Review: La Sportiva Crosslite

The Crosslite is a new lightweight neutral trail running and racing shoe from La Sportiva with a super low profile and aggressive lugs for increased traction and cushioning. Unique features of the shoe include a non-removable external shroud over the laces which does a great job of keeping out small rocks and dust, but is tight enough that our testers felt it would be near impossible to replace the laces. The upper is a lightweight breathable mesh and the toe has a significant reinforced bumper that our testers felt did a great job of protecting toes. The Crosslite has a super aggressive outsole with huge lugs formed in a tacky rubber material that gave us a very sure-footed feeling on loose and muddy terrain. One of our testers commented, “I think I could run up a tree in these.” La Sportiva claims that the special outsole lugs significantly reduce shock while climbing and descending steep trails.

Overall, we found this to be a true specialist shoe- fast with ultimate traction for aggressive trail running and racing on loose or muddy trails, but the high-profile of the lugs would rule this out as an all-around running shoe for the runner wanting to run a few road miles to the trail, or only running on fire roads or smoother trails and paths. For those, La Sportiva offers this same upper and midsole combination with a more versatile, low-profile outsole in their Skylite model. For more information, please visit LaSportiva.com.