salomon exit aero 1 first impressions

Wed, Aug 18, 2010

Fitness Footwear have kindly provided a pair of Salomon Exit Aero shoes for me to try out and review. They didn’t arrive in time for the Cairngorms trip, where I wore the Merrell Chameleon Wrap Slams but I’ll give them an airing at the weekend. The Exit Aeros are part of Fitness Footwear’s Salomon trainers range from their extensive Salomon footwear collection.

The first thing that struck me on pulling them excitedly out of the box is the lack of any weight. They really are lightweight. I don’t have scales but they’re approaching the lightness of my ancient Walshes. They’re so light that I’m not quite sure what they’ll be like in the mountains so I’ll prolly take them along the Camasunary path to see how they fare on rough paths. There’s no waterproof lining and you can see into the shoes through the mesh so they’ll be nice and cool and although you’ll get wet feet in the rain, I expect they’ll dry pretty quickly.

The soles look interesting and grippy, being something called Contagrip:

All in all they look well made and they have reasonable torsional stiffness. They feel quite tight on my feet with a squidgy toe box so I’ll be keen to get them out on low level stuff before hitting the peaks in the next installment of the eBothy gear series!