Nordica Fire Arrow F1

Shell Fit

Initially when we visited Charley Bradley at the Boot Doctors in Taos, I didn’t have any work done to the shell of the boot—it felt snug and comfortable, with no obvious fit issues. However, I still noticed a few things about the general shape of the Fire Arrow mold that seem to reduce, rather strictly, the number of people that the boot will ultimately suit.

First, even with my medium instep, the boot’s middle buckle does impart a noticeable amount of pressure on the top of the midfoot (between navicular and cuboid bones). For the fist couple days skiing in the Fire Arrow, this was a little uncomfortable, but the issue soon went away as the liner seemed to mold and break in appropriately. While this wasn’t an issue for me, it might be for others.

The plastic of the F1’s lower shell, tongue, and buckle straps all overlap on top of the foot. This aspect of the boot’s 3-piece construction really limits the sort of boot work that can be done in this area to accommodate a foot with a fairly high instep. While it should be the case with any boot purchase, make sure to try the F1 on in a shop before deciding if it’s for you. If you do have a med/high or high instep, you might need to rule out the Fire Arrow. If my instep were any higher, I suspect the pressure from the F1’s middle buckle would cause a good amount of pain and discomfort, even if left very loose. On the other hand, if you have a particularly low instep, this might be a good reason to consider the boot, provided the performance characteristics (which I’ll outline in a moment) sound appealing.

I mentioned above that, initially, I thought I didn’t need any work done to the shell of the F1. I was pretty happy to find this because I’ve never owned a pair if boots that didn’t feel like they were crushing my 6th toe after 20 minutes of wearing them out of the box.

After a few more hours of wearing them around the house, it became clear that I did need to have the 6th toe area punched just a little. I did, and the fit then seemed dialed. This speaks to the Fire Arrow F1’s wider last, which, while it still needed some minor tweaking in my case, is certainly more accommodating to slightly wider feet or folks with a problematic 6th toe.

Liner Construction

Here, while talking about last width, I’ll mention that Nordica does supply two pairs of plastic shims that can be inserted in pockets on either side of the stock liner to allegedly reduce the last to 98mm. Because of my wider feet, I couldn’t try these, so I’m not able to speak to how well this works, but I’m a little skeptical, and we’d love to hear from those who have used the shims.

If you do fit into a narrower 98mm last boot well without any punching, I would worry about using this system in order to make the 100mm last of the F1 work. In general, I wouldn’t want to rely on some thin, semi-secure plastic shims (which could easily move around in the liner’s pocket over time) to maintain a good lateral fit through the forefoot. This seems to me like a bit of a waste in engineering to try and make the F1 fit a narrower foot. If you have a narrower foot, first look into a narrower boot rather than try to make this wider one work for you. Or, if you do have a narrower foot, and do think you’ll still want to try out the F1, just know you’ll likely need to rely on good bootfitting to take up some width in the forefoot before Nordica’s shim system.

The F1’s stock liner does have a pretty cushy feel to it—by no means does it feel as firm as the wraparound Intuition liner in my Konflicts, or Dalbello’s I.D. liner in the KR2. On the other hand, the softer liner has helped prevent any kind of shin pain/bang or discomfort along the lower leg after many days of hard riding. However, though it is still snug after almost 25 days of skiing, given how quickly Nordica’s liner adapted to the slight pressure on my instep, I’m thinking it may pack out quickly. This isn’t confirmed by any means, but a second, aftermarket liner purchase down the road is something you might want to keep in mind if you think you’re in the market for the F1.