Black Diamond Prime Approach Shoe

Whether or not the Prime is for you largely comes down to what you're looking to use them for. They sit right out at the softer end of the approach shoe spectrum, being more casual and urban in nature, and as such they do push the definition of 'approach shoe' towards destruction. If you're off down the climbing wall then that's fine, but on grass, mud and quagmires this extremely bendy, flat-soled shoe performs very poorly, while its lack of support means that it isn't going to be a natural choice for longer walk-ins. In the Session, Black Diamond already had a really decent soft shoe, and one that I like a lot. With that existing model in the range, we think they'd have done better with the Prime, and indeed the Fuel, to concentrate more on support. It looks nice though, which may be the most important consideration for some.