fact there were moments when I was up there working out different sections that I thought the exact same thing. Just another awesome Yosemite climb. A modern classic!

The man himself Dan McDevitt

Romulan Warbird can be rappelled with a single 70m rope. All the belay anchors have been replaced with stainless ASCA bolts and hangers. Thanks ASCA!

Luis "Lucho" Rivera 11/11/11 Luis "Lucho" Rivera 11/11/11

Dragons Horns

Tioman Island, Malaysia

What an incredible year! A first free ascent of a big wall in Hetch Hetchy, a finished mega-pitch project in the High Sierra, and now to top it off with my first trip out of the U.S. to go climbing! I feel lucky! Though I live for first ascents and adventure climbs, my international trip was a little different and special; I was going overseas to rock climb with a long time friend, Cedar Wright. Cedar invited me sort of last minute on a trip to Tioman Island, Malaysia to put up first ascents for a bigger cause than just climbing rocks! We were climbing to raise money for the Summit for Someone program a fund raising organization that supports the Big City Mountaineers. In addition The North Face pledged to match the first $4,000. Finally a way for me to give back to the organizations that truly see the potential in future generations; I was proud to be a part of this. Big City Mountaineers supports and mentors youth in inner city areas like the San Francisco Bay area, as well as other big metropolitan areas throughout the country. I attended a similar program called the Urban Pioneer Program based out of San Francisco. It impacted my life in more ways that I could have ever imagined. I thought about this a lot on our downtime while getting to our destination.

Almost there! 71 degrees F and almost midnight

After a 19-hour travel excursion we finally arrived in Singapore. It was the longest time I had spent traveling to get anywhere and was wasted. The time difference also meant I wasn't going to be able to sleep at my normal bedtime, so an exploration of Little India was in order. Little India is an area in Singapore that hosts the most hostels and attracts a younger crowd of travelers to Singapore. I went back to the In Crowd Hostel where Cedar had booked us a couple nights while we figured out the second part of our trip- getting to Tioman Island. The next day we went to an amazingly enormous market not far from our hostel to look for some basic supplies.

On the third day we boarded a bus that would take us to the city of Mersing on Malaysia's east coast. From Mersing we were to take an hour and a half ferry ride that would bring us to Tioman Island, the final destination for the remaining 3 weeks of our trip.

Upon the first site of our climbing objective, the Dragons Horns, I thought to myself "oh those things don't look that big". As we got closer I thought, "Wow, those formations are actually looking kind of big now". Funny how perspectives change so quickly and you never truly know the size of a chunk of rock until you're actually at the base or climbing on it.

The ferry dropped us off at a jetty on the west coast of Tioman where we loaded onto a very small dinky boat that would bring us to Mukut a village on the south coast of Tioman closest to the Dragons Horns; our gear on one boat and us on the other. The half hour ride was fun but wet, and then it began to rain. By the time we got to Mukut we were soaked, holding onto our electronic devices like babies shielding them from the water that came from everywhere. Luckily it was a tropical climate so we weren't cold just soaking wet. We dragged our loads to our room, changed our clothes and prepared for the first of many delicious dinners at Tanoshi Resort. At first I think the staff was worried we weren't going to like their simple laid back little resort, but for us it was perfect. What the locals didn't realize is that Cedar and I were simple ourselves and compared to what we were expecting (canned food, top-ramen and biving in the jungle) this was good living to us. We were psyched to have hot water every morning for our coffee and the occasional massive feast laid out before us of freshly caught fish, squid, crab, pretty much any edible creature from the ocean. It was paradise!

The next day Cedar and I woke up pretty early to have a look at the north unclimbed Dragons Horn. After a couple hour jungle trek and some angry wasp encounter we started up what looked to be like the cleanest line of the cliff. The first pitch was a little bushy and I wondered if this was going to be the characteristics of the climbing here on the Dragons Horns. After a short mossy first pitch we arrived at a ledge that gave us a view above tree line and were able to see the rock above. It was clean and featured and there were many options for a good adventure. We both led and followed with light packs staying prepared for whatever would come. Twice on our ascent we were rained on, heavy at times but it never lasted more than half an hour. We covered as much ground as we could between breaks in the rain quickly making our way to the top; the possibility of free climbing the first ascent of this formation in a day was becoming a reality! Some six hours later we found ourselves staring at the summit. We scrambled up jungle-y steep forest then bushwhacked our way for a couple hundred feet onto a bushy jungle summit. By this time the sun was setting so we stomped down a bivy near some flat boulders to lie down for the night. Somewhere through my iPod play list we woke up to the sound of thunder in the distance, it was coming. The flashes of lightening and sounds of thunder that were previously off in the distant South China Sea were now creeping over to the Dragons Horns.

The coming storm made it hard to sleep and we sat awake, thinking about heading down before the rain came again. We were visited by fireflies and noticed an interesting luminescent glow-in-the-dark moss on some pieces of wood around our heads. We finally made the decision to go and set up the first rappel. We feared the rain might make it difficult to descend if it rained any harder. Eventually we came to the conclusion we needed to get down and started our rappels at about 3am. We figured we would be finishing our rappels around the time of first light and sure enough we arrived at our start point around 7am. It took us about two hours to hike back down to Mukut. About halfway down the trail it started to heavily pour, by the time we got down to the village we were soaked but relieved that we hadn't waited until first light to get caught in this downpour on our rappels.

After coming back down from the mountain, we rested and powered up by eating some of the freshest seafood I had ever been treated to. I discovered I really liked squid and couldn't help to take in the beauty of this tropical paradise. After a couple days of rest we headed up to the south Dragons Horn to find the approach to a clean white buttress we had scoped the day before. Another party had previously climbed a line to the left of the buttress we had our eye on, so we knew there would be some sort of trail or at least signs of travel. Bushwhacking for hours with heavy loads took its toll on us physically and mentally and after about four hours I started losing my psych. Not long after that we stumbled onto the previous parties abandoned base camp.

We found their old fixed ropes leading up to the base of their climb. We took this approach up and slightly right to where we thought we would start our new route and were happy to find clean-featured granite right from the start. Cedar headed up to what would be our first pitch a steep discontinuous crack with multiple roofs. Not long after building the first belay it began to rain. We descended and waited for a break in the weather. It eventually stopped raining but with only a couple hours of daylight left we decided to come back early the next day.

We returned the next day excited to push our route higher. With the approach fresh in our minds what took us four hours the day before only took us an hour and a half. Our routes second pitch was hard technical face climbing right off the belay. I hooked and free climbing through featured rock into a short corner that led up to a sloping ledge. Unfortunately, I was only able to push our route one pitch higher that day before the rains came back. We rappelled down to our first pitch to find shelter under a big roof in hopes of waiting it out but after an hour of constant rain we bailed. In two days we had only gone up two pitches and were hoping this wasn't going to be the pattern for the rest of the climb.

After another day of rest and drying out our soaked clothes we returned to make major progress on our route. Cedar and I both led amazing pitches on our third day hooking on small features, stance drilling and connecting featured face climbing to crack systems. The summit was closing in and by the end of our third day on the South Dragons Horn we figured we might have one or two pitches left to the summit.

After two short pitches we unroped and scrambled up jungle-y ledges and wandered our way up through thick forest to reach the summit ridge. Within an hour we were standing on the incredible summit of the South Dragons Horn being the first team to summit both formations! Clouds quickly moved in and rain looked to be quite possible that day… Who would've guessed? But we spent a couple hours on the summit-block eating, snapping shots, and enjoying what was left of the view.

We enjoyed the accomplishment of our new rock climb by resting for two full days. There was a great feast of red snapper, rainbow fish, squid, lobster and crabs galore during our rest days. Some local fisherman, friends of the employees of Tanoshi Resort had brought tons of freshly caught sea creatures to share with us. After another unforgettable feast I felt powered up and ready to go. I was psyched the toiling was over for now and the treat of just going up our route to free climb was a great reward for all the hard work. We knew we could easily be shut down by weather so we woke up around 3:30am the next morning, which would put us at the base of our climb at first light. The climbing went smoothly and swiftly and we made quick work of our pitches. Thankfully the clouds moved over us, broke apart and never settled in. We had an amazing day of climbing. Our second summit of the South Dragons Horn that week and flawlessly freeing our route at 5.12!

We named our route on the North Dragons Horn, "Tanoshi Buttress" III 5.10 after the Tanoshi Resort in Mukut that took care of us throughout our stay on Tioman. Our route on the South Dragons Horn we named "Batu Naga" IV 5.12- , both routes had excellent face and crack climbing.

With some time left in our trip we wondered if a monsoon was coming or if was already here. In the two weeks we had been in Malaysia we had only experienced 4 days of no rain. I was excited to explore the island, relax and of course eat some more seafood. Days after our free ascent it started to pour rain like never before, and it was obvious the monsoon season was here. We made our preparations to leave Tioman. We were told, in the past it had been difficult and or impossible to leave the island when heavy rains and big swells shut down the ferry service altogether.

The plans were made and we were set to leave Tioman a week after finishing our climb. I was sad to leave but relieved that we were going to make it off Tioman and not miss our flight out of Singapore. The smaller boat came to shuttle us from Mukut to a ferry in a bigger village on the west part of Tioman and eventually back to Mersing. From Mersing we took a cab instead of a bus across the boarder to Singapore which made the crossing between Singapore and Malaysia much more pleasant and painless than on our way in. Back on the mainland we enjoyed the big city life of Johor Bahru and Singapore for a few days before heading back to the U.S.

This trip was such an amazing experience for me; I'm very thankful to Cedar for inviting me, for sharing his travel experiences and being a great climbing and travel partner! I'm thankful to La Sportiva for providing me with the best climbing and approach shoes on the planet, my family and friends who have given me endless support while I chase my dreams, and organizations like The North Face and Big City Mountaineers who support individuals with an adventurous soul! Last but not least I would like to thank the Rain Gods for holding off for a few more days while we worked our way up the Dragons Horns!

Luis "Lucho" Rivera 3/19/11 Luis "Lucho" Rivera 3/19/11

Pama Punku 5.12d

Wapama Rock, Hetch Hetchy

Here are a collection of photos from my adventures in Hetch Hetchy this last winter. A typical California winter with weeks of no precipitation and great partners made this route possible.