Atomic Backland — Putting a Boot Fitter Near You Out of Business

Randy Young (right) of our advertising partner Cripple Creek checks out the new shoes.

I’ve got about 20 days of testing on my Atomic Backland Carbon ski touring boots. We fit them in Austria using their full “Memoryfit” technology that’s purported to heat mold the shell to your foot along with the liner. I was a little suspicious of this. Why doesn’t the whole shell just expand and get too big? Turns out the process does work, but has to be done correctly (and may not be needed if you get a good shell fit out of the box, in which case you can just do a normal “stack” heat of the boots for a molding.)

Note that Atomic will offer three liner options when the Backland boots go to full retail next fall. One of the liners will be ‘high volume’ to help fill for lower volume feet, while the other liners will be a standard version and a super light and flexible version. Official word: “Three liners, Platinum Light (which is in the orange boot for uber light weight touring guys), Platinum, and a Platinum Low Volume (which is currently being developed for the women’s version as well as aftermarket sales).

Thing is, if you’ve got any alignment problems or any areas on your feet that normally need a boot fitter’s punch, you just might be able to do an oven mold of the Backland and get it all perfect in one step. More, if you’ve got the classic problem of skinny ankles and long feet you can possibly downsize for ankle fit and depend on the process to lengthen the toe area.

I was just joking about the boot fitter, as you’ll still need him and his calibrated oven to do the Memoryfit. But you might not need him as much.

A few days ago Lisa and I attended a demo of the process, hosted by Colorado area sales rep Michael MacQuarrie. Check out a few photos and commentary.

Aspen Powder Tours manager and guide Bob Perlmutter gets ready to bake. It takes some pressure from the inside to get the shell to expand, so padding key areas of your feet is key. Just like molding liners only you have to be a bit more aggressive with the padding if you want the shell to really respond.

The boots are heated for 12 minutes (after the boot fitter gets some experience this can vary somewhat with how aggressive you want the molding process to be). Temperature of around 240 degrees F is necessary. Too hot can damage the boots. This is probably something you won’t be doing at home in your kitchen, though it’s possible that the do-it-yourselfer with a big enough convection oven could pull it off.

The boots don’t have to go on particularly quickly as they’re nicely heat soaked after 12 minutes. But foot insertion has to be done smoothly so the liner doesn’t get bunched or wrinkled. Plastic bags on the feet do the trick. Ultra thin socks are worn so the molding is done ‘bare foot,’ otherwise the boots can easily increase too far in volume.

A boot fitter who’s experienced in the process makes for success.

Bob got a good mold, surprisingly good actually. He did mold with his custom orthotics, but doing so can sometimes throw things off if the boot doesn’t have a cuff alignment system. In the case of Memoryfit the boot is somewhat self aligning so long as you’re careful about your stance as they cool from the mold. In Bob’s case, he stepped on to this cool $15,000 stance checker and got a nearly perfect score.

Check out our other Atomic Backland boot posts firstlook here. and my visit to Atomic in Austria here.

Thanks goes to boot fitter Steve Centofanti for use of his location and equipment (if you need boot work in the Aspen area, he’s at 430 South Spring Street in the old mining town).