New Scott S1 130 Carbon Ski Touring Boot — Tested
Scott S1 130 Carbon showing how the tongue opens.
The boot crew at Scott must have opened their minds by reading French philosophy, I mean REALLY opened their minds, as they certainly went off the farm with this one. A “clamshell” boot that opens at the front and rear isn’t a new concept. (A modified “rear entry” cuff system, if you will.) But to the best of my knowledge this type of shell design in a dedicated ski touring boot has not been attempted for decades.
Front lean lock shifting to touring mode.
Rear, look ma, no leanlock! Super stiff forward, as to be expected with no rear lean lock a bit of give to the rear but not anything significant. In fact, I’d call the rear flex “progressive” as compared to the ultra rigid front flex. I know that sounds odd, but I didn’t notice it while skiing, only while carpet testing. In terms of flex I’d say these match up with other “130” boots I’ve fooled around with, perhaps slightly softer.
Carbon rigidity is important at the toe box, since the tongue is supported by the pivots in that area. Note that you can’t do a width punch in this co-molded area of the boot. All Scott boots have a fairly wide last (they’re based of the former Garmont lasts) so a width punch will probably be a rare need. They’ll also sell a non-carbon version of this boot, which will be easier to mod but I suspect might be noticeably softer.
The nicely made liner is the correct height in relation to shell, but didn’t fill up the cuff for my skinny legs without excessive buckling.
I had to really yard on the buckles to close up around my leg. In real life, I’d have to do some boot fitting mods to fill up the volume. Average to large boned folks won’t have this issue.
Upper buckle is combined with power strap, it all hooks to his downsized ladder. Overall buckle situation with this pre-production version is fiddly; I’m told that’ll be improved, but if you shop for these boots be sure to give them a thorough carpet test that includes real-life buckling. Making up for that, you’ll find that with the swing-out tongue and impressive cuff travel, entry and exit could be the easiest you’ve ever experienced.
What’s odd is that I still felt quite a bit of forward resistance in touring stride. In my opinion, if the tongue is supported with this “strut” front lean lock in downhill mode, why not hinge it more freely?
Front lean lock buckled and ready to ski.
Another view.
Scott S1 130 Carbon best feature? Fully removable and replaceable sole, user serviceable. The beauty of this is they could supply different sole options. Such as a super light for pure ski touring, a thick beefer for folks who chew their boots up on rocks, and even a “WTR” for those of you who eschew tech bindings for frame or alpine.
I’m not sure how much weight the sole option adds, clearly, not much. Thus, this could be something they could add to other Scott boots such as Cosmos.
So, the Scott designers clearly went off the farm. Question is, did they move to another farm, one where guys with white coats bring you meals and you have to pay to get out? Nope, I think they’ve got a viable concept here. Overall, Scott S1 130 is easily the most innovative ski touring boot I’ve seen in some time. That is, in public, anyhow (smile). The swap sole is killer. If they free up the tongue a bit so it hinges better in touring mode, the front lean-lock could be a smart solution to the eternal dilemma of “tongue boot touring stride resistance.”
Weight, one boot, 28-28.5 BSL 316, 52 ounces, 1478 grams.
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Comments
29 Responses to “New Scott S1 130 Carbon Ski Touring Boot — Tested”
how much range of motion is there?
I don’t like coming up with some kind of weird “degrees” metric for that, can say that rearward it’s about the same as any regular touring boot, and forward it’s pretty good though as mentioned I found some resistance forward I thought would have been gone due to the front lean-lock allowing the tongue to be totally locked or free to hinge. If it’s marketed as a “130” beef boot, it has really good ROM.
You can force the cuff to go quite far rearward, it has an adjustable limiting strap inside to prevent that, and to apparently give it a little more forward stiffness in downhill mode.
The best feature IMHO is the swap sole. They could put that on any boot they wanted to.
Lou
“tongue boot touring stride resistance” … Ever ski a La Sportiva Spitfire 2.0 ?
Tongue resistance virtually non existent.
With the countersunk top buckle ladder it doesn’t look like there are multiple holes to allow moving the ladder for large amounts of adj like most ski boots ?
Xer, the strap is adjustable, velcro. Lou
Rick, in my opinion it’s still there, but yeah Spitfire clearly has a very flexible hinge. I think Scott could make this one more flexible as well, if the choose they could make it as flexy as Spitfire. Best IMHO is to somehow get entirely rid of tongue resistance, either with a two piece or removing it entirely. But if they combined this front lean-lock with a really free hinge on the tongue that would be gold. Lou
Xer and all, I wasn’t impressed by the buckles but I’d heard they’re doing some improvements so I didn’t feel it was fair to dwell on it. We’ll of course check out the production ver this fall. Lou
While it has some novel features, a boot that provides more rearward flex than forward it completely unappealing. To me this seems more like an experimental concept than a product that has proven to be ready for prime time. I applaud the pursuit of innovation, but I’m not convinced this one is a winner.
How do they fit, compared to Cosmos? I have heard they fit tighter, but don’t know how much tighter.
Lou – you wrote:
“In fact, I’d call the rear flex “progressive” as compared to the ultra rigid front flex. I know that sounds odd, but I didn’t notice it while skiing, only while carpet testing. In terms of flex I’d say these match up with other “130” boots I’ve fooled around with, perhaps slightly softer.”
The last thing I want as a skier is flexing the boot directly into a brick wall. 110, 120, 130, 140, 190 flex…I don’t care what they call it…does it ski good?
We’ve gone so far past the point where sort of aggressive AT skiers flex forward through their boots, we don’t need this over-compensation in developing “brick wall” 130 AT boots that frankly are stiffer than they need to be and don’t ski all that well.
Wait were is the testing bit? By WS standards this seems a bit more of an early impression.
Still not sold on this concept. Doesn’t sounds like they make the uphill easier, definitely doesn’t sound like they make the downhill easier, doesn’t sound like they make transitions easier. Besides getting into and out of the them, where is the “pro’s” on the list of pros vs cons.
The easy of changing soles is kinda cool though.
Sure Cody, I toured them and skied… could be we’ll get these to someone else as well. They skied fine, I couldn’t identify anything other than what I mentioned in the post. Quite stiff in forward, seemed to give a little to the rear, didn’t tour as free as I expected, felt a bit softer than a 130… Liner is in my view a pretty much standard tongue liner. It’s a pre production boot. And yes the sole is really cool. Lou
Courtesy of Aspen Expeditions, I was able to try a pair of these for a run at Aspen Highlands two weeks ago. The fit wasn’t dialed in but they skied pretty well. I ascended via a chair lift so no take on their uphill proficiency. That said, buckling and unbuckling these books was, putting it kindly, a challenge and the power-strap top buckle thingy appeared to be rather flimsy and I doubted it could last deep into a season with our fraying or failure.
The Scott rep who was helping me was extremely patient and knowledgeable and did mention that a number of the finicky features would be changed or improved for final production.
I’m a big Scott fan, have had the Cosmos and Cosmos II, so I’m very excited to see what’s next from Scott because their boots ski good (sic)!
Pete, I’ve got some Cosmos 3 here that are quite nice, review coming in a week or two. External lean lock. Lou
Nice looking boots. For me, getting in and out of ski boots can often be a struggle involving pain and colorful language, so the clamshell design could be a godsend. You raised the issue of the liner not filing the upper shell for skinny legs and the need for mods to compensate. I am a skinny leg guy too, and probably not the only other one out here. I have had similar problems getting the cuffs of various ski boots to fit properly and have done some fitting with varying degrees of success. Can you offer any advice on how those of us with this physical challenge can best deal with the issue?
Lou, I’d love to come down to C’dale and check them out and maybe, just maybe, get an uphill and downhill on them some spring afternoon!
Pete, stay in touch. They’re there for folks to try, though I probably need to return them sooner than later due to them being pre-production and having some issues we don’t want out in the wild. Lou
@lou What kind of boot fitting mods do you do / recommend for reducing volume around the calf and ankle? For those of us with skinny bones.
ALW, it’s always a hassle. What I do is keep a bunch of old liners around, and I also ocasionally buy or beg a hunk of high density boot fitting foam. The easiest is to cut a tongue out of an old liner and glue it to the existing liner to make it super thick. There is a boot fitting item for this, I think it’s called a “duck bill” but in my experience the old liner tongues work much better. Beauty of doing it this way is you don’t end up changing the cuff lean angle, which happens if you put foam behind your calf on the liner, between liner and spoiler. But sometimes due to chicken leg syndrom you can end up with less cuff lean than you want, so a layer of foam back there can be good. I use Barge cement to do the gluing, and always test it first on a small area to make sure the solvents don’t disolve anything. Downside is once things are glued it’s difficult to heat mold, depending on the sensitivity of the glue to heat, different rates of expansion, and the foam possibly not holding up to the heat.
It’s important to use fairly high density materials for all this, otherwise you end up building a “pillow” that’ll collapse during agressive skiing. So you can’t just stuff any old foam in there.
Lou
ALW: we used to have a product in our bootfitting area called Eliminator Tongues made by Instaprint that helped to take up volume. We usually used them for folks in alpine boots who were getting shin bang due to skinny legs, not sure about durability in the touring context, but maybe worth a try. For awhile, they were hard to find, and we switched to using either thin or thick neoprene (3m or 6mil perhaps?). We would just cut out blanks from the neoprene sheet and glue on the front of the tongue, make sure not to extend it to far down to where it gets pinched at the tongue bend. The neoprene seemed to walk a decent line between padding and compressibility. Ditto what Lou said on the Barge cement; apply it thin-to-win on both items, and hit it for a second with some heat before pressing together. You can take a razor blade and trim it back on the edges, bevel etc, if you find you’re getting a pinch somewhere.
http://www.tognar.com/the-eliminator-custom-tongue-shims/
Would a heat moldable shell like Atomic or Fischer (maybe better because of vacuum process) be a good solution for skinny legs?
Thanks for the feedback. Just so happens I have thin closed cell foam, old liners, and plenty of neoprene at my disposal. Let the contact cementing begin!!
Thanks for feedback from me too. See, I have Atomic Backland boots and still have this issue. I think the heat molding is good for pushing out pressure points but maybe not so good at reducing excess volume in the cuff. I will work on those mods.
the stuff I got from the local ski shop the owner called Spenco and it came in 12×12″ x 1/4 thick sheets with a peel & stick backing, i used it to build up the tongue on a liner
I read that the heat moldable shells are good for blowing out but they don’t shrink around your ankle ?
Once again, I’ve never actually seen them, but I believe the Fischers actually use a vacuum bag over the boots when molding.
See, I’ve done a couple of fittings with the Vacuum system, my recollection is it doesn’t have much effect on the diameter of the cuff, but there might be a bit of change. Would be interesting to check out with that specific goal in mind. Lou
“Quite stiff in forward, seemed to give a little to the rear”
I’ve been in a boot before that “gave a little to the rear” and it downright sucked when skiing aggressively (which is what a 130 flex boot is for, right?). I guess we’ll see, but color me skeptical.
Lindahl, the rear “give” is quite minimal. But it’s there. I’ll have to get someone else in them for an opinion. Thanks for chiming in. Lou
Pete, let me know if you want to get the S1 up on the ski hill before the lifts close. Stop by and grab them. Lou