Following the launch of their first footwear range last year, consisting of approach shoes and trekking boots, Arc’teryx have announced their first technical mountaineering boot, the Acrux AR GTX Alpine Boot.
Trek & Mountain was invited along to an exclusive preview of the new boot, along with several other additions to Arc’teryx’s footwear offering, at a special event alongside the Mer de Glace in Chamonix, ahead of this weekend’s Arc’teryx Alpine Academy.
What is it? Well, Arc’teryx are touting their Alpine Boot as a boot combining the weather protection benefits of a double boot, with the lightness, fit and climbing performance of a single boot. It uses a construction to their top-of-the-range Acrux and Bora products i.e. a removable inner boot and a synthetic outer boot made by thermo-laminating different layers together to form a seamless upper. Both the inner and outer use Gore-Tex layers, the reason being that the water-resistant zip of the outer boot can’t be guaranteed to be completely waterproof over its lifetime.
The Acrux Alpine Boot is not a boot for high altitude, since it doesn’t have the insulation to cope with 6,000m+ mountain environments, however it is intended for technical ice, rock and snow routes in alpine terrain (around 4,000m) – it is B3-rated and therefore can take fully-rigid crampons as required for these routes. Although a fairly specialist item of gear, we believe that a softer B2-rated alpine boot will appear in due course, and this of course will have a broader appeal for general mountaineering use.
RELATED LINKS
www.arcteryx.com
