La Sportiva Named Backpacker Mag's 2010 Editors' Choice Award Winner

La Sportiva, makers of technical climbing, mountaineering, Mountain Running® and hiking footwear, has been honored as the recipient of the 2010 Backpacker magazine Editors’ Choice Green Award, the most prestigious award in the outdoor industry, given annually to products in recognition of their outstanding innovation in design, materials and/or performance.

Backpacker Editor-In-Chief Jonathan Dorn and his staff of editors and testers presented La Sportiva’s FC ECO 3.0 GTX specialty hiking shoe with the 2010 Editors’ Choice Green Award at the annual Outdoor Retailer Winter Market in Salt Lake City, Utah on Thursday, January 21st.

The Backpacker Editors’ Choice Awards, bestowed annually since 1993, honor the products that Backpacker editors have chosen as the best of the year based on months of trail testing by teams of highly experienced hikers and climbers. With no set categories for the awards and no set number of recipients, the products and the testing process drive the award categories.

La Sportiva’s FC ECO 3.0 GTX was one of only 15 innovative products that have been honored with a 2010 Backpacker Editors’ Choice Award. As the 2010 Editors’ Choice Green Award winner, La Sportiva focused on the materials and processes used to produce its current Spring 2010 FC ECO Series. The outsole uses the Vibram® Eco-step compound composed of 30% recycled rubber content. The new Zero-Waste EVA midsole uses a combination of compression molded and injection molded pieces, which have a net effect of zero waste. The upper uses 100% recycled nylon for the mesh, laces and webbing. The lining uses a Dry-Best® Bristol component witha 40% recycled nylon content.

“In an era of dime-a-dozen digital gear reviews, consumers are looking for product evaluations that they can really trust,” said Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Dorn. “And no one does more than our test team to make sure that our selections earn the respect that Backpacker awards get. Led by Gear Editor Kristin Hostetter, the dozen or so core members of our crew hiked more than 15,000 miles this year, then finished our testing for Editors’ Choice with a 100-mile route through the Swiss Alps that entailed more than 60,000 feet of elevation gain, hours of waist-deep postholing, and weather conditions that challenged every piece of gear we packed. The result of the team’s hard work is a collection of smart, durable products that will deliver comfort and performance for many years to come.”

“We are honored to receive the Backpacker Editors’ Choice Green Award for the FC ECO 3.0 GTX,” says La Sportiva North American president, Jonathan Lantz. “Being recognized at the start of the new year for a product that just launched will not only help us gain exposure and recognition for the FC ECO 3.0 GTX, but the rest of La Sportiva’s FC ECO hiking line. Producing a shoe which possibly features the highest recycled content of footwear on the market is an achievement that La Sportiva is very proud of.”

The Backpacker Editors’ Choice Awards are the gold standard against which all outdoor products are measured, and are a seal of approval that can help put an outdoor company or product on the proverbial map. Each year at the Outdoor Retailer show, retail buyers use the awards announcements as a must-buy shopping list, knowing that their customers will be asking for these products in the spring.

Since their inception, the Backpacker Editors’ Choice Awards have come to be regarded as the most sought-after award for outdoor equipment and apparel found in the industry.The impeccable outdoor credentials and rigorous field-testing standards of the Backpacker staff guarantee that these awards are an undisputed mark of quality for the companies and products selected.

All winners must excel under extensive field-testing conducted by Backpacker’s team of editors, who take hundreds of new products every year into the backcountry to put them to the test.This rigorous process ensures that the performance of the winners is truly worthy of distinction and meets the guiding principle behind the program: gear that is of real value to the readers of Backpacker magazine, who are very active, long-term outdoor enthusiasts.

The complete list of Backpacker 2010 Editors’ Choice Award winners will be officially announced to the general public in the magazine’s April Gear Guide issue, on newsstands March 2, 2010.

With over 80 years authenticity in making the best technical footwear to explore the outdoors in, La Sportiva’s versatility is represented in our technical climbing, mountaineering, Mountain Running® and hiking footwear lines. La Sportiva products will let you go where you dream to go, do what you dream and live how you want to live. For more information on La Sportiva visit www.sportiva.com or check out the online interactive community, La Sportiva LIVE, at http://www.sportiva.com/live.



Backpacker (http://www.backpacker.com) brings the outdoors straight to the reader’s doorstep, inspiring and enabling them to go more places and enjoy nature more often. The authority on active adventure, Backpacker is the world’s first GPS-enabled magazine and website, and the only outdoor media whose editors personally test the hiking trails, camping gear, and survival tips they publish. Backpacker’s Editors’ Choice Awards, an industry honor recognizing design, feature and product innovation, has become the gold standard against which all other outdoor-industry awards are measured. And the magazine recently launched mobile media applications that allow users to text-message hiking maps and directions to their phones. In the last four years, Backpacker has won five National Magazine Awards, the publishing industry’s highest honor. In 2008, the magazine won the NMA for General Excellence, joining The New Yorker, Mother Jones, GQ, and National Geographic as top winners in their respective size categories. In 2009, it won three awards, including General Excellence Online. Backpacker has also won numerous other print, design, and digital awards, and its writers have been recognized in prestigious contests and best-of-the-year anthologies.