Written by Philip Curry, CEO and Head of Product
Astral is headquartered in the PNW now.
But Astral was born on the whitewater rivers of western North Carolina. Around there, our favorite rivers run steep and warm – all year long. Most rivers, even the most extreme, can be accessed via a bridge or short hike. Once in our boats, we only get out to scout, portage, or set safety. The river’s rocks are mostly granite, worn smooth by eons of weathering. The soil is often dark and loamy and shaded by massive rhododendron shrubs and ancient hemlock pines. For this terrain, history has embraced soft soled moccasins (extremely popular for thousands of years); thin, leather soled work boots worn by loggers (this area is the cradle of American forestry); court shoes; flexible sandals; and most recently – Astral shoes.
It was for this environment that Astral’s original and iconic river shoes were born; the Brewer, Rassler, Loyak, and Hiyak. The performance priorities were grip on wet granite, lightweight agility, and uppers that dried fast.
Of course, Astral has changed a lot since we launched our first shoes in 2012. Our circle of friends has expanded widely, and many of them paddle and/or live in some of the most demanding environments on earth. Places like the Stikine, Indus, Middle Kings, Rio Pascua, and Clark’s Fork. For this type of terrain, history has embraced thick-soled cowboy boots, heavy duty hunting, and stiff mountaineering boots.
When it comes to river footwear, these places also require excellent wet grip, agility, and fast drying times. But they also demand more support (access is often via very long and strenuous hikes) and more protection (these canyons are often much younger, with unworn, jagged rocks). Conditions are generally larger, more exposed, and more abrasive than the rivers of southern Appalachia. These places test a shoe’s durability very quickly and expose any weakness.
For these places, our most hardcore expedition-level team paddlers (like Lindgren, Aniol, Nouria, and Benny) had long pushed me to build a shoe they could use on their most demanding expeditions. With nothing satisfactory from Astral, I completely understood why they chose to use stiff, water absorbing, and narrow-toed shoes from European mountaineering brands for these trips. I hated not having a product for them, but we needed more time.
Astral has a hard rule that a product must be three things before we commit to making it. A product must be NECESSARY, UNIQUE, and SUPERIOR, in measurable ways.
Whether this product was necessary had been resolved long ago. Our expedition athletes had been proclaiming for years that there was not a shoe available from any company that was entirely adequate for their use case. We knew from them and many other loyal customers that an “expedition-grade” river shoe has been needed for a long time.
When considering how to make it superior to other shoes, the obvious performance gap in the market is durability. There is no piece of kit that takes anywhere near the abuse as footwear during a river expedition. Traversing boulder fields, mountain passes, canyon ledges, and riverbeds – typically off camber, wet, and often with the extra weight of a loaded kayak on your shoulder, for days on end – exerts forces that quickly destroy most shoes. The common approach to improving durability is to make shoes using conventional methods however with more glue, heavier materials, and less flexibility (the thinking is less flex equals less stress on bonded components). These things may extend a shoe’s life 10-20% but come with performance and comfort sacrifices (less grip, longer dry times, and heavier). Our goal with the Pusha was to improve durability 100% or more without any sacrifice to grip, weight, dry times, or comfort.
Our solution to the durability problem came from an unusual but obvious place. We studied our 15 years of customer warranty claims and saw remarkably fewer claims on our models made using our Stitch & Bond method (e.g.- Loyaks and Hiyaks) vs. models made with a conventional athletic shoe method (Rassler, and all other brand’s river shoes). By attaching the rugged canvas upper directly to the durable rubber outsole with heavy duty thread and also bonding, durability is profoundly improved. To be superior in durability, the shoe had to be Stitched & Bonded.
An Astral product also has to be unique. That means there must be nothing else quite like it. It should look, feel and perform differently than the rest of the market. The Pusha looks different because of its unique construction and our design aesthetic. It features a removable midsole that is incredibly unique in the market. The shoe’s wide toebox provides a very unique experience never felt in this market.
That is the story of how the Pusha came to be. It took us too long to create this one, but we really hope that you will love them as much as our team of testers and athletes do! If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to contact me at [philip @ astraldesigns.com].
We remain eternally pulled by all the Pushas!
Philip
