Sometimes trends can be, well, more than a little mystifying.
Take this year in ski boots. There’s a lot of buzz about overlap construction in alpine-touring boots. Backcountry magazine’s gear guide, for instance, last month talked about how this year “overlap shell design challenged the long tradition of hinged-tongue boots.”
And that is true - several new boots brought something to the realm that we haven’t seen before, and there was a lot of talk about what that means for boot performance.
It should be noted, however, that they mean backcountry ski boots (obviously, the name of the mag is Backcountry, after all), because over at Freeskier, they just came out with a story this month about how Full Tilt “brings back the three-piece boot,” meaning - yes - alpine-skiing boots designed with a tongue.
Freeskier’s piece touts the benefits of using tongue construction - somewhat of an anomoly in alpine boots - and talks all about the positives that a three-piece ski boot design offers (namely, that the tongue allows a very sweet progressive flex) and that there are “literally thousands” of alpine skiers out there clamoring for this design to be brought back to market (Full Tilt revives a design by Raichle that had a strong following in the 80).
Skiing phenom Seth Morrison says in the article “pretty much without this boot, I couldn’t do what I’m doing … I could go skiing, but I couldn’t go jumping around like I do now.”
Overlap construction - typical in racing and performance-level alpine boots - essentially means having two pieces of material that overlap on the lower shell that surrounds the foot, so that when the buckles are tightened, the two pieces cinch down. The upper cuff also overlaps. A tongue-style boot has a cut-out area on the lower shell, which is covered by a tongue that extends to the top of the boot, and is encircled by a upper cuff that wraps to varying degrees around the tongue. Overlap construction has been around since plastic ski boots were first constructed. It was the first ski boot design. Tongue-style construction was pioneered in the late 70s and 80s when people touring on ski boots wanted a system that would be more versatile for skinning and climbing.
So, in the backcountry world, overlap boots are ‘new and different’, and in the alpine world, boots with tongues are ‘new and different.’
So which is better? Well, our two cents is that any design has its advantages and its disadvantages, and that’s the case here.
What’s good about overlap? Well, it’s good for taking up volume in the lower shell, because the overlap is really good at compressing down the more the buckles are tightened. That’s where the rep for performance fit comes from. It also costs less, because you’re molding two pieces, not three (which makes it all the more mystifying why alpine boots often cost just as much or more than touring boots). Some also claim you can make a boot stiffer using this design, but most tongue boots come with softer tongues to facilitate touring, so on that point, things are a lot less clear. However, there’s no doubt overlap design appeals to the performance-driven skier with an alpine background who’s more familiar with that style of boot.
What’s good about a design with a tongue? First, if you have a tongue, it’s easy to customize the boot by the manufacturer making and the skier swapping out tongues that are different stiffnesses. That means it’s easy to dial in one pair of boots with the right stiffness for a day at the resort (with a stiff, rigid tongue) versus a day in the backcountry (using a softer, hinged tongue). Generally, you get a better range of motion for touring with a tongue design (because the cuff is able to extend back beyond vertical for full range of motion). And designs that use tongues are way easier to get into and out of (for mountaineering situations, really cold morning starts, or simply ease of use). And then, there’s the nebulous realm of flex (not stiffness, but flex), and many say a tongue design offers a smoother, more unified flex through the range of motion, instead feeling like you power the boot until it suddenly hits a point and stops.
And to further blur things, boots like the T1/T-Race/T2X family from SCARPA are both overlap and tongue boots.
But in the end, there are differences in designs, and the point here is probably that something different that what you’re used to feels, uh, different. And that can be good or bad depending on where you’re coming from.
So we’ll see where this all ends up. Frankly, I think everyone’s missing the real story - the soon-to-be-unveiled return of rear-entry boots. It just makes so much sense after the comeback of one-piece suits.
