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