Scarpa Laser ski touring boot circa 2002. Still available on the used market and worth purchasing if you’re on a budget.

Throwback Thursday! First released around 2002, Scarpa Laser was a revolutionary ski touring boot that combined walking comfort and skiability in a lightweight package that few other boots could match. Add tech binding fittings and a last with enough toe room for nearly anyone, and what’s not to love? Well, they did ski okay but in those days we were still needing to press against the fronts of our boots, as well as have enough overall stiffness to lever skis around a turn — even if we were not dropping cliffs and enjoying other vile shenanigans.

Prior to this project I’d been modifying ski boots for years, but before the Laser I’d not come up with something this effective — this worthy of the name “frankenboot.” This wasn’t the first frankenboot by any means (ski racers had been doing such stuff for decades), but it was one of the first published ski touring frankenboots.