Review: Five Ten NIAD VCS

The ultimate test I set for the NIAD VCS was at Yosemite’s burly Arch Rock. Everything hard about Valley climbing is packed in here—endless cracks over stone so polished that it squeaks when you smear. I wanted to see how well they performed on Midterm, the squeakiest of the lines at Arch, a nails-hard 5.10 that begins with first-knuckle fingertip jamming with slick edges for feet. From here it widens to fingers, hands… all the way to a slick, flared chimney. That day on Midterm, my feet didn’t slip once—not on the nothing-there smears, nor on the heel-toe jams, nor on the highstep rollovers. I was amazed, and the NIADs performed flawlessly.