La Sportiva Spectre

Liners

I’m sure I’ll eventually find a stock touring boot liner that I end up using for a season, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The Spectre liner looks to be well made with a nice heel pocket, thermomoldable foam, and an articulating section in the back to allow for better motion when skinning. It just didn’t work for my foot (see below).

Walk Mode

I loathe ski / walk mechanisms that allow for noticeable fore / aft slop when I’m skiing, and I think the Dynafit Ultra-Lock is the most elegant solution to date (as of May, 2014) for a simple, effective ski/walk system.

But during my limited experience with the Spectre, I haven’t noticed any play while skiing and, so far, it’s reliable and easy to change between modes.

Cuff range of motion is not very important to me, but it can be useful while walking and for traversing long, flat sections. The Spectre has an advertised 60 degrees—the same as the TLT6 and the Vulcan, and almost twice that of the Scarpa Maestrale RS. With one foot in a Vulcan or TLT5 and the other in a Spectre, with the same liner in both, all three seem about equal.

Fit / Sizing

As always, a good shell fit will vary immensely between skiers and, if possible, it’s always best to be shell fit by an experienced  boot fitter.

That said, there are a few aspects of the Spectre’s fit that should be highlighted. The most notable is the instep height.

I’ve often struggled with my relatively high instep, but I’ve usually found replacing a liner, moving a buckle, or changing my insole to be adequate remedies.

This was not the case with the Spectre, which seems to have an exceptionally low instep. Even after heat molding the stock liner and remolding a pair of Intuition Powerwrap Plug liners, I wasn’t comfortable across the instep. I’d used a heat gun to work on Pebax boots in the past, so I gently tried heating the Grilamid to see if I could take some of the pressure off my instep. It didn’t take much heat to bend the lower shell to accommodate my instep, and I was surprised how little memory the Grilamid had once reshaped.

[Update 5.11.15 – La Sportiva has increased the instep volume of the Spectre, so they have continued to sell the original version of the Spectre that we’ve reviewed here as a “Low Volume” version, next to a new higher instep volume Spectre that they’ve produced. Sportiva does not plan to continue to make a new “LV” versions of the Spectre going forward. When the original boots are gone, all Spectres will have the newer, higher-volume instep.]

After working about thirty minutes on each boot with the heat gun, I felt pretty good about being able to spend a day touring in these boots. Since the stock liner was still too bulky over the instep, I molded a new pair of Intuition Powerwrap Plugs and ended up with a comfortable, snug fit.

I typically wear a 27.5 in most touring boots and I went that same route with the Spectre. Lengthwise, my shell-fit is about 8mm for my 278mm and 280mm feet. The Powerwrap plug is a low-volume liner and works well with the right shell fit. The toe box feels very good—it’s lower volume than the 27.5 Vulcan, and comparable to a 27.5 TLT5.

I found the entire shell of the Spectre to be lower volume than the Maestrale—it feels snugger and more precise for my foot. The heel pocket is similar to the Vulcan—it’s not particularly contoured, but I found it to be adequate.

I was worried about staying warm in these boots given the tight shell fit and seemingly thin Grilamid shells, but after two days in sub-zero temperatures, I didn’t feel like they were any colder than most other boots I’ve used.

Performance

• Going Up

The weight of the Spectre sits halfway between the TLT5/6 Performance and the Vulcan. On two short tours, it was tough to appreciate the difference, but the boots were comfortable and the cuff articulation was more than adequate for my style of skinning, even with the Powerwrap liner. I skin with all buckles open and appreciate how they lie flat and secure against the shell.

The lower shell buckles stay high and out of the way for boot packing and clambering around on rocks, a noticeably better design than the lower buckle of the TLT series, which is much more exposed and routinely gets popped open and abraded by rocks.

As with the Dynafit TLT and Vulcan/Mercury series, I appreciate the relatively short BSL for both skinning and walking/climbing.

• Going Down

I know this is one of the most important parts of a boot review, but I don’t have enough time in the Spectre to adequately describe its downhill performance (but see the next page of this review for my Update).

On the three runs I made on my last day of skiing this boot, I skied shin-to-knee deep, cold, dry pow on big, open slopes that were about 35-40-degrees steep. It’s hard not to have a great time in this kind of terrain, especially with a big, rockered pow ski like the 138… All I’m willing to say for now is that the Spectre worked well for me.

A few times on the runout where the snow was a bit wind affected, I found myself getting thrown forward over my tips, but the Spectre provided ample support. I need to do some back-to-back comparison between the Spectre and the Vulcan and the TLT Performance, and I’m not prepared to make a real comparison at this time except to say that the Spectre is not as stiff fore/aft as the Vulcan when I’m using the same liner (Powerwrap plug) in each boot. I suspect that the lower volume shell on the Spectre gives it a little extra performance relative to it’s flex compared to the Vulcan or Maestrale RS. I can’t comment on lateral stiffness yet since I’ve only skied deep, soft snow with the Spectre.

The last thing I’ll say about the skiing performance is that the powerstrap on the Spectre is far superior in strength, length, and flex to the ones that come stock on the Vulcan and TLT.

Price

I have seen the Spectre online for under $500, which makes it markedly less expensive than comparable boots. Even the Spectre’s standard retail price of $599 is $100 less than the Maestrale RS which is heavier, has less adjustability, and a higher volume fit (albeit a much more manageable instep height). Compared to the Dynafit competition ($1000 for Vulcan and TLT6 Performance and $800 for the Mercury), buying a pair of Spectre’s could leave a lot of money in your wallet for that hut trip you were planning.

Bottom Line (For Now)

The La Sportiva Spectre appears to be a well designed and innovative new offering. If it skis comparably to other high-end Grilamid touring boots, it could end up being the best deal on the market for a quality AT boot.

NEXT: see our Update on the Sportiva Spectre