Skischuh

The Spectre 2.0 proves that La Sportiva not only makes good climbing boots, but also scores points in the ski touring boot segment! The enhanced ski touring boot is convincingly tailored to the needs of downhill-oriented ski tourers.

Once again this year, we are reporting from ISPO in Munich. This article is about touring ski boots and touring bindings suitable for downhill skiing, a sector that has been booming for several years and is therefore being provided with some interesting innovations by the various manufacturers.

The Booster Strap was invented by Ray Fougere in 1999 and park and pipe skiers quickly realized that the strap stopped ski watch bruising. Nowadays, almost every ski boot manufacturer has its own strap technology, but nothing beats the original.

Fritz Barthel, father of the pin binding, and Eric Hjorleifson, freeride legend and material freak, enjoy working together on ski boots and bindings and have brought a joint project to series maturity with the Hoji Boot. Hoji's involvement gives hope for uncompromising big mountain performance, while Barthel's focus was on handling and ascent. Dynafit promises an egg-laying, revolutionary wool-milk sow.

The Lupo series from Dalbello entered its third round this season. After the normal Lupo model was extended with tech inserts two years ago, the high-end Lupo Carbon T.I. model followed last year with improved shaft rotation (67°), removable tongue and optimized weight. This season, Dalbello is offering a whole range of Lupo models. I have been using one of these models, the Lupo 130C, for a year now and would like to share my experiences here.

As in previous years, there are many technical innovations in ski touring boots. More and more manufacturers are coming onto the market with ever lighter models that are still very suitable for downhill skiing. One of the most interesting new models, the Hoji Pro Tour from Dynafit, won an ISPO Award but could only be admired in reality to a limited extent due to the lack of a Dynafit stand.

PowderGuide reporter Basti is a material fetishist and always on the lookout for interesting new developments. He recently discovered something exciting on the feet of his gondola neighbor: Self-made ski boots from a 3D printer. He did some research and paid a visit to the Swiss company Tailored Fits.

Back in the 2014/15 season, Scarpa launched the F1 Evo, a boot that was set to revolutionize the world of ski touring. Unfortunately, the boot had to be recalled in February because in some cases the boot fell into the walk mechanism during the descent. This revolution is being relaunched in 2016. And PowderGuide is part of it.

For this season, Dynafit has given the extremely successful TLT series a major overhaul and has added a few more innovations to the TLT7 compared to the TLT6. This not only further reduces the already very low weight, but also further improves the great ascent performance. We have tested how the shoe performs in more freeride-heavy use.

Lighter - tougher - more agile. This seems to be the credo of the hour for freeride boots. The boundaries between freetouring and downhill-oriented boots with a walking function are beginning to blur. The Italian boot specialists from Tecnica are also consistently following this trend and, with the Cochise 130, are delivering a downhill-oriented four-buckle boot that doesn't need to hide away on the ascent either.

As in previous years, a number of innovations from the booming ski touring sector were presented at ISPO 2017. Both the "classic" ski tourer and the "modern" freetourer are addressed. And the ever-growing sector of piste tourers and ski tour racers will also be provided with new equipment. We took a look around the trade fair and provide an overview of new ski boots and bindings that will be of interest to freeriders and downhill-oriented ski tourers.

Dalbello continues to develop the three-piece convertible ski boot design in the direction of ascent performance and presents a touring boot for the 16/17 season that should score points with both its downhill and ascent properties. We have been using the boot since spring 2016 and want to compare it with the normal Lupo and Krypton as well as with similar boots in its class.