I’m just back from a four day tour in the Vanoise Alps. During the tour I lost the bolts from both of the ratchet locks and also lost the bolts from both top (toothed)clips on my fairly new Maestrales. This renders the boots next to useless for any kind of downhill control. Not a good situation to find yourself in up the hill and far from home!!

Given the type of terrain these boots will be deployed in there must be a safety implication here.

Coincidently I bumped into 2 other guys in one of the huts skiing independently who also had new Scarpa touring boots who had also lost clips and were trying to improvise a short term fix.

The boots have been returned for the attention of the Mountain Boot Company - the UK supplier. It will be interesting to see their response especially given the huge volume of these boots sold recently.

From what I hear Scarpa are aware of the issue.

More here - which makes 4 of us a least.

http://www.winterhighland.info/forum/read.php?5,136768

S

Interesting, keep us posted. I had trouble with my Spirit III in the same area but after 3 seasons and 100,000+ meters.

Same thing happened to me.  Ironically was just telling my mates how good my new boots are when I glanced down and the whole buckle was hanging off with the bolt just dangling loose in the buckle, very lucky not to have lost it.  The bolt on the other buckle had come loose as well.

Let me know if you get anymore info, whether scarpa are going to address this or not.  I’ve put some loc-tite on the bolt, will see if that’s effective.

It’s a real shame as otherwise they are a really good boot.

Just back from Cham with a mate with brand new Mistraeles. Same thing happenned, buckle hanging off. Lots of guides wearing these, common problem it seems. Need gluing better, bolts already have blue loctite/screwlock type glue on but it seems not enough or ineffective. We were lucky, spotted it (just) and had the two or three allen key sizes needed for a quick fix.
Guides reccommend superglue.
Shocking really.