BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA — Picking ski boots usually involves going to the local big-box sports store, stepping into a few boots off the rack to find the ones that don’t hurt, and picking whichever boots look best with your skis.
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No More Pink Skis! Women’s Snow Gear Leaps AheadGreg Whitehouse wants you to know you’ve been doing it all wrong. The proprietor of the California Ski Company has been fitting ski boots for 10 years. He’s also invested in a new Fischer vacuum boot-fitting machine, a contraption that precisely measures your feet and vacuum-molds a pair of custom boots just for you. California Ski offers a comfort guarantee on the Fischer-fitted boots. Combined with Whitehouse’s reputation as a ski-gear guru, the shop attracts skiers from as far away as Australia to come in for a fitting.
We paid a visit to mine Whitehouse’s deep boot knowledge, and get a pair of Fischer Vacuum Boots fitted to one of our staff members — a procedure that’s hopefully worth both the physical and monetary expense he endured. (See the sidebar below.)
Wired: When shopping for boots, what should a skier be looking for?
Greg Whitehouse: Find a shop that knows how to sell boots. Look for a decent selection and/or a boot-fitter that’s excellent. You need to buy the right size, or it’s just not going to work. If you went to a place where you could just pull the boots off the shelf and try them on and pick your own boot, almost everybody would pick a boot that’s at least one size too long and probably at least one size too wide.
Wired: Is it because the correct boot size feels too tight?
Whitehouse: Exactly. Ski boots use a liner that’s designed to compress and mold to your foot. Imagine you have two shells. They have the same spongy liner inside with the same thickness, but one is bigger and one is smaller. The one that’s correct is going to feel too tight. The spongy material is going to compress, and when it compresses, the denser it gets. Think of a sponge — when it’s not compressed at all, it’s really spongy, and when it’s halfway pushed down, it’s pretty dense.
Cruel Shoes: The Fischer Vacuum-Fit Boots
While at the California Ski Company, Wired.com photo director Jim Merithew got custom-fitted for a pair of ski boots using the shop’s fancy $6,000 Fischer Vacuum Boot machine. The first part of the process involves 90 minutes of foot measuring and having a mold made. Next comes eight terrible minutes of foot-crushing hell. You put your feet inside your new ski boots, which have been pre-loaded with the appropriate liner material and pre-heated so that everything’s malleable. (If you require any sort of orthopedic inserts, they can add those, too.) Then, you step onto a machine that looks like a very large treadmill from the ’90s. It has two “tents,” each with its own protruding hose, that envelop the boots. Using a powerful vacuum, the machine sucks all the air out and compresses the material around your foot.
Before Jim buckled in, small pieces of foam were attached to his feet in areas where a skier needs room to wiggle: the toes and protruding bones like the ankle. He stepped into the boots, the machine was switched on, and Jim’s mood instantly turned sour. During the process, the skier is instructed to look forward. This keeps the skier’s feet from shifting around too much. But since the machine faces a wall, it also keeps your face partially hidden, lessening the chance your wincing and grunting discourages the other shop patrons from getting the procedure done. All the sucking and compressing is definitely painful. Every time I asked Jim how he felt, he had an angry look on his face. “I just wanted it to be over,” he said after the fact.
But after eight minutes of pain and allowing the blood to circulate back into his feet, the custom-molded boots (base cost of $850) were placed on Jim’s foot and he was happy to report that they did feel great. Now for the real test: What do they feel like on the mountain? We’ll be testing them next week as part of our Wired Winter Camp test package — check back soon for a full report.
So you start out with a boot that feels great. You put it on and you say, “Oh my God, this feels great!” Ski it tomorrow, and it feels great. But the day after tomorrow, it feels a little loose. And the day after that, it feels really loose. And when you start buckling the boot to bring it to your foot, they don’t shrink. A boot doesn’t shrink. It doesn’t even really wrap like a shoe. It really just compresses from the top down, so you have a situation where you have that liner and this boot feels comfortable. But the top of your foot has blood vessels and the arch underneath, and you’ll just keep tightening it down so your foot doesn’t move sideways. By the time you do that, you’ve shut down nerves and blood vessels.
Wired: So how long until the correct boot is broken in and “feels good?”
Whitehouse: Maybe you’ve gotta ski it five days, and that liner breaks in. Then it’s good to go and will hold that shape for a long time.
Wired: What about when you rent boots?
Whitehouse: You see it more and more in rentals — “What’s your shoe size?” They tell me 10, I’ll give them a 28 boot, which is a size too big, being conservative because they’re rentals. The customer will open it up, put their foot in, and without buckling it, they’ll say, “Oh, I need the next size up.” Then you have a choice to make, because there’s a line of people waiting. You could do the right thing and say, “Listen, I know it feels a little short. You want to buckle it up. When you stand in the boot with a buckle, your heel is nowhere near the back, so your toes are jammed in the front.” Depending on the day and the mood I’m in, I might just say, “Here’s a 30, try that.”
Wired: What about buying boots for kids?
Whitehouse: Parents have a tendency to buy their kid’s boots too big. Boots only come in one-centimeter increments, which is much more than a shoe size. And for a kid, if you bought a boot that was two sizes too big, maybe it’s an inch and a half too long. Relative to a kid’s foot, that’s a lot bigger deal than it would be on an adult foot. On more than one occasion, I’ve had a parent come in and I size the boot and I say, “This boot’s too big. You’ve put your child in a situation where they’re not going to be able to ski well, and it’s going to be frustrating. I think you should put these away until they fit better.”
Wired: What do you do when a person is determined to buy a boot that doesn’t fit?
Whitehouse: Some people will come in and say, “Any boot, as long as it’s powder blue.”
We had a guy come in for a boot fit. It takes a good hour and a half — we evaluate the foot, how the foot works. We explain the process as we go along. We finally get this guy nailed down to this boot. The guy says, “Yeah, but I want it in that color (purple).” And the fitter says, “Well it doesn’t come in that color.” And he says “But I want that color.”
I walk over and say, “Sir, if you want to buy that boot, I can name a few places where you can get it, but we offer a comfort guarantee.” I’m sure he’s out there in his purple boots and purple jacket. I hope he’s happy.
Wired: Doesn’t the industry cater to people wanting the best, even if they don’t need it?
Whitehouse: People watch videos and they see what the pros use, be it boots, skis or anything else. They see the videos, and they come in and they want this product. And you know it’s the wrong product from a technical standpoint. You go back and forth, finally telling them what you think, and your concerns, and you let them make their decision. People will buy the wrong ski, but it doesn’t matter because they love it. They just love it. I tell the staff, what we have to do is keep in mind that what the customer wants is “smiles per hour.” If they love it, they love it. I think the reason people come here is because they’ve tried that route, and they’re looking for something that will really work.
All photos: Ariel Zambelich/Wired 
