Nine point three ounces, 29 millimeters of cushioning and no plate: The North Face’s Offtrail Ultra bets on subtraction for technical terrain.
- Nitrogen-infused DREAMBOUND superfoam midsole in two densities, produced in a single molding, with no adhesive holding the two materials together.
- 9.3 oz men’s (264 g) and 8.0 oz women’s (227 g), 29 mm of stack at the heel, 6 mm drop.
- SURFACE CTRL G2 outsole with 5 mm lugs and a dedicated forefoot grip zone; built-in stretch SCREEGUARD gaiter to keep debris out.
- €160, part of the Summit Trail Run collection inspired by the 1990 Trans-Antarctica expedition.
Nine point three ounces for the men’s shoe, 29 millimeters of cushioning at the heel. The Offtrail Ultra, introduced by The North Face on August 4, lives inside that ratio: enough material underfoot to absorb hours of rock, little enough weight that those hours don’t also become a lifting session. Over a long distance the gap between 9.3 and 10.6 ounces starts to register after a few hours, once the quads have picked that weight up several thousand times.
A Midsole Molded in One Piece
The core of the project is the DREAMBOUND midsole, a nitrogen-infused superfoam built in two different densities, which the brand presents as an industry first. The interesting part is how the two foams are brought together: one single molding process, with no adhesive bridging the materials.
Put that way, it sounds like a factory concern. In practice it’s about the place where a mountain shoe ages. Every bonded element is a joint, and a joint is where stress concentrates: lateral torsion on a root, a crooked landing on a rock, thousands of asymmetric compressions. Take that boundary away and you take one variable out of the durability equation.
On how the Offtrail Ultra actually runs, the premise is strong: responsiveness and comfort over long distances. What can be said already is that the direction is consistent with recent research — in fast shoes the larger contribution comes from the foam rather than the plate, and dual density is a way of asking the foam alone to do two opposite jobs: soft where it has to absorb, firmer where it has to hold the structure.
Rock, Descent, Debris: Where the Shoe Claims to Work
The SURFACE CTRL G2 outsole runs five-millimeter lugs and a grip zone under the forefoot. That second detail is the one that gives away the ambition of the project: when the trail stops and you find yourself pushing your toes into a tilted slab, the rest of the outsole becomes irrelevant and the inch of rubber ahead of your big toe does all the work. Designing a dedicated zone there means expecting whoever laces these up to leave the track. The difference between gradient and technicality plays out in exactly this kind of passage.
Five-millimeter lugs are a measurement meant for soft ground, the kind where rubber has to dig to find purchase: loose gravel, churned dirt, scree.
The SCREEGUARD gaiter is stretch-built and integrated into the shoe, closing around the ankle to keep small debris outside. The value of a detail like that, on a long outing, comes down to a single measure: how many times you stop to loosen a shoe and empty it. Above it, the reinforced mesh upper goes after low weight and breathability, with a fit The North Face itself describes as performance-oriented. Translated: foot locked down, volumes kept tight.
What the Offtrail Ultra Leaves Out
The list of absences describes this shoe better than the list of features does. No plate, no pronounced rocker, no outsized stack height, and a gaiter with no zippers and no adjustment dials. Plates and exaggerated geometries are standard issue in the fast-trail market by now, so walking away from them is a specific philosophical position, and it deserves to be judged as one. Zach Miller, an ultrarunner on The North Face team, backs the choice, saying that simplicity is precisely what makes the shoe versatile across climbs, descents and technical ground.
Prototypes on Five Continents
The North Face put Offtrail Ultra prototypes in the hands of its own athletes on five continents. Kaytlyn Gerbin crossed New Zealand’s Southern Alps in them, Tara Fraga attempted an FKT (Fastest Known Time, the benchmark time on an open route, outside an organized race) on Cotopaxi in Ecuador, Stephanie Case took them to a training camp in Arctic Norway.
The Offtrail Ultra sits inside the Summit Trail Run collection, which this year looks back to the 1990 Trans-Antarctica expedition: seven months of crossing, 3,741 miles, six explorers of different nationalities outfitted by the brand. That’s where the high-visibility palette and the International Flag of Planet Earth applied to the apparel come from. The callback serves a purpose beyond heritage, because those colors have a practical reason too: on broken ground, being seen from far away counts.
The price is €160, at thenorthface.it and specialty retailers, which places the Offtrail Ultra in an unusual middle bracket for a shoe built around a new foam. The profile it speaks to is clear: people who spend hours in the mountains on terrain that changes every few hundred feet, and who would rather have a shoe that disappears underfoot than one that imposes a trajectory.