I am sure these boots provide comfort but I must say I find them damn ugly. They’d look better on some stormtroopers in a Star Wars movie than me. And somehow the design strangely reminds me of the rear-entry skiboots. Anyhow, the user can easily switch between skiing and walking modes by pulling the lever up or down. Naturally, easing pain in the feet helps many skiers by allowing them to spend more time in slopes, but will these boots really work? The final verdict is not out yet since there are no reliable test reports available.

Almost every major manufacturer is offering an AT boot these days. So, this shouldn’t be big news. However, Dalbello boots have a certain cult following as do Full Tilt boots too – they’re kind of the descendants of the legendary Raichle Flexons that still have fanatics fans all over the world. And many of the big name freeriders/freestylers all over the world swear by the original flexon system, as you can read on my last winter post Dalbello Krypton Il Moro Ski Boot Review.

Basically ski boot reviews are pretty useless – it is all about the last and fit anyway. Flexons/Kryptons/Full Tilts are a bit different though. At least I believe that the basic design of these boot have something very special on them. I was a strict Lange guys (those just fit my feet) for years but after trying Il Moros for even couple of days, I was immediately a believer of the Flexon design (in freeskiing, gates might be a totally different thing) So, if some of those three brand’s boot  fit, it is at least wort a try. Still, some skiers love this desing, some don’t consider it any better than “normal” ski boot design/engineering.

Well, at least the legendary Glen Plake is on Dalbellos. And one of the posters in TGR forum already speculated that Plake tours quite a lot these days, and Dalbello wants the mohawk man (=their most visible skier) on their boots and not a competitor’s pair. Sounds quite wise to me!

The final version is said to be Dynafit compatible, which probably is a delight to all the hard core touring guys/girls. The weight shouldn’t be too much either, around 1600 gr. Time will tell if this boot is cabable of driving big skis and take “freeride” type skiing approach… or is it more up-hill and long tours oriented? In best case the Krypton/Flexon desing can offer the best of both worlds?

Here are some more pictures (picture source: www.skiforum.it)

First off, I’m a newbie telemarker. Secondly, I don’t smoke alot of weed. And finally, I wonder if that statement was about powder riding with teles? Because in the groomed slope it seems like it is even more essential than on alpines to use your hips, stay square to the fall line and even use the old school counter-rotation to keeps those edges carving (= just what your old race coach might have teached!).

Well, I still wait to get that first real tele experince on powder snow though. I’ll try to remember that advice then… it surely sounds fun, heh.

Ok, what I’ve been doing lately is trying to learn tele turns.It has been quite fun and addictive! And I think I’m advanced quite alot in a few weeks. And lots of it does to do with gear, after all (IMHO). I still point out that I am novice at this tele thing, so take these note as such…

You can find the essential info of the reviewer from our latest gear review article. The conditions have been variable but basically all spring type snow: from perfect corn snow to (refrozen) hard groomers with ice chunks here and there.

Boots – Scarpa T-1 Thermo

A boot review is kind of an oxymoron. Buy a boot that fits and if nothing fits, take the one that causes the least pain and walk to a nearest specialized bootfitter.

Ok, I still want to say a few words about (tele) boots. In telemark the boot choice is maybe a bit more crucial because the type of the boot you choose affects quite alot to your skiing: take a low cuff (xc-oriented) leather touring boots and try to match it to your new fat skis. Or try to ski a long flat approach wearing a pair of high downhill oriented plastic boots…

See what I mean? Of course there is the school of purists that requires everyone taking a pair of tooth -pick skinny long touring skis, a pair of leather boots and nordic bindings. Stating that otherwise you wouldn’t learn “proper” or “right” tele technique.

I might be wrong but I call BS on that kind of thinking. Choosing your gear for its intended purpose is another thing but if you want to get downhill performance: choose burly, downhill oriented gear. (do’h – sounds pretty wise, does it…)

So, I tried some Garmonts and the heel lifted, way too wide heel area. Scarpas were right from the beginning and felt pretty stiff and powerfull too. And, dang, what happened to my skiing – I found that inside ski, that magic “little toe” and the mystic tele turns didn’t felt that mystic to me anymore.

Is that cheating? Maybe but I have 95mm waisted skis too and sturdiest cable bindings you can find…it was pretty stupid to try to match that with sloppy boots. (My former boots were also Scarpas. T-race’s from like 6-7 years back. I got the boots free from a friend. No wonder because thinking it now, the front “hinge”/bellows of the boots were so soft that I could have skied in leather boots as well…)

So that’s it about the boots. They are burly, stiff, maybe a tad heavy for tours. And, yes, alpine turns are no hassle with them. I think I could ski the new Scarpa T1′s and R8′s everywhere, I’d just use alpine turns on sketchy places…I have no shame to admit that. In my opinion there isn’t actually anything wrong with alpine turns on teles. I think you should just use whatever technique works and feels the best for the given conditions and purpose. I like the term “freeheel skiing” – it is just skiing with a bit different gear, right?

Bindings – Rottefella Cobra R8

Well, I haven’t tried alot of tele bindings. And the ones I’ve tried earlier have been old school cable bindings (e.g. Riva Z’s).

NTN (New Telemark Norm) might change the world of tele-bindings but until it has been tested and proved a few year, I guess you can’t go wrong with these.

Rottefella R8 is said to be on the “active” side (see some explanation here) but not the most active on the market. I like that because at the moment I like to keep my tele stance fairly upright, not letting that rear ski too far back (and loosing all the pressure from the edge). I might be on the edge of “fake-a-marking” it (again, see explanation from this thread) but I don’t care as long as the turn carves and feels good. I have been adviced that strong alpine skiers tend to like fairly active tele bindings and at the moment I agree on that. Let’s see how it evaluates…they send that the squat will get deeper as you find the joys of “real” t-turn. Well, we’ll see.

Also, I feel that adjusting the lenght of the cable affect significantly on the active-neutral scale. Let the cable looser and you get more neutral feel and vice versa. Pretty simple, eh. (But I might be talking out of my ass here, as a total newbie. Please correct if I’m wrong?)

Skis – K2 Hippy Stinx, 179cm

Check out the first image above for K2 Hippy Stinx skis. Nice match of colors…???

This is the older version (04/05) with measurements of 125-95-118mm. Since then they have given a few mm’s more to it and made it a tad straighter and stiffer. The Seth’s pro model’s have gone pretty much the same way, I guess.

I was kind of stupid to sell my old K2 Seth Pistols (they were 189cm though) and buy these at almost the same price. The ski looks and feels quite same. With teles, however, I must admit that I feel better with 179cm’s though. And K2′s 179cm is almost as long as 190cm Völkl Gotama (I guess they’re both essentially around 185cm). So, there’s plenty of ski and flotation, even in 179cm version. I also think that the reinforcements in the tele inserts area stiffens up the ski a little – giving it a bit more girth in the middle. At the moment that works pretty well. Soft tip, stiffer middle and pretty soft tail – a round flex perfect for t-turns. At least these skis are pretty easy to ski, and can still hold a decent carve, even on hard pack. On a really icy stuff with uneven (icy) chunks I was in trouble though. But this is probably due my less than ideal technique more than any other factor.

Ok, that was a few thoughts on tele gear. I am eager to go ski in Finnish Lapland next week and find out if I can fins some softer snow under my Hippy Stinx (Still, I plan to take Alpine skis with me too).

Reports and hopefully some more gear reviews coming, I’ll try to get to test at least a couple of pairs of new skis…

Krypton Il Moro is a different ski boot though. If this fits you, it is also something totally different. In this review I will tell you why.

How did I discover Dalbello Kryption Il Moro?

I did buy this ski boot pretty much out of an impulse. I’ve heard much about the legendary Raichle Flexon boots and been tempted over the years to try one – these are the current reincarnation of the Flexon design. Dalbello is also said to make some refinements to the boot, without loosing the original idea. There is also a small company/label called Fulltilt who still makes (almost) the exact original Flexon boot.

Anyway, I believed that my feet were made for Langes, after several years of being quite happy with them. Then I tried the Il Moro, and they felt pretty good from the start. I decided to give it a try – after all could Seth Morrison, Glen Plake, Janne Lahtela, etc. be wrong? It seemed that there was some kind of cult believing in this design (see e.g. TGR forums, search for “Flexon” or “Krypton”…)

Is the race boot originated design the best for freeskiing? That’s maybe something the original designers of the Flexons thought. I was also coming into this question as I’ve spent quite alot of time in the last years hitting the kickers in our tiny little area. My Lange FR 120′s were doing the job but something felt missing. Especially the stiff and very forward leaning flex started to bother me slightly.

Making the first turn with Il Moro

Enter Il Moro. First impression: damn these boot are light! They shouldn’t feel THIS comfortable. Toe area is maybe just a tad tight for my “duck feet” (very thin ankle/heel area, but somehow wider toe area). Start skiing: hmmmmm, seems like I can’t pressure the front of the boot AT ALL. Very weird sensation… Ok, this is the very soft flex option, I can always change the “tongue” to stiffer “race” version (available with every pair). Still, I remember some review saying that you should change the technique from “ankle skier” to “knee/hip skier” with these. Let’s try that: forget pressuring the front, concentrate on getting angles from the hip and/or knees. Well, this works pretty fine, still feels odd though.

Conclusion from the few groomed runs: I’d still try the stiffer “tongues” for “real” skiing. The soft progressive flex is still something you must get used to. I’ve read many review where this is said to hold even for the stiffer “tongues”, meaning that skiing with these you should modify your technique a bit. At least it occured to me that I like to drive the ski from pressuring the boot, maybe even too much for modern skis and technique? This is yet to be seen.

Ok, I thought maybe the park/jump performance is something that really makes difference with these. Into the jumps we get… OH BOY. What can I say? I’d almost say it felt like doing a different sport, a step towards to snowboard like comfort and hit absorbing I’ve never experinced before. I also had new, “poppier”, stiffer and slightly longer skis. The combination of these boots and better skis just made me feel like flying. I don’t know if it is the slighly more upright stance, the progressive flex of the Flexon/Krypton system, shock absorbing inner sole, snowboard like buckles, intuition liners, the unique heel fit or the combination of all these but I just have to say jumping with these things just felt so much more natural, it made me smile and almost laugh the whole two hour session. The kids at the park must have wondered that weird old dude pulling simple moves but having stupid perma-grin on his face…

Also, one super cool feature of the Flexon/Krypton design is that it lets you to adjust the ankle buckle so loose that it is very comfortable in the lift/lift line. Yet, you don’t have to tighten it on the top of the hill – add some pressure and get into the skiing position and the system/buckle kind of tightens automatically, especially really locking the heel into it’s preferred position. The heel just doesn’t lift, even with the quite loose buckles. This is something very functional in the small hill and/or park environment, forget the hassle with the buckles, just adjust them on the comfy position and keep shredding.

So I was getting maybe even too comfortable with these: on the so called “last hit of the day” I was trying to do 360 mute when something went wrong on the take-off… I started to rotate too early and too strongly, edge catched slightly, causing me to case a little and over rotate a bit. On a short but over rotated landing I managed to slighly tweak a knee (nothing serious luckily). Once at home I also noticed that the piece controlling forward lean on the back of the boot was broken. No big deal but this leads to my few only complaint of the boot.

Every single piece made to modify the ride is an additional attachment/single piece to add to the shell. Canting, forward lean, forward flex. All right, they’re pretty simple but I’m a firm believer that every additional moving part is a breakable part (and I proved that again here!). This means I have to buy spare parts, lots of them actually. And I don’t like the idea of that at all.

I might try the most upright position and loose the forward lean piece completely – seems like I liked the quite upright stance for park skiing (the middle position gave approximately 13 degree forward lean, while the most upright is around 11 degrees). Also, I felt like I don’t need the forward flex piece at all. That piece is made for restricting the “travel” in forward flex. Without the piece you get most forward flex (in travel), and then you can reduce this with additional pieces of plastic. But I probably won’t need these either, I felt like the strength of this boot is the unique “progressive” forward flex that gives you more “travel” into the flex. The only way I can describe this is to compare with the bottomless squish of the big travel full-suspension DH/FR mountain bikes. No wonder Seth likes Flexons…if you think his habit to fly “just a bit” off different obstacles…and land those airs too!

Al in all the overlook of the boot is a bit “plastic” and I think I will buy some spare buckles too. Other than that the snowboard like upper buckle and the original Flexon type ankle buckle are just superior to any traditional buckle. Did I already said that – superior.

Summarising Dalbello Krypton Il Moro ski boot review

To summarize: one day at the local park made me a believer. I’ve yet to try these in any bigger environment, and I think I take my trusty old Langes to the upcoming Austria trip (4 days still!). But even with that little experience I can say that at least in park/freestyle these just work and are the comfiest ski boots I’ve ever worn (and trust me I’ve worn quite alot of different shells and designs!)

Stay tuned: the review of my new park skis, Salomon Teneighty C.R Labs is coming tomorrow (yes, the ski is a couple of years old but still very NICE). Also, I will post from Flachau, Austria, next week. Hopefully I’ll get the first real powder of the season there…