Well, we’ve finally been able to try out the new boot from Scarpa, the TX Pro, on the snow. With a quick stop at Ski Bartlett in Uxbridge to have the liners of the boots form fitted to our feet, we then headed out to Italy for some on-snow testing. 

First Impressions

They are a nice colour, black and red in the men’s and black and blue in the ladies.

They look to be higher than the old style TX Pro but they are about the same height.

Weight wise the new boots are weighing in at 3,358g for the men’s against the old boots at 3,852g. That’s a difference of 494g, about a pound in old money. The ladies boots weigh in at 2,754g v’s 3,050g, a difference of 296g. These figures are from weighing our own boots with our footbeds and stock liners fitted.

The new boot is quite different in the overall design, with one less buckle and a redesigned Powerstrap too. The Powerstrap is elasticated which is novel to me. I’m not sure how well that will work in practice.

Improvements

The change into walk mode has been much improved, it is easy to see, feel and hear that it has engaged. Though I am not sure of the longevity of the Scarpa dongle! It’s like a zip pull made of string with a small plastic end. Once in walk mode it is much improved with a huge range of motion from front to back. I really like the comfort that provides. 

The mid foot strap has gone back to the older style ratchet strap which is a really good move as the previous model was just difficult to catch and then do up. The old style required quite a lot of fiddling around to make sure it had engaged whereas this new ratchet is straightforward and easy to adjust. 

The liner is all new too, being thinner than the old style with some of the foam designed to crumple as the liner squashes into the boot. Again, I am not sure about the longevity of the liners as there is just less of them so they will wear out faster than the previous Intuition liners. After just two days, Suzanne was already finding that the lining was collapsing slightly at the rear of the ankle. 

Internally there is a bit more room in the boot overall: not the length but definitely in the toe box, top to bottom depth. It feels like a really comfortable boot when you put it on. 

On the snow impressions

I clicked into the Meidjo bindings on my Scott Slight 93’s with relative ease, about the same as the old boot.

Flexing the boot there is a big improvement in the heel hold down internally. One of the problems we’ve often had with the older version of the TX Pro is heel-lift inside the boot and I have needed to add a Y-shape piece of foam on the outside of the liner to cinch it in again to hold my heel. That does not appear to be a problem with the new boots which are nice and snug fitting at the back, for now at least. 

I expected the boots to be stiff because they were new as it takes a bit of use to soften the bellows but wow! These are really stiff, both in the flex, which should soften, in the boot and the cuff which probably will not. These boots seem brutal and will not allow you any mistakes in your technique. There is no hiding place, the stiffness in the boot along with the really stiff cuff forces you into a very upright stance. My stance was pretty high before and I’m not sure this is going to be good for my somewhat dodgy skills. Suzanne found the same on day one and could not get the boot to flex forward, she likened it to the old Crispi boot with a harsh cuff that she did not enjoy skiing. 

Day 2 and the flex in the forefoot is better and better again on day 3 but they are still really stiff and the cuff flex is no better, still really stiff. The liners have not suddenly packed out but there is a lot more room in the boot and my foot is slopping about inside the boot which does not improve my control. It is also very cold here in Courmayeur as the skies are clear and it is sunny, nice but cold. My feet are feeling it. As the liners are thinner, then I should expect them to be colder as well as they do not have the same thickness of foam to retain the heat. It’s no different from your down jacket, a thicker down jacket is warmer as it traps more warm air than a thinner down jacket. I think that I might need some sort of custom liner with a boot warmer for these boots to work for me.

The boot seems to have lost the sweet flex that the old TX Pro had in both incarnations. It is now so stiff to ski that I seem to only be able to “fakiemark” and whilst I struggle to put pressure on the back foot with the ski chattering about underneath me, the front just slops about chattering away too. I went back to my old TX Pros for a day, effectively my first day on skis this winter, my skiing is not perfect but it works with pressure applied as desired to drive and control the skis. I can still telemark so it’s not me it’s you! 

So, on balance, although there are some improvements in those areas that needed attention, the overly stiff cuff and lack of flex in the boot is a real drawback. It is a totally different boot and really is not the TX Pro that I was expecting. 

Conclusions

Scarpa really seem to have dropped the ball on this redesign. It’s as if Scarpa have decided to make a really good ski touring boots that you can telemark in. The starting point being their own great range of ski touring boots, then put a flex in the toe of the boot. It seems they have cured problems that the old boot did not have. The TX Pro needed improving there is no doubt but not a complete redesign. All they needed was a tighter heel hold down, which the new boot has, a better strap across the instep, which the new boot has and more volume top to bottom in the toe box, which the new boot has, along with a better change into walk mode, which the new boot has. The rest of the changes seem to be from listening to their sponsored athletes and not the casual telemark skier who want a nice soft flex like their current boot. It’s almost as if in redesigning the TX Pro they have ended up with the TX Comp Extreme instead and that was surely not in the design brief!

It seems that the boot will begin to loosen up after 25 – 30 days of use. Well that might work if you live in Colorado but for your average UK skier that’s about 2 or 3 years ski trips. That’s just not acceptable. If Scarpa had given any idea that this boot was such a departure from the old boot then I would not have bought them even though my old TX Pros are worn out. It would have been much better to have given it a new name so that we were not expecting it to be a replacement for the TX Pro. They must have known that it is radically different from the old one so why not give it a new name? To expect people to invest over £550 in a vastly different boot, £1,100 in our case for two pairs of boots, is really taking advantage of being the only big player in a small marketplace!

I read on the internet that Scarpa were going to design the boot to only work with the tech toe bindings, read Inwild Meidjo and 22 Designs Lynx, and eliminate all users of Rottefella and Bishop bindings. Is the telemark market so large that you can drop a large swathe of the marketplace? Telemarkers are not always the biggest spenders in the ski world. We have already had to bite the bullet of buying new bindings when we buy new boots, moving over from 75mm to NTN, and probably new skis as well. You can read my thoughts on skiing the Meidjo elsewhere on here but whilst it skis really well and is top notch on the skin track it is a faff to get into sometimes. It would be easier if I removed the brakes but then I would need to add a leash and where would be the advantage of the step in? Thank goodness that we can still chose which bindings we use rather than having our choices reduced to only two options.

Scarpa Customer Relations

I contacted Scarpa as “I was not feeling the love in these new boots” they asked for a couple of videos to show what I was experiencing in the new boot verses the old TX Pro. Here’s their response: –

“Thank you for sending the videos. We have reviewed them and noticed that the stance distance of the supporting foot differs between the old TX Pro and the new version. We believe this affects the flex load of the boot.
 
From our discussions with athletes and users, we have found that the new boot has a different flex pattern compared to the old version. Initially, the new boot may feel stiffer, but with use, it becomes progressively easier and more comfortable to use.
 
We appreciate your detailed feedback and are committed to improving our products based on your insights.“

All I can hope is that they do improve it by making it more like the old TX Pro again.

“Is Telemark Dead”

The old adage that you should never be a first adopter in telemark rings true once again! We keep asking “Is Telemark Dead?” Well it will be if this is the future of telemark skiing where your average telemarker cannot buy boots to replace his TX Pros, which ski the same and offer an easy and smooth way to find that telemark sweet spot. I really don’t see a newbie trying telemark for the first time enjoying his day in a pair of the new Scarpa TX Pro. Equipment should enhance and improve the experience; not be another hurdle to overcome in the execution of an already difficult sport!

As we have struggled to finds the love in these new TX Pro boots, we bought a pair of the old model TX Pro and a pair of Ladies TX Pro boots. I think these were the last size 28 and second last pair of 24.5 boots in the UK!

We took these out on a recent trip to Serre Chevalier and skied them from day one. They settled down quickly and we were able to break them in on the first morning. These new boots skied just like our old boots which they should have done as they were the identical model. Half a day to break these new boots in, unlike the reported 25 to 30 days in the new model.

Quite a difference, this is something that Scarpa will really need to sort out in the new model. The new Scarpa TX Comp, in a black and white colour scheme, launches this coming winter, 2025-26, and it is a whole lot stiffer again than the new TX Pro. We have been looking at the new TX Pro as a new boot, but the reality is that it should be an update, a replacement for the previous model. It should be similar but a bit better with the flaws and wrinkles sorted out in the updated model which is not too bad as it stands.

There seems there is no mention of a smoother, softer flexing TX Pro model yet. I have read that Scarpa plan to offer a replacement for the T4 Nordic Touring boot in some form as their next telemark product launch. We will have to wait at least 2 years before Scarpa replace the “old” TX Pro boot.

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