Race boots
More weight does not always mean better skiability
- Author: Denis Trento
- Photographer: Alo Belluscio
Race boots is a segment in which it has taken manufacturers the longest to find the right balance between weight, comfort, performance, reliability, and cost. Several seasons have come and gone as they’ve tried to solve this complex problem. It used to be that carbon fiber was virtually unheard of in a boot, and it took some time to figure out how it could work. Unfortunately, for years tests had to be done directly by athletes under actual race conditions. At the same time, there can be no better test scenario than a race, so after a long process of trial and error, boots have finally reached a level of development suited to the task at hand.
Here, too, manufacturers have all approached the lowest weight allowed by competition rules, at the expense of some comfort depending on the margins that each brand offered at the start.
For the less extreme race boots, whether semi-carbon or full plastic, the extra weight compared to the more aggressive models does not always translate into enhanced skiability or increased comfort. But it definitely gives you a more affordable product. It’s not easy to pick the right race boot, given all the factors to be considered. But it’s of crucial importance in the setup of any ski mountaineer. With the high cost and extreme nature of a race boot, one of the key factors to take into account is its failure rate.
For the Buyer’s Guide, just a few days of testing is obviously not enough to fully test this issue. However, over the years, a great deal of development has focused on this crucial area, and today’s materials are much more reliable for it. Of course, it’s increasingly common for even amateur racers to find themselves in complicated situations due to a lack of snow, and the stresses of racing both on the athletes and on their gear go well beyond the norm. So now and then, things do break. And when it happens, it’s important to remember that, in skimo, statistics show that, in most cases, when equipment does fail, it acts as a sort of early warning system, breaking under stress before that same stress can break an athlete’s bones.
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The word ski mountaineering encompasses skiing and alpinism. The calling to head high, to reach summits, ridges and the most spectacular vantage points, and then don your skis, often inevitably requires you to use mountaineering equipment. In order to make the right choice, you need to understand how it works and know how to use it.
Probably The most accurate ski test out there.
