J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by billip1

=Tony_H]

How was Nassfeld?

)tres drole Tony. And yes, the boots were definitely worth it.

After a fantastic week last week somewhere beginning with the 14th letter of the alphabet, it's great to pop back in and be able to agree that this is indeed a nice place to come home to (before I go off again later, promised tax rebate permitting!)

The advice, tips and info I've had from people on here has been great, if sometimes ended up costing me money because, for example, I just h-a-d to buy my own boots, because everybody said it was the way to go :)

Great to hear that Blodyn. Hope you left some beer for us all !

Dave, hope to catch you next week .... in the inglenook of the Bichlwirt, mayhap ?

Well, I'm off there this weekend so hoping for another enjoyable week.

Swingbeep: I still have the original liners, so I will check. Thanks for the tip. But my feeling is that the Zipfit liners are fairly chunky, with lots of leather on them, whereas the included-with-the-boot liners are more like slipper boots, but anyway I'll check it out.

I recently had an extensive fitting session for my first "own" pair of boots, having always previously rented. The session in the shop was pretty rigorous and the boots (which happened to be Dalbello, but that was the shop's choice, based on their measurements of my feet etc), felt very snug, if not tight, but not uncomfortably so. The whole session took most of the afternoon, and included the replacement of the standard boot liner with a more bespoke one, from Zipfit. This was because I told the boot fitter that, despite the overall "snug" fit of the boot there was still some movement up and down the sides of my heels. After the change of liner (extra cost, of course!), the boots felt fine, although the toes were butting up against the front of the boot. I know this is what you should expect when trying boots on in a shop, so that when leaning forward against one's shins when skiing, the toes tend to come back from the front of the boot. The following week they went into action in earnest in Austria and after two days my big toes were black and blue under the toenails, being bruised by the constant contact with the front of the boot. For the third day's skiing I had to rent a pair from the ski hire shop, which were much "comfier", insofar as they didn't bruise the toes, but were also obviously not anything like so "snug" everywhere else. Anyway, once I got back home, I went back to the fitter, showed him my black toenails, and he then made various adjustments to the boots and also was able to lengthen them in the big toe area, and to give a bit more height over the big toe too, which seems to have fixed the problem. I will know after another week's skiing in early Jan, but am hopeful.

Overall, I didn't mind too much the not-perfect first fit, as the after-care was excellent and I now, hopefully, have a very snug and secure-feeling boot yet without the bruised toes !

I'm no expert, but I should imagine it's nigh-on impossible to be 100 percent sure, simply in a shop, even with the best boot-fitter in the world, that a boot will perform perfectly in action, so the follow-up is vitally important, not just the up-front service.

I'm also looking forward to my trip there, w/c 7th Jan.