La Sportiva Vanguard Touring Boot — Mad Scientist Marvel?

by Doug Stenclik
written by Doug Stenclik
Vanguard cable system

The La Sportiva Vanguard, new for 2021/2022 mixes a variety of boot technologies into one. Case in point: Double the cables double the fun.

In a world devoid of trade shows with supply chain issues plaguing the entire outdoor industry, it has been hard for the gear tester to get a grasp on innovation for the 2021-2022 season. Specifically, the ski touring boot story is setting up to be a year of the status quo. Next year, most manufacturers will release 2021-22 lines with updates to colors and plastics, but with designs that stay relatively in-line to where they’ve been for the last two years.

That was, until the La Sportiva Vanguard emerged from the laboratory deep within Italy’s Val di Fiemme valley.

We’ve been waiting a while for this boot. Back in 2020, the WildSnow crew rolled into the Denver Convention Center excited to get a glimpse, but when we arrived at the La Sportiva booth we were informed the new boot was not ready for unveiling and wouldn’t even be put into production that year. Although disappointing at the time, it seemed to be the more responsible road less taken as many manufacturers — LaSpo notwithstanding — had previously opted for rushing to production and missing important fall deadlines.

Instead of producing the much anticipated ski touring shoe, the engineers retreated to Italy and to sure up plans for the new design. Later that year, on a night we can only assume was filled with lightning strikes and thunderclaps, the La Sportiva Vanguard was born. Although the diode bolts were chopped at the cuff pivots before the pre-production run was released, you can definitely see what took so long in development. A brand new overlap design is being employed, different from the traditional cabrio or any overlap design of the past.

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Downhill Dream Boot — Scott Freeguide Carbon Review

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger
The SCOTT Freeguide Carbon touring boot: the product of 1.5 years of development, 12 prototypes and more than 150,000 meters of ascent and descent.

The Scott Freeguide Carbon touring boot.

Written by Aaron Rice

I’ve come up with a patent pending method to test the skiability of a boot. Step 1. Check the weather and ignore all but the most optimistic forecast then plan accordingly for a two-foot dump! Step 2. Drive to the trailhead with skis that are 124 underfoot and 184 long. Step 3. Realize that it only snowed 3-6 inches and it’s sitting on top of frozen crud. Step 4. See if the boot in question can still drive a massively oversized ski in horrendous conditions!

During the winter months you can find me solely in the backcountry earning my turns. Unlike some new arrivals drawn to the ski touring for uphill fitness, I’ve always been and still am primarily in it for the down. For me the best way to get the best turns is to earn them. I believe in this philosophy so much that in 2016, I spent the year skinning and skiing 2.5 million vertical feet and setting a new record and did so wearing Vulcans on skis 95-124 underfoot! So with that as my background and continuing to ski 300-400 thousand vertical feet each year, I not only need a boot that is going to be the most fun on the down, but also one that’s going to tour like a dream.

Top: DPS Lotus 124 Pure 3 with Kingpins driven well by Scott Freeguide Carbons even in poor condition Bottom: DPS Cassiar 95 Tour 1 with Dynafit Speedturns and Vulcans - my primary setup during my record breaking year skiing 2.5 million human power feet.

Top: DPS Lotus 124 Pure 3 with Kingpins driven well by Scott Freeguide Carbons even in poor conditions.
Bottom: DPS Cassiar 95 Tour 1 with Dynafit Speedturns and Vulcans — my primary setup during my record breaking year skiing 2.5 million human power feet.

Intended use

Released in 2020, the Scott Freeguide Carbon is Scott’s offering for a freeride touring boot. It is the heaviest and stiffest boot in their touring line at an advertised 1455g (26.5) and 130 flex. The Superguide Carbon and the Cosmos III boots fill out their touring lineup, both a step lighter, softer, and less costly. The Freeguide is made with “Grilamid® mix + carbon fiber” which, best I can tell, is standard Grilamid plastic impregnated with carbon for added stiffness.

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Atomic Hawx Ultra XTD 115 W Touring Boot Review

by Cindy Hirschfeld
written by Cindy Hirschfeld
The Atomic Hawx Ultra XTD 115 W Tech touring boot is a suitable option for narrow-footed women who seek a balance of downhill and uphill performance, with slightly more emphasis on the downhill.

The Atomic Hawx Ultra XTD 115 W Tech touring boot is a suitable option for narrow-footed women who seek a balance of downhill and uphill performance, with slightly more emphasis on the downhill.

Hope springs eternal in backcountry ski touring, for powder days, for epic runs, for snow stability—and for a boot that performs just the way you want it to on both the uphill and the down. In my ongoing quest for just such a boot, I’ve been using Atomic’s Hawx Ultra XTD 115 W Tech GW for the past three and a half months. Spoiler alert: it excels on the downhill. That means I’ve been very happy with it for at least 50 percent of the time, and often much more.

Falling between Atomic’s standard alpine boots and the brand’s lightweight, touring-specific Backland series, the Hawx Ultra XTD family aims to fill the gap by enabling solid downhill performance with enough range of motion and weight savings to competently tour. At $700, the 115 W Tech is right in line pricewise with other women’s AT boots.

When I first opened the box, my heart sank just a bit as I noticed the boot’s traditional overlap, four-buckle construction. Not only was it not what I expected for an AT boot, but up to then I’d only toured in boots with three-piece tongue construction. I feared the Hawx Ultra XTD would be heavy and cumbersome for skinning. But when I lifted one up, I realized it was about as light as the Scarpa Geas I’d skied in for the past several years, and way lighter than my alpine boots. (A pair of the Hawx Ultra XTD weighs in at 1,360 grams (size 24.5); for comparison, current-model Geas are 1,250 grams (size 25), and my older ones are a tad heavier.) Hope restored.

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Dynafit Race Review Part I — Mezzalama Ski, PDG 2 Boot

by Slator Aplin
written by Slator Aplin
Left: Groomer touring at the beginning of a skimo race. Middle: A double skin rip (#doubleskinrip) executed in mediocre fashion. Right: Attack Turtle descent style performed flawlessly

Left: Groomer touring at the beginning of a skimo race. Middle: A double skin rip (#doubleskinrip) executed in mediocre fashion. Right: Attack Turtle descent style performed flawlessly.

Is there a place for race gear in your backcountry quiver?

Raise your hand if you’ve ever found yourself craving the following experiences out of ski touring:

— Redlining while ski-jogging up a resort. Either racing against other people or alone while resort skiers heckle ‘You’re going the wrong way!’

— Transitioning at a blistering pace (ideally performing the legendary double-skin-rip).

— Descending in classic ‘Attack Turtle’ style, praying for the run to finish soon so you can get back to touring uphill.

— Weighing your gear on a scale and making a Gear Weight Spreadsheet (kit measured in grams obviously).

If you raised your hand to any/all of these (and maybe even if you didn’t), you should probably look into skimo racing. Skimo racing is a silly, intense niche of our beloved backcountry skiing community. If the subsets of ski touring were placed on a gradient from uphill to downhill oriented, skimo would slam against the uphill-oriented side of that spectrum. The gear is as light as possible while still managing to ski downhill (Check out ISMF’s shockingly strict and precise rules about gear). The intent behind the sport is to travel as fast as possible both up and down (or train to do so at some other time).

Spectrum of ski touring infographic. Obviously super advanced graphic design.

Spectrum of ski touring infographic. Obviously super advanced graphic design.

Jokes and cultural priming aside, this blog post is first and foremost a gear review, but also a commentary on the sport of skimo racing. I reviewed the Dynafit Mezzalama ski, the PDG 2 boot and the Low Tech Race 105 binding (LTR105). This race kit is capable of a solid finish at any North American skimo event. It’s also a quality training kit for resort fitness touring. The combo of Dynafit skis, bindings and boots is designed for the gram-counting, second-shaving, take-racing-seriously community.

But is that all this gear is capable of? Is there more that race gear can offer to the backcountry community, or is it confined to the packed powder of ski areas and flagged off race courses? How dreamy does it sound to log backcountry vert while moving at a skimo race pace…(I have dreams of big alpine enchainments like this, do you?) I reviewed the Dynafit race kit to get a better understanding of ‘skimo’ and test the limits of this uphill-most oriented touring equipment.

This review is broken into two parts: a narrative review of the Mezzalama ski and PDG 2 boot followed by a review of the LTR 105 binding and an epilogue of sorts sharing my lessons learned from taking race gear into the backcountry.

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Ski Touring Boots 2021-22 — Upgrades to Past Favs

by Slator Aplin
written by Slator Aplin
The magenta Gea RS and Aqua Maestrale RS feature new more sustainable materials, the Walk XT ski/walk mechanism, and fancy exoskeleton cuffs and shells to help transfer power through the boot

The magenta Gea RS and Aqua Maestrale RS feature new more sustainable materials, the Walk XT ski/walk mechanism, and fancy exoskeleton cuffs and shells to help transfer power through the boot.

Touring boots are the keystone of the equipment necessary to move in the mountains. Without them, your feet would be freezing, vulnerable, wet, and not be able to click into touring bindings. With them, you can glide uphill, slide downhill, and walk to and from your car in the parking lot without the signature resort-boot-cowboy-gait.

We have filtered through the ski touring industry to see what’s new for the 2021 season. The general theme for the development happening this season is: conservative. There are no crazy, space-age developments set to revolutionize the touring world come Fall 2021. However, what is notable within the industry are minor improvements on already great equipment. Incremental steady change in the positive direction seems to be a great responsible decision. Nice one ski touring industry. So without further adieu, let’s get into the new boots for the 2021 season:

Redesigned Scarpa Maestrale/Gea & Ladies F1LT

The Women’s Gea and Men’s Maestrale are the quintessential mid-range touring boot. A middle ground between uphill and downhill performance. Scarpa says they are ‘the world’s best selling and highest performing backcountry ski boot.’ We’ll reserve such judgement. But I sure do see quite a few of them on the skin track each season. For 2021, they both receive incremental improvements to move a step forward in their ski boot design fame.

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Light(ish) & Robust — 2021/22 Fischer Transalp First Look

by Manasseh Franklin
written by Manasseh Franklin
A crew of socially distanced media folk with matching Fischer Transalp Pros.

A crew of socially distanced media folk with matching Fischer Transalp Pros.

Here’s a testament to the contemporary age of ski touring gear: one night last week, I imagined an ideal boot. This boot would be light enough for the long tours I mostly embark on, but more robust than the 1000g boots I typically wear. It’d have enough power to drive a 100mm underfoot ski without overpowering an 85 underfoot ski. It would walk exceptionally well, be comfortable enough for big days and be capable of enough power transfer to show up on demanding descents.

The next day, I got to try out that very boot. It seems the folks at Fischer had similar ambitions in thinking up the 2021-22 Fischer Transalp. It is light-ish (1280g for 26), stiff for its class (approximately 120 flex), powerful enough to drive a larger ski, compatible with a minimal tech binding or burlier hybrid like the Shift, and easy to transition between efficient walk mode and stiff, sturdy ski mode.

I first met the Transalp at a parking lot of the west side of Eisenhower Tunnel. My legs were wobbly from 2.5 hours of white knuckled driving in blowing and sloshing snow and I was happy to finally get out of the truck. At least the 24.5 women’s Tour model of the Transalp fit well, though it took some finagling to adjust the buckles as I shuffled into position on the skin track between skiing legend Mike Hattrup and a small handful of safely distanced media folk.

It was a day of low expectations for skiing. Our guide, Rocky Mountain Guides owner Peter Krainz kept reminding the group in his playful Austrian accent that really, we were just out for a walk. The tundra we approached was wind scoured, peppered with rocks and bushes, and had enough fresh swirling snow on top to turn the rocks into unwitting core shots. The most important thing was to see how the Transalp toured, he reminded us. Right, but we all secretly hoped for at least a few decent turns.

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