I’ve a problem with my feet in my Scarpa TX Pro boots in that when the Intuition liners supplied with the boots pack out as they inevitably do, my feet can slide about in them from left to right and I don’t have full control. It’s just the way the boot liners work and it happens to everyone and not just to my boots but if you have skinny ass feet like mine it can be a problem. The foam just naturally breaks down as it is affected by the heat and dampness in your boot throughout the ski day.

I’ve tried various custom foam liners and even had them fitted by the founder and owner of one of the manufacturers, but I’ve found them not to be the solution that I was looking for. In one of the brands the tongue was too stiff and crunched my foot when I’m flexed into a tele turn. All the liners had the same problem with the foam liners packing out, just like the Intuition liners, though if you can take your liners out the boot overnight then the foam in the liner sorts itself out. Unfortunately, during fitting, the foam packing out the inner expands to fill the space round your foot in a very snug fit, so this makes it difficult to take the custom liner in and out as it is such a good fit in the boot shell and round your foot. Over the summer the liners seem to rest and recover for the start of the season, so everything is hunky dory again. Pulling the liners out at the end of the ski day and taking them up to your room every evening to dry can be a real pain. The Intuition liners are much easier in this respect as they slip in and out quite easily. I also found the custom foam liners cold, but this can easily be rectified by fitting a battery powered heated insole and running with a background warmth all day. Don’t run them at full blast as you will run down the battery very quickly and will also overheat your feet in a short space of time. This will leave them sweaty and prone to chills as your boot cools in the cold.

I use electric boot dryers, and they work up to a point. Putting your boots on the heated boot dryers in the hotel boot room helps too but the only solution is to pull the Intuition liners and dry them properly overnight. They do slide into the boots more easily than a custom foam liner, but it is a chore at the beginning and end of the day. I also take a selection of boot fitting spares with me on a trip too; 3 Volume Reducers in 2mm, 3mm, and 5mm thickness and a set of each with the toes cut off too. These allow me to firm up the fit as the liners pack out. I also take some Y-Pieces and C Shape pads to help hold down the heel and around the ankle if needed. The volume reducers are available from almost all bootfitters and from the Sidas Store online.

Is there a solution?

Well, this year I am biting the bullet and trying out some £365 Zipfit Liners. These are probably the most expensive liner option on the market, but they seemingly last a very long time, longer than the life of 2 or 3 pairs of ski boot, plastic shells. Now that is a long time. They come in various options depending on how much spare volume, or room, inside your ski boots you want to fill up. I’ve gone for the Gara LV or Low Volume after trying them out in my boots. They flex well in the forefoot as they are made of neoprene and lined with merino wool for warmth. Intuition Liners weigh in at 546g per pair and the Zipfit Gara LV at 1298g so there is a significant increase in the weight, but these are going in my piste boots rather than a super svelte lightweight touring boot. The other Zipfit options are Gara HV, Freeride, Corsa, GFT and Workhorse which can be found on the Zipfit website. The Zipfit GFT is the one for your super svelte touring boots.

So how are they different?

With a leather lining and neoprene on the toe and exterior, they seem very robust. The way they are constructed is very different with a secret mix of paraffin wax and cork round your foot and especially round the ankle to hold it down. They are warmed and then moulded to your feet on an initial fitting, then slowly, over the course of a few ski days fine tune themselves to the fit of your feet. The heat generated by your feet warms and then moulds the wax and cork. The beauty of this fitting is that you can try them out in your boots without going for the full foam liner injection or moulding of an Intuition Liner, because if they just don’t work out for you the shop just has to heat and mould them to another customer. Obviously, you can’t take them away and ski with them, but it will give you the opportunity to see if they are likely to work for you or not. Best discuss this with your boot fitter before you jump in. A big thanks to the team at Ellis Brigham in Aviemore for their help with fitting my liners.

Zipfit recommend that you put them on and lace them up then put them into your ski boots and take them off the same way after skiing. This works well with most alpine ski boots, but my Scarpa TX Pro (old style) Telemark boots have a tight cuff round the boot front, and it is extremely difficult to put the liners on first then slide them into the shell, as in almost impossible. I’ve put the liners in the shell and then slide my foot in, just like I have always done as I can’t see me sticking to the “correct” way to do it. This may not be perfect, but I hope it works for me. I’ve already removed the power strap from the liners as there is no spare room under the boots’ own power strap. The drawcords may be the next thing to go as they are a pest as they are too long for me and are just another faff to securing your boots. My first tele boots had laces on the liners but they soon were pulled out. The manufacturers all stripped them out of their product line over the next few years too. I haven’t skied with a laced up inner boot for years.

Zipfit Liners have pockets around the ankle which are filled with cork along with a pocket in the tongue and you can add more cork into one or the other or even both as required to help improve both foot and ankle retention once the liner is well bedded in. This could be especially welcome for me as you can see from the photo, there is a bit more room for extra cork for me to help increase the midfoot retention and stop my foot sliding around inside the boot. At £365 they are not a cheap option, but it looks like you can really fine tune them to sort out you own feet. 

In my review of the new Scarpa TX Pro I wrote the following about the old boot: – 

“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.”

If you’ve read the other blog, you’ll realise we are still skiing that old model. The Zipfit Liners should help with all of these; extra hold down in the heel, a bit more room in the toe box and we’ve replaced the cross-foot strap with a ratchet strap from the new boot as an aftermarket modification. 3 out of 4 ain’t bad and we often forget to put the boots in ski mode and end up skiing in walk mode anyway!

So how did it work out in practice?

I took my boots and Zipfit liners out to a course with Nicko Brackston from TeleTracks in ValD’Isere and put them through their paces. The first thing I found out was that I definitely need to take the liners out of the boots at night. They can be a bit damp and sweaty and leaving them on the boot dryer does not give them enough throughput of air to dry out overnight. Day 2 my feet were cold and damp but after I started to take the liners out at night, they dried out hanging on the radiator overnight!

For fitting each morning, I started off by trying out the method where I put the Zipfit liner into the shell first and then put my foot in to the lined boot. That was a real struggle. So, I did end up following the recommended method of putting the liner on my foot first and then smashing it into the shell. Both methods seem particularly tricky with a Telemark boot, but on balance, the recommended Zipfit method seems to be the way forward. I think that I could get away with a size down from a 28.5 to a 27.5 and would hope that it would make this a bit easier.

Ski wise they were very good holding my foot down at the heel and in the mid-foot. There was a bit of slop round my forefoot but this will need an application of more cork to hold it down, possibly 2 full tubes of cork. Not something I could do whilst on the average ski day. The liners seem to settle quickly and on day two I added a 2mm volume reducer and again on day three swopped this for a 3mm volume reducer. I do think the Zipfit Liners are a valuable addition but they do take a lot of fiddling to finally sort them to your feet. Once you have got through the process they will give years of service but it will take a few visits to your local boot fitter to fettle them. In the meantime you will learn a lot about both your feet and Zipfit Liners!

Zipfit Liners are readily available in the UK, though stockists tend to be the ski stores specialising in boot-fitting, so you need to check out your local ski boot fitter. 

From North to South they can be found at: – 

Ski Racing Supplies, Sheffield, Lockwood’s Ski and Outdoor, Leamington, Solutions4Feet in Bicester, Ski Bartlett in Uxbridge, ProFeet in Fulham, Captain’s Cabin, Sevenoaks, Snowtogs, Southampton, Ellis Brigham in 8 of their stores.

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