Firstly I use garmont adrenalin boots with moulded liners - the liner of one boot has worn away at the heel - anyone know of a way of getting a replacement? I live in North of England.

Secondly - Ive heard about people improving performance of touring boots by getting a heavier duty liner / tongue on the boot - anyone any experience of this?

Thirdly - my movement evolution skis with Fr Explore bindings are coming to the end of their lifespan - want a similar ski - light and versatile - one ski for family trips on piste and for off piste trips and touring - any thoughts or recommendations?
My skiing style is pretty laid back - not taking big hucks, but can crank it up if the mood takes and sometimes hit the steeps.
Skis I looked at include Movement Ikis / shaman / red apple 74.  Also demoed a pair of G3 spitfires which were awesome but a little heavy.

sinbad - 14 March 2010 07:13 PM

Ive heard about people improving performance of touring boots by getting a heavier duty liner / tongue on the boot - anyone any experience of this?

Generally there’s a trade-off between:
(A) best “performing” boot
and
(B1) avoidance of foot pain
(B2) avoidance of cold toes (from not getting adequate blood flow)

As the liner inevitably “packs out” (i.e. loses it’s volume and elasticity from thousands of compression/expansion cycles), you can also try putting in various inserts that take up some of the space between the liner and the boot shell. Some of the inserts deal with specific performance deficits, others deal with the general “volume” problem.

But before you invest much time and money in new liners or inserts, first check the basic fit of the boot shell to your foot (various web pages talk about this). If your shell is on the large side for at least one of your feet, then there’s going to be a limit on how much “performance” you’re going to ever be able to achieve with that boot.

So you could purchase a whole range of inserts and try out different ones, see what helps. As my liners were packing out after several years of frequent use, I used a “volume” insert under the bottom of each of liner for each foot. Cheap, and seemed to help. For a while I would carry tongue inserts in my pack while climbing up, then insert them for the downhill run. Also seemed to help.

Eventually other mechanical parts on the boot were wearing out, and I bought new boots, and that was way better.

My advice: Go see a good bootfitter.

Ken

Sinbad,

the UK importer for Garmont is Dave Brown of DB Outdoors tel 015939733842, he has supplied replacement liners, new soles and sent my Adrenalins back to Italy for replacement of the ankle hinge rivets, very helpful.

I have since changed my liners again for the comformable injection foam liners, not the race version (silver plastic outer) but the slightly softer version with the black fabric outer, do not get the injection tongue, they do an ordinary tongue. These are stiffer than the Garmont foam liners but not quite as warm for the toes.

Ski’s are very subjective, but I can recommend the K2 COOMBAck, it feels about 80mm underfoot, it is an excellent and very forgiving ski (174 is approx 1800g) 135mm, 102, 121mm, they make powder and breakable crust effortless (slight rocker at the front), and are very easy to control on piste or the icy bump ridden rat run at the end of most tours in the chamonix valley.

I’m having the same problem with a pair of garmont endorphins so can’t help there.  At the mo I have volume adjusters and insoles in there to compensate, which is working. I was told that the conformable inserts could render the ‘walk’ function obselete.

As for skis.  Not sure of your budget but I’m about to replace my scott missions&diamir freeride with the Kaestle 84’s + Marker Baron bindings.  The skis are light as a feather and very good all round in powder as well as on piste or skied-out off piste.  I’ve been trying skis all season - mouvement spark, scott neo, sultan 80/85’s, fischer watea 84’s(not bad), and these are true all rounders.  Would probably have gone for the marker tour f10 or 12 (as seen on here) but they’re not included in the offer!

Thanks for advice - have ordered new liners from DB outdoor for 80 quid.

Anyone skiied the movement Ikis or shaman? I feel a bit of loyalty to movement due to the pleasure my movement evolutions have given me over the last 5 yrs.

I would recommend this years K2 backside skis.For some reason they are great value.  I got a pair of Way Backs this year as a replacement for a set of Scott Missions (which with fritchis I thought were just a bit heavy for week long tours). I have used Movement skis in the past and the Waybacks remind me of them a little.

The Waybacks have a waist of 88m so just the right amount of float, are light and a very forgiving ski able to adapt to different snow conditions. I used them on the family holiday for a week and for some tours and they handle both well.  They don’t have a metal sheet in them like some of the other K2 backcountry skis so are a little softer. You can still blast along quite happily on them, but they begin to feel a little unstable if you are travelling at warp speed. I don’t often travel at warp speed so it isn’t too much of an issue.

If you want to use the skis for everything I would stick with Fritchis. The Duke seem heavy to me and I prefer the realease properties of the Fritchi over Dynafits if you are skiing around on piste.

In the UK the Waybacks are only £300. The price in Europe seems to be €550-€650 depending on how overpriced the resort you go to is. I got mine from Braemar Mountain Sports.

Although, I like these skis if K2 had actually managed to import any into the UK in the right size ( I think they only brought in the 181cm) I would have gone for the Backlash (92mm wide and a metal laminate cap)as a good compromise ski. I couldn’t justify paying almost £650 for the Backlashs in Val D’isere when I got the Waybacks for £300 in the UK

The Iki is closer in shape to your evolution than the shaman. If you want a new version of the same ski it’s a logical choice. The shamans are really fun to ski on as they have lots of shape but are more twitchy because of it. However because they aren’t stiff it’s not an issue. I have changed from shamans to the coombacks mentioned above because I wanted to check out some 100+mm skis. I love them and they don’t feel wider than the movement thunders that I used to have.I use dynafit STs on mine to keep the overall package weight down. Anything saved on the binding can be traded for ski performance.