J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

Stewart Dowling wrote:Hi Admin,

For what level of skier to this accommodate for?

It is a great bargain and you can get a flight for about 70ukp so I would be very interested in this as I would like to improve my skiing ability as much as possible.

That would work, if you contact Joanne at Mountainsun direct she'll be able to sort out an instructor for you, that'll be one to one unless there's more than one of you or she can buddy you up with someone. Glaciers are great places to learn or improve technique as well just because of their terrain but it's also a good use of limited terrain of course.

pavelski wrote:

Try it!

The mink has to die to provide this, it's a by product of the fur trade. Many people may not wish to support that trade.

There's an Intersport up in the glacier at Stubai that's excellent, huge range of boots and test gear.

bandit wrote:
I was measured and fitted with a reasonably new pair of (rental)touring boots by a retailer that you know well. They fitted so badly, that I could turn one foot on it's side on the footbed, with the boot fully fastened. The volume was such that I could pull my foot out of the boot with it done up. As I know how a boot should fit, I declined to use them.

No, that's about how touring boots are supposed to fit :D we just all have incredible and precise foot control :D

I'm not sure XXXsport are that good really, best range of skis in the valley but the Intersport over the road is a little better to buy from. Ideally you'd go down to the bottom and somewhere like Follomi or La Haut or further on to Stöckli. There's not many ski stations I'd buy boots from, Val d'Isere, Tignes and the Stubai are the only ones that spring to mind.

bandit wrote:Iceghost, in my experience, when a boot has "canting adjustment" what the manufacturer means is that the upper part of the boot "the cuff" can be aligned to your lower leg.
Footbed canting is serious stuff and will affect the whole way you stand on your skis.

that's true, I should have said "can" or "can often" be corrected with foot-beds, they're not quite interchangeable.

bandit wrote:ise, iceghost is a suitable candidate for an expert bootfitter. I know you're sceptical, but do you have bone screws in your feet?

depends where you are, luckily the cult of the celebrity boot fitter hasn't spread to the European market :D Most stores here, outside of tourist traps, know what they're about though.

IceGhost wrote:Canting- [ex. -/+2]
rear spoiler-
[ I have one on my car, why do boots need em'?]
Flex indexx- [ex. 120-110]
sizing- [MP XY.Z] Whats with the MP?
wedge-

The time has come to start looking for new boots. I got to try some different brands on my last trip to Austria and I fell head over skis with a honey of a set of Nordica speed machines.

Canting, In engineering that means the difference in angle between two sides, ie roads or railtracks are canted. For boots or shoes it means some people don't evenly weight across their whole foot so, for example, they're placing more pressure on the inside than the outside, if the boot is canted then that imbalance can be evened out which means you have a more equal pressure and that's an obvious advantage for edging a ski. The more canting a boot supports then the more you adjust that. A boot ought to have some canting adjustment although most people shouldn't need it and shouldn't mess around with it. A good test is to ride up a drag lift, relax into a neutral postion and just glance at the ski, you should see it running flat to the ground (on flat or non-cambered terrain), if it's not then you might need to look at the canting. On the other hand, this can be corrected with footbeds that's probably better.

Spoilers. It's a raised section more or less bolted to the rear of the boot shell, the spoiler will make it harder to lean back so far and flatters weaker skiers. Some people hate them and remove them. Worse though, they're rather dangerous and are linked to ACL injuries when a skier takes a backward fall where the ski does not release. Good spoilers will be removable and you'd be able to move them up and down.

Flex index is just a measure of how hard the boot is and how difficult it is to flex or bend, the higher the number then the stiffer it is. The stiffest boot is more suited to racing and the most flex to beginners. The index just lets you compare boots in a range and to an extent compare different makes of boots, the flex indexes aren't precise but they're not so different across manufacturers.

MP is a mondo-point, again it's just a universal sizing, in fact the mondopoint standard is regulated by ISO and is the only international standard for footwear sizing.

Wedge. Not sure what you mean, where have you seen this word used? A wedge is just a wedge, probably mostly commonly associated with forward lean wedges, that's basically a wedge placed at the rear of the boot behind the ankle which again will stop you leaning back so far in the boot.

I wouldn't get hung up on makes of boots, there's only two sorts of boots, the ones that fit and the ones that don't. Unless you've a genuine foot problem, there's a boot that fits without being mucked around with. Nearly everyone doesn't have a foot problem no matter what they self-diagnose or what a boot fitter tells them, there's a simple test, if you can walk a couple of km with some uphill and downhill in a normal pair of shoes without any modification you can be fairly sure your feet are perfectly normal. That means the best place to buy a boot is generally the place with largest range not the boutique with the celeb' boot fitter and two models of boot.

Mostly people buy boots too big, they fit for a couple of weeks, or appear to, then become too sloppy to be usable. So new boots will be a little tight, it ought to be an even pressure all around the foot not some sharp point pain though.

I've driven past, near to Lermoos I think which is pretty big. There is, or used to be, a Tirol area pass that covered most of the stations around there. In fact I think Berwang is linked by bus to Lermoos which would make it one of the stations in the Zugspitz area, the Zugspitz is the highest mountain in Germany although there's not so much piste skiing on it.

Ideal for what you're wanting although so many stations in Austria fit the bill as well.

Gooseh wrote:
This sounds very interesting indeed. I've got a basic (roughly A/S standard) knowledge of German already, so at the very least I would have a strong base to build on. I'm really very tempted by that course, especially considering its 'guarantee' of work, though I'm not sure how much I believe it.

Peak Leaders have a good reputation, I think you can take their guarantee at face value there. If you've got some grounding in German I'd take advantage of that, it's an asset to be used.