Sporting equipment is notorious for developing odors. For soccer players, shin guards are the culprit, and for hockey players, well, everything reeks. It’s the same for climbers—rock climbing shoes usually develop a smell over time and after copious trips to the climbing gym or crag.
But why is that? Why do rock shoes smell? And how do you clean rock climbing shoes?
Below, I will explain why sporting equipment, like climbing gear, develops odors. Then, I’ll share five tips for cleaning climbing shoes. Hopefully, they will prevent you from becoming the smelly one amongst your group of climbing buddies.
Why Do Climbing Shoes Smell?
Everybody sweats, especially while playing sports. Sweating is one way the human body cools off and regulates its temperature while you exert yourself. Interestingly, you have three types of glands through which your body excretes sweat.
- apocrine: restricted to hairy regions on the body, like armpits
- eccrine: present in all skin types on the body
- sebaceous: restricted to certain areas on the body
The sweat your body excretes through these glands is not what smells. Sweat is actually odorless. The smell comes from when microbes metabolize with your sweat.
In the case of body odor, the microbiota that lives on the skin metabolizes with sweat to create malodorous byproducts, aka body odor (BO). Microbes thrive in moist and warm areas of the body, like armpits. Therefore, these locations can develop the most BO because more bacteria means more odor.
It’s the same for sporting equipment. Any location that remains warm and moist, like climbing shoes after a three-hour Moonboard session, becomes an ideal microbiome for microbes to thrive. When those microbes metabolize with your sweat, they create odors.
Therefore, mitigating the odors your climbing shoes emit is all about letting them adequately dry out in between sessions. In addition to drying, keeping your feet clean, using deodorizers (which actually just absorb moisture), and periodically cleaning dirt them your shoes are all great ways to prevent smelly shoes.
Most Manufacturers Recommend Avoiding Machine Washing Your Climbing Shoes
The vast majority of climbing shoes should not be machine-washed. The reason is that strong detergents and hot temperatures (from the water and the dryer) can do more harm to your shoes than help them.
That said, however, there are a couple of climbing shoe models that are designed to be machine-washed. For example, the La Sportiva Oxygym climbing shoes are machine washable. That’s because they are synthetic shoes marketed towards climbing gyms that need convenient and cheap climbing shoes for their rental fleet.
Teenage gym employees in charge of cleaning smelly climbing shoes can just chuck armloads of Oxygym shoes into the washing machine and then dry them. But for most climbers, especially those with leather shoes, I recommend other strategies for keeping your shoes clean and odor-free.
5 Tips for Cleaning and Caring For Climbing Shoes
Like most things in life, prevention is critical. You can prevent your rock climbing shoes from developing odors if you do your due diligence upfront and consistently. Below, I’ll discuss five preventative steps you can take to care for your rock shoes. Then, I’ll discuss how to clean rock climbing shoes by hand washing them.
Keep Your Feet Clean
One of the best things you can do to help prevent your shoes from developing a stench is to not focus on your shoes but focus on your feet. By focusing on keeping your feet clean, you mitigate the opportunity of stuffing your shoes with dirty and sweaty feet.
For example, when you are at the crag, try not to walk around barefoot in between climbs. Before you put on your shoes, blow or shake out any dirt or debris that may be inside. When you’re at the gym, slap on a pair of sandals when you are not wearing your rock shoes.
Store Them in a Well-Ventilated Area
As I mentioned above, smelly climbing shoes develop their odors because they have not been able to dry out properly. In other words, when you leave your rock climbing shoes in your hot car or buried in your gym bag after climbing, you’re enhancing the stench they will eventually develop.
Instead, let them air dry. The air-drying process lets any leftover moisture from your sweaty feet dry out before it can contribute to developing bacteria (and odor).
Air drying is perfectly fine, but you can also use extra ventilation to dry your shoes completely. However, avoid extreme heat when trying to dry your climbing shoes.
Try Using Shoe Deodorizers
Another great way to combat the occasional odors that come with climbing shoes is to deploy a shoe deodorizer. If you want to keep things super simple, you can use any normal footwear deodorizer. There are all sorts of sprays on the market.
If you want a cool climbing-specific product, check out Boot Bananas. People swear by them and seem to think they do a good job of absorbing moisture and helping keep shoes odor-free.
For the DIY climbers out there, you can try baking soda. Baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, is a natural product that neutralizes nasty odors, even when not dissolved in water.
Keep the Outsoles Clean
Thus far, we’ve been paying a lot of attention to the inside of your smelly shoes. But it’s also important to take care of the exterior, especially the outsole. By keeping the outsoles of your climbing shoes completely clean, you increase their longevity and enhance their friction.
If you climb outside a lot, you know that debris on the bottoms of your shoes negatively affects their performance. Dust and little pebbles create a sensation like climbing on ball bearings.
So, I recommend monitoring the condition of your climbing shoe outsoles and periodically cleaning them. (You can resole them, too!) If you are at home, you can clean the soles with warm water and a damp cloth or soft brush. If you are at the crag, you can wipe down your soles with a microfiber cloth or just gently scrub with the palms of your hand.
Wear Socks
This might be blasphemous, but you can also wear socks to keep your feet clean. Or to create a barrier between your dirty feet and your shoes. This is especially helpful for folks with naturally smelly feet.
In addition, if you know you struggle with pungent foot odors, you can use foot powders to try and mitigate them. Who knows, after not wearing socks in your rock climbing shoes for so long, you may learn to like it!
Hand Wash Your Climbing Shoes
If you’ve been doing all the things, like letting them dry after a climbing session, cleaning dirty soles, and using deodorizing products, but your shoes still act as a breeding ground for bacteria and foul odors, then it may be time for hand washing.
When it comes time to wash climbing shoes, it’ll be important to consider the following tips.
- Avoid hot water and extreme temperatures.
- Use mild soap, and do not use laundry detergent.
- Be careful with the scrubbing tool you select. (Some are too abrasive.) An old toothbrush works fine.
- Plan ahead and try not to cut corners with the drying process.
How to clean climbing shoes by handwashing
- Plug your sink and run lukewarm water until you’ve got enough water to submerge your shoes.
- Create soapy water with a mild soap. (You can also wash climbing shoes without soap if you’d like.)
- Soak your shoes for a few seconds to soften things up, and pre-wash your climbing shoes.
- Then, using a soft brush, like an old toothbrush, scrub the grime inside and occasionally rinse.
- After you wash the inside of your climbing shoes, move on to the exterior. Wash the upper material, scrub the rubber outsoles, and rand. Work slowly and occasionally rinse.
- After washing each shoe, unplug the drain and rinse them with cold water. Wait until the water runs clear. If necessary, continue scrubbing any remaining dirt.
- After washing, stuff the shoes with newspaper, paper towels, or rags to act as absorbent material.
- Set your climbing shoes aside in a well-ventilated room to air dry. Using some additional ventilation is okay, but avoid high heat. (If drying your shoes outside, set them in the shade and avoid direct sunlight.)
- Over time, if necessary, replace the absorbent material on the inside of the clean climbing shoes.
- Don’t rush the drying process! Wait for the clean rock climbing shoes to dry completely before taking them climbing. This is especially important for leather shoes.
Rock Climbing Shoes Are Important: Keep them clean to make them smell less (and last longer)
We all like to think that we don’t smell. But let’s be honest, between the sweat and climbing without socks, most climbers have shoes with a particular smell. Keeping them in a shoe bag or buried in a backpack most of the time doesn’t help either.
To help with the smell, you can try to keep your feet clean (no more walking around barefoot at the gym or crag), set your shoes out to air dry in between sessions, and use a deodorizer like Boot Bananas or baking soda.
If you need to take more drastic measures, you can always wash your rock climbing shoes. If you do wash your shoes, opt for hand washing instead of the washing machine. Use warm water instead of hot water, mild soap, and a soft toothbrush to scrub the dirt from the soles and wash the sweat from inside.
Once you’re done, dry them thoroughly, and do not wear them on any climbs until each climbing shoe feels dry and ready to rock!
