From Mike Doyle,
Your Guide to Skiing.
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More and more experienced skiers are looking for a little something extra to ratchet up the challenge and enjoyment of skiing and are turning to the variations offered by learning telemark and alpine touring (AT or randonee) techniques. Both telemark and AT skiing have corresponding gear and boots that are unique to each discipline and which differ from gear used in traditional downhill skiing.

Suffice to say that telemark and AT boots are lighter, more flexible and can have liners that differ in design and purpose from alpine downhill boots. However, and here comes my mantra again, both telemark and AT boots are just as accommodating to custom footbeds as downhill boots. I firmly believe that all skiers from recreational to professional cannot pay too much attention to their boots and how their boots affect their skiing. My answer to questions concerning how to ski better always includes the suggestion to look into footbeds and to have stance and alignment evaluated by a professional bootfitter.

If you don’t get fitted for footbeds when you purchase telemark or AT boots I recommend that you take your boots to a shop that sells, custom fits, installs footbeds, and will later correct and tweak them to your comfort and satisfaction.

I recently purchased an alpine touring setup – skis, AT bindings and Scarpa Matrix boots. In a personal effort to reiterate to myself the importance of custom footbeds I hiked and skied a day in the new boots without footbeds. I then brought the boots to Northern Ski Works in Killington, VT to have footbeds installed by technicians trained at Masterfit University. Masterfit University is a training program sponsored by Masterfit Enterprises and any shop that carries Masterfit Enterprises Instaprint Custom Footbeds will have bootfitter graduates of Masterfit U.

At Northern Ski Works I was fortunate to work with bootfitting specialist, Hal Karabots. Hal has been in the bootfitting business for over 20 years and not only holds all degrees offered by Masterfit U, but also has completed the Pedorthic Management of the Foot program at Ball State University.

Hal has fit thousands of downhill ski boots with Instaprint Custom Footbeds and when I asked him if – with the very comfortable thermofitted Scarpa liners – would I really need the balancing benefits that are derived from custom footbeds in AT boots? Hal removed the liner and showed me that, inside the Scarpa bootshell, there was no zeppa or boot board on the bottom because of the inherent design of the boot when used in a walking mode. In fact, the benefit of the footbed is enhanced in this situation.

I was comforted to know that my new boots and old feet were in the hands of a long time pro bootfitter as Hal walked, and talked me through the process of casting, posting, grinding and tweaking a pair of Masterfit Instaprint Footbeds. Believe me my next day out hiking, skinning, and sking was made a lot more comfortable with the Instaprint Custom Footbeds. Proof was I was still skinning up and sun was starting down!