Field Journal

Stories Behind the Gear: La Sportiva Prodigio Hike GTX
Written by Daniel Neilson // Featuring Bee Leask
Photography by John Summerton

Bee Leask has spent more than a decade climbing the mountains of Scotland. Early one beautiful morning, she slipped on a pair of the La Sportiva Prodigio Hike GTX and began a speedy ascent to the Cairngorm Plateau.

The mountains are for sharing. Sharing with friends, sharing with those at the beginning of their journey, sharing with the world. Our relationships with the mountains are as complex and as intricate as the geology that formed them. They inspire; they offer a sense of achievement; they offer solitude; they offer companionship.

For some, the mountains will be attacked, on a dawn raid, up and down at speed. For some, it’s to take your time, ponder, wonder. For some, they are to be feared, and for some, revered. For most of us, it’s all four. But above all, they are to be shared. Remember your first time up a big mountain, on a Scottish Munro or an alpine ridge. That sense of awe, the disbelief in the size of these monsters, ancient, immovable, seemingly insurmountable. Then, taking someone up a mountain, experiencing that for the first time, is partly to relive it, but also to offer reassurance and care.

For Bee Leask, this sense of sharing the mountains led her to begin gaining her Mountain Leader and International Mountain Leader qualifications. For years, Bee had been sharing her Scottish hillwalking adventures through her Instagram account @bumblebambi and her website bumblebambi.com, inspiring walkers as she merrily climbed all 282 Munros (Scottish mountains over 3,000ft, as compiled by Sir Hugh Munro in 1891), claiming the full house on 6th July, 2024, 11 years after her first one.

MORNING ON THE CAIRNGORMS

Our destination in early April met the 3,000ft benchmark to be a Munro, but its proximity to the higher peak Cairn Gorm, means it’s described as a Top. Not that nature adheres to the arbitrary decisions of a Victorian baronet with a penchant for big hills, but Cairn Lochan (3,986ft) offers some of the best views on the Cairngorm Plateau. This is why, at 4am, we found ourselves speeding up into Coire an Lochain as fast as our La Sportiva Prodigio Hike GTXs could carry us. Well, fast hiking mountain shoes and robust coffee.

Coire an Lochain and Coire an t-Sneachda are two glacial cirques, natural amphitheatres that climb up towards Cairn Lochan and Stob Coire an t-Sneachda, respectively. Many well-known climbing routes wind from the end of the cirques up to the peaks. Our walking route resembled an upside-down heart, heading up the gentle western slope, around the high point of Cairn Lochan and back down. In the early pre-dawn, the blue hour, we disturbed a couple of ptarmigans in their summer wear, and climbed higher. Across the mighty Lairig Ghru valley, through the mist, we spotted the headtorch lights of a distant team, probably making an early ascent of Braeriach – one of the best mountain days out in the Cairngorms.

Our more modest ascent was no less spectacular. Bee often led. Her Mountain Training courses were taken at Glenmore Lodge, the National Outdoor Training Centre, which we’d pass near the ski centre. These challenging hills, exposed and ancient, are the training ground of Mountain Leaders. Friend Jenny Tough with Lola, a Labradoodle, and Wynter, a lively young Shepski who was aching to lead the pack.

We saw pockets of snow lingering in the shade as the sun rose – but not as much as there should have been. It was cold and clear, with clouds floating far below us among the Caledonian Forest. We half-jokingly threw around cliches like ‘ethereal’. ‘It’s shite being Scottish,’ said Bee, an ironic reference to the film Trainspotting. The views were vast.

After our hike, Bee talked about the inspiration that comes with leading people in the mountains. ‘You have to ensure people are eating and drinking enough, and taking breaks, but you are also trying to keep morale up. The hike is often a big deal for inexperienced people in the mountains; many are raising money for charity, so there’s always a personal story. It’s lovely to be part of that. But it’s your job to make sure the whole day is great and safe.’

THE MUNRO JOURNEY

Bee’s journey into life in the mountains has been remarkable. Brought up on Shetland and always outdoorsy, it was perhaps inevitable. But in July 2013, she climbed Ben More on the Isle of Mull, her first Munro, and that day would change the direction of her life.

‘I’m quite goal-driven and like a list, so having 282 Munros ahead gave me focus. It’s almost arbitrary having a list, but it took me to so many different parts of Scotland that you wouldn’t necessarily go to if you weren’t aiming to climb a Munro.’

On July 6th, 2024, almost 11 years to the day, Bee climbed Beinn na Lap from Corrour railway station. She was joined by friends who laid a table out in her honour: food, drink, and laughter. The location wasn’t entirely by accident. You can get a train there (which helped for the journey home), but it was also where Renton, played by Ewan McGregor uttered the words, ‘It’s shite being Scottish’ – a phrase Bee found herself repeating over the years, in irony, as she looked over another glorious view.

She later wrote in an Instagram post: ‘I didn’t have a clue then of the incredible adventures the Munros would take me on. I’ve seen parts of Scotland I didn’t even know existed, seen views that continue to blow my mind and met the most incredible bunch of people along the way. From the hundreds of lovely people I’ve met randomly on the hills, to the very incredible friends I met along the way (mostly through Instagram) who all shared a love of Scotland and the outdoors.’

REVIEW: La Sportiva Prodigio Hike GTX

A shoe rarely breaks new ground, but La Sportiva Prodigio Hike GTX could be one of those. Don’t get us wrong, it’s still got an outsole, midsole and upper, looks like a shoe and feels like a shoe. But glance at it in the photos and you’ll notice it looks like a trail running shoe wearing a BUFF.
The La Sportiva Prodigio Hike GTX is designed for fast days on the mountains, and it needs to meet several criteria. It needs to be lightweight, comfortable, and have a grippy outsole.

Designers at La Sportiva have also recognised one of the key problems with shoes vs boots: the chance for water to get into the top of them. This is particularly important when the shoe has a waterproof membrane, because once the water is in, it stays in. The Prodigio Hike GTX (GTX is a reference to the GORE-TEX ePE Extended Comfort waterproof membrane) calmly gets over this issue with a collar around the ankle, minimising the chance of getting water in, and adding ankle stability.

Setting out at 4am towards the Cairngorm plateau with a heavy dew on the ground, there was no ingress, no annoying splashes that seep into your socks. But the overwhelming sense is that it feels like a trail running shoe, with deep cushioning, but with the added protection around the toe and heel – perfect as the path to Cairn Lochan gets rockier. Treading against the rocks is the FriXion Red outsole, something we’ve seen on other La Sportiva shoes. And the overall feel is one of stability. There’s little lateral roll, but front to back, there is a distinct propelling roll.

When you’re reviewing a shoe, you start by sensing around your foot. Are there hotspots? How is the fit? Some shoes with collars like this can rub, but not so here. Halfway up the mountain, once the coffee had kicked in and the sun was rising, we’d pretty much forgotten about our feet, and that’s the sign of a great pair of shoes.

At points, we broke into a run, aiming to get to the summit by sunrise proper. Again, they felt like trail runners. For single days across the mountains, whether the Cairngorms or the Alps, the La Sportiva Prodigio Hike GTX are the ones to bet on.