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Today, you — our prestigious GEAR:30 listeners — provided the questions, and Jonathan Ellsworth and I are offering our answers.
Topics include our go-to backpacks for ski-touring; how a given brand’s size, location, and ethos factor into our own purchasing decisions; what skis to get if you’re spending a lot of time cruising slow-speed groomers; when and how to replace ski boot liners when they wear out; and we answer one of the most frequent questions we get: what were our favorite skis this season?
RELATED LINKS:
Skratch Labs: Fuel Up, Hydrate, & Recover
Get Yourself Covered: BLISTER+
TOPICS & TIMES:
Go-To Ski Touring Backpacks (7:32)
Supporting Indie Brands vs. Big Brands (21:07)
Ideal Skis for Slower Groomer Laps? (30:56)
Ski Boot Liner Longevity: When / How to Replace? (39:11)
ON3P Woodsman vs. Moment Countach (49:16)
Scarpa 4-Quattro Pro (53:48)
Quiver Overlap (101:54)
Our Favorite Skis This Season (1:09:58)
CHECK OUT OUR OTHER PODCASTS (click each to learn more):
Re Pat’s Woodsman 110 question…there was no mention of tune. Having owned several Woodsmen… If still on the stock ON3P tune, it might be worth trying having them reset to 1 degree base, 2 degree edge, with less detuning of tips and tails. I did this and gained a fair bit of stability.
Jonathan, What have you heard about Peak skis? Seems strange to me, are they a legit co .
“Legit” is not the first word that comes to mind. Stay tuned…
I am pretty sure the cryptic comments are about Peak Skis. They were a scam from Day 1! Look at Wirth and Miller’s track record. Start a company, raise money from investors, get themselves paid and leave everyone else in the lurch. This time those shitbags took money via crowd sourcing from ordinary people, even as the two of them are already multimillionaires. Greedy bastards.
I was wondering if they were ever going to get called out on it.
Jonathan and Luke, great show. It made the drive to Mammoth this weekend much easier. :>)
Jonathan you were absolutely slaying Resurrection that morning.
The Zip Fit liners discussion is a topic of interest to me as I have about 75 days in my current boots. I am also in a I “want” new boots for 2026 season. You speak of taking the liners to different shells. Are the Zip Fits altered as you moved shell to shell over time? or is the ski boot shell altered to the Zip Fit? I was not clear on that part.
Thanks,
Pete
Provided it’s a shell that generally makes sense for my feet (i.e., it’s not drastically too low volume or high volume), I usually just throw in my ZipFits and ski them for a few days. This typically moves the cork around to the appropriate spots in the new shell. But if I want to speed up the process, I’ll throw my ZipFits into a liner oven (or just put them on a boot dryer with the heat on for a few minutes) before skiing them in the new shells for the first time (the cork gets more malleable the warmer it is). Either process has worked for me in most cases, but if a new shell is notably roomier than the prior one, then I might consider adding more cork to the ZipFits to take up that volume. If the new shell is notably lower volume, then I might need to have a bootfitter grind / punch the shell to create more room.
If you know you want to run ZipFits in your new boots, the best practice would be to bring the ZipFits with you to the bootfitter when figuring out your new shells. But I’ve had good success getting the same ZipFits to work in most shells (all in the same “MV” class) without much more alteration other than skiing them for a few days.
Thanks Luke.
I agree with everything Luke says, but IME it also depends on how different the lasts of the boots in question are.
ZipFit liners have 3 interconnected “pounches” for OMfit material on each side: A fairly large one directly over and above the ankle bone, a skinny one that wraps down under the ankle and up along the achilles, and then a third forward of the other two and alongside/above the arch. You can see a side view of these about 2/3 of the way down https://www.zipfit.com/resources/adding-omfit-cork.
When you go from, say, a boot with a lower and wider ankle box to one that is higher and narrower (let’s call them brands T and L respectively) you might need to shift material between those pouches, and for that you will want to roll or knead the material through the openings between pouches while heated to 120-130F (never go above 140F with a zip).
It’s probably also worth noting that the Zip is not a very “cushioned” fit. The OMFit material is relatively incompressible (that’s why it doesn’t pack out and why you can get hundreds of days out of the liner). For someone like me who wants something as close as possible to the control of a don’t-call-it-a-plug-or-jonathan-will-be-mad boot but with less pain, that’s a good thing. For somebody who wants a cushier feel and isn’t into DIYing the living daylights out of their liner an Intuition or a modern heat-moldable stock liner might be better. My $0.92.
Good info Patrick…
I think I want the cushier feel. Plus if I get the option of changing stuff myself I will start messing with them when I shouldn’t and that won’t end up well for sure. Haha.
A question for the Blister crew: Have any of you worked with the ZipFit Corsa 92? That’s what Zip recommends for boots like Jonathan’s Redster CS. I’ve looked at one and it comes with basically no OMFit preloaded. It’s essentially an ultra-low-volume racing liner with the option of adding OMfit as and where needed. If I were going to cram myself in to a that CS or a plug I’d think really hard about it.
We haven’t used the latest version, so I can’t make any precise comments on it. All I can really offer is that a friend of mine who’s a bootfitter does use the current Corsa in a 96mm ‘rec race’ boot and he’s been a big fan.
For skiing “slowly” on groomers nothing beats a modern SL (165 cm Head WCR E-SL FIS in my case). It’s the most fun you can have at 25 mph or less, and I ski on them with the kids all the time. The harder the snow, the more they shine.
Admittedly they need a lot of input and will squirt out from under you and dump you on your a** if you get backseat. I can manage them in moguls, but they’re definitely not the easiest there or in crud.
I assume you’re talking about Peak, and my take is what they did with that 1.2 million cash grab “investment” Republic thing last year was the ultimate slimeball move. They knew they were lying about their future. They started shedding people immediately after. They closed their support as soon as they got the check. If I would have been taken in that I’d be talking to a lawyer and getting all the other donators together.
And now their website is down and the CMO who fronted the Republic scheme is working for Visit Truckee. Safe guess Wirth & Miller are not planning to return that money.