Unorthodox ski boot testing

Last Sunday, I was still unsettled with my new Nordica rear-entry boots that I felt I needed to push their assessment a tad farther. During my active career in the ski industry, I’ve been in charge of marketing ski boots and that activity, as well as my ski background, took me testing boots on many occasions as well. In the process, I became keenly aware of testing methods (and their highly subjective nature) as well as assiduously scrutinizing test results, mostly those of ski publications. 

Today, I realized that the way we’ve been testing boots all along was pretty much flawed, in the way we neglected “direct comparison” when we evaluated different pairs of boots. We would put on a pair of boots A and then boots B, C, etc. and try to remember how A, B and C compared to each other. Remembering sensations is extremely hard, if not impossible that way.

That’s perhaps why, the Saturday before I did that new test, I got an insight that the way to test a pair of ski boots was to put on foot into A and the other one into B (the sole lengths being identical and requiring no binding adjustment), and this is exactly what I did the next day. When I hit the slopes no one even noticed that I had two different boots on. 

As soon as I was on the chairlift I could compare the pressure point locations on either foot, with a weighted or unweighted boot, and the same went on as I initiated turns, carved or just skidded my turns. Very soon I could feel the difference which, to my surprise, was just located around the ankle bones, a frequent occurrence with brand new boots that had not yet “nested” the bones protrusions. 

Yet, I was impressed by the excellent skiability of this new rear-entry boot that I could clearly sense and judge on the hard packed portions of my runs. In fact, what makes this rear-entry so good technically is its amazing heel purchase. On that subject and as I had previously noticed, entry was not that easy as the heel had to clear a sill of sorts that let the heel move back inside a well designed heel pocket that held it in place remarkably well while skiing. 

Again, this boot's secret weapon! That secured heel position was also what made getting out of that boot not that easy as the heel had to clear the heel pocket and demanded a specific effort for it. This was more a disappointment with the product than anything else as I precisely bought the boots to facilitate their exit at the end of a ski outing. 

In spite of it, at the end of the afternoon, I was still sold on my new boots and impressed with my direct comparison method and feedback I got from testing one different boot on each foot!