At the start of this season I bought some new boots. They're Salomon Maori.
Truth be told, I didn't quite need to replace my old boots, a pair from Ride. But four things convinced me to make the plunge and buy some new boots. One, the old ones were showing some wear, externally. That's inevitable, I suppose, but it struck me as a sign of things to come. After all, I had those boots for four seasons.
They were also rather stinky--literally. Athletic gear can get a certain odor about it, and my old boots qualified. And they stunk not just right after a snowboarding session, but the next day, and even some days afterward.
The old boots were also the lace variety, requiring exposing my bare fingers to the cold to tie them up. If I didn't tie them up, I would drag them through the parking lot, through the mud, and so forth. They also had an unfortunate tendency to come loose.
Finally, I thought it was time to have a fresh start with a whole new kit: snowboard, bindings, boots.
I spent quite a while talking with a shop manager about the board, and went with a Salomon Special. There was a certain logic, then, in choosing a Salomon boot. On their
web page for the boot, the company says "If we had to keep one single boot model to sell to all riders, it would be this one."
Upon the recommendation of the manager, and after walking around in various sizes for a while, I went a full size smaller in this boot than I had in my ride. It took a while to get used to, and was rather painful for the first day or two. In fact, the pressure so great that it caused some bruising on my big toes. So I don't recommend the one-size-smaller route!
The boot is a step up from the long, round floppy laces of my old Ride boots. There are two lacing systems, both of which use a line thin and some sort of hardware to keep them in place.
There is first a line for an inner layer, a sort of tongue that rests closest to your boot. The outer layer is secured by a separate line.
But after a not-too-frequent season of riding, some weaknesses have appeared. To start with, the heel cup is starting to flake away.
A shop employee blames my Flow bindings, and suggested that Salomon would do the same. I'm not sure what to make of that claim. The Ride boots never had that problem, and I was using Flows with them the whole time.
Then there's the matter of the clip. The excess line from the inside lacing system tucks nicely inside the boot. The excess line from the outside system has to go somewhere. To tighten this line, you pull on a rather thick handle. The handle works well enough, but it is too bulky to fit inside the boot. Instead, it has a clip that attaches to the top of the boot.
During my trip to Aspen, the clip on one of the boots broke off, leaving me a relatively large handle that, absent the clip, had to be put somewhere. I ended up tying it to my leg with a spare lanyard from a discount card. That's the bailing-wire-and-duct-tape approach to snowboarding gear.
Unfortunately, the shop did me wrong when I called about the problem. The person I spoke to said "Oh yes, we have those" when I explained the problem. But after I made the 30-minute drive, I found out that no, they don't have those handles with the clip; they need to be ordered from Salomon. So it's back to improvising for a while.
There's another problem with the boots: they feel much too lose around my leg, especially towards the top of the boots. The slop in that part of the boot may be suitable for freestyle tricks, but it is looser than it should be for riding at fast or even moderate speeds.
The search for the perfect not-yet-stinky boot continues.
Labels: snowboard boots
