Janine was all smiles as she approached with skis and poles clutched in the crook of her arm, a black bucket helmet and the coolest white ski suit this side of Florida. She was ready, except she wasn’t. Looking at her rental boots, with her generous calves desperately trying to climb out of the cuffs, I felt her pain. There was no way her lesson would be successful, and yet someone at the rental shop ushered her out the door telling her the boots just needed to warm up.
The plastic was so stretched out that together we couldn’t latch the buckles. “I’m in so much pain, I can’t even think straight,” she said as I escorted her back to the gondola for a date with Mr. Rental Shop Supervisor and a lesson refund.
Janine’s story, unfortunately, is a common one. As a beginner, you’re not ready to invest thousands of dollars on new, properly fitting equipment if you’re unsure whether you will even like the sport. However, how can you like the sport if you are uncomfortable from the get-go? In addition, how do you know that it can feel any other way? Even as a professional ski instructor with 30 years of teaching under my Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) pin, I have found myself lying on the side of Chips Run at Snowbird, waiting for the arch pain to subside, all because I thought suffering was part of the ski game. And it was, until brothers Russ and Bob Shay said it shouldn’t be.
Russ and Bob grew up skiing in Stratton, Vermont, and after those long, cold winter days on the hill, Bob would hobble to the lodge in agony while Russ, a competitive racer, pushed through the pain — the alternative was a bigger, sloppy boot that could cost him the podium. Unwilling to accept the situation, they asked every shop in town for help but there was no solution to those mass-produced, generic hunks of plastic and padding. They were either too loose, too tight or just downright torture due to the angles of the shell and the thin padding.
At 18, the brothers moved to Park City, and from inside their family’s garage, they began grinding, cutting, padding and pounding ski boots into submission. By 1982, their first Surefoot location opened its doors to lead customers to a better boot. Before Surefoot, the only option was to find the least bad boot model and hope your toenails didn’t turn black from the pressure.
Since then, Surefoot has grown into the world’s largest custom ski boot retailer, with 29 locations across North America and Europe, fitting nearly one million pairs of feet not just into ski boots but custom orthotics for running, golf, hiking and more. “We’re still a family-owned business with my dad and my uncle involved with every location,” says Sierra Shay, Bob’s daughter and chief marketing officer. “Many of our managers have been with us for over 20 years so even though we’ve grown, we still have this great network of knowledge and 40 years of experience. We are always improving our products and continue being a trusted brand.”
Deciding If Custom Boots Are Worth It
Any level of skier can walk in, step up on the Surefoot digitizer, learn exactly what brand of boot would fit best based on the skier’s ability, build and terrain of choice, and then feel the magic unfold. In just over an hour, trained boot fitters will take a 3D scan that maps 538 points in your foot to create a topographic map of the sole, which will then be used to drive a CAD/CAM milling machine to craft custom ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA) orthotics. These ensure a neutral stance to maximize energy transfer to the skis. The process ends with gel-like memory foam injected into custom liners that solidifies in minutes and hugs the foot, ankle and calf. Your boots should automatically fit better, perform better and warm your toes better. Plus, no break-in time is needed. If you do have issues with pinch points and hot spots, Surefoot’s lifetime fit guarantee offers free adjustments at any location.
However, a luxurious fit comes with a price tag that many might eschew. Even if you found a pair of “prescribed” boots on eBay for $200, you’ll still pay close to $1,000 for fitting fees and the custom orthotics and liners and perhaps $2,000 if you need individual canting, alignment and parts.
“If you are just getting into skiing for the first time you may not want to go full custom but just getting a custom orthotic and maybe a custom liner [that you can put into your rental boot] is going to be much, much better than an off-the-shelf boot. But really, it’s buy right or buy twice,” says Sierra.
Not only can a bad boot be painful, but it can be dangerous. Generic boots, designed for a mythical “average” foot, cause pain, cramping or sloppy control, especially for skiers with wide, narrow or high-arched feet. Custom boots align the foot in a neutral position, correcting pronation or supination and maximizing energy transfer for better turns with less fatigue. You may not even realize that your crappy, standard boot is the reason for your stress on the hill.
Boot-fitting scene
Back at Snowbird, I asked a shop guy if he could work on my boots, pointing out where I felt the most pain. Ironically, he recommended I go to Park City as “no one does it like the boys up there.” It makes sense that a place that draws thousands of skier visits, houses the Olympic Ski & Snowboard Team and provides the training ground for international snow sports athletes would be the boot-fitting epicenter of Utah.
While Surefoot’s Resort Center location at Park City Mountain Resort remains iconic, boutique fitters like Bootworks, Cole Sport, Park City Boot Room, Park City Ski Boot and The Ski Shoe also offer incredible customer service and nuanced adjustments tailored to unique foot shapes.
“I’m hands-on, so I pay attention to detail,” says Brian Potempa, owner of The Ski Shoe. The business also partners with Biomoto USA, a company that collects and analyzes body motion data to build custom “sensormotoric” insoles for ski boots and athletic and walking shoes. As a competitive mogul skier and Wasatch Freestyle Team coach for 20 years, Potempa leveraged his skiing expertise to inform his boot-fitting expertise. “We make sure your foot does what it’s supposed to do. Most stores will offer their version of boot fitting but then they say, ‘if it hurts, come back.’ With me, I eliminate the pain right off the bat, so you have a better experience on your first run,” he says.
But what if you have no express pain? And how do you find someone you can trust? “Your boot may be comfortable but you’re not skiing as well as you could if you don’t have the right support,” emphasizes Cole Sport’s Scott “Dude” Dudevoir, who has been fitting feet for 33 years.
Cole Sport puts their boot fitters through a rigorous one-week training program, and the first thing they learn is to size the shell. “If any fitter isn’t doing that, it’s an immediate red flag, but after that it’s a matter of experience,” he says. “To find a good boot fitter, there’s plenty of reviews online these days. Or you can go with the old adage — go to three different bars and if you hear the same name more than once, that’s a pretty good place to go.”
Only you can weigh the costs and benefits of premium boot fitting, but just as no two feet are the same — not even yours — there’s no such thing as a universal fit. For expert skiers, a proper fit means you will have precision and control without losing a second of your day lying down to relieve pain. For beginners, it means longer, happier days on the slopes learning rather than suffering or wasting time arguing with the rental shop manager. In Park City, where artisans like the Shay brothers, Potempa and Dudevoir craft boots to elevate every turn, the perfect ride might be worth every dime.
