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For my first four years of my backcountry touring experience I had been touring in some old Scarpa Gea boots, and ya know, they did their job. I liked them enough when I had them, but there were a couple of things that I wanted to fix with the next boot I got. The first was the width - I have annoying feet that are pretty wide for how long they are. The second was the weight. I wanted to try skiing a two buckle boot that was lighter. The Hoji Pro Tour was the boot that I wanted to make work, but as it turns out, my calves wouldn't allow the boot to go into ski mode, because they were a little too big. Dang my powerful legs. The Pro Tour has a boot width of 103.5mm which is a great width for me, but with the TLT8's being only .5mm narrower, I figured they'd be just fine as well.
When I first skied them, I was in love. Mostly with the uphill performance, but I happily skied a couple steep couloirs without doing work to them, and I skied them just fine. I had just a few things I needed to tweak to make the downhill performance great. The things that I ended up needing to figure out for better performance was this:
Filling in a bit of the heel space so that my heels weren't moving around, and so that I was "hanging on my calf" a bit less
Moving out a small bit of material above my right arch
Addressing a bit of empty space above my toes (width was good, and arch volume was mostly good, but I had a bit of space here)
BIG big thank you to Jim Mates from Custom Boot Service for helping me problem solve here. Some people can buy a boot and have it work well for them off the bat, but my feet do not fall into that category, as do a majority of other people I know. Jim is the Yoda of boot fitting here in Seattle, and worth every penny.
To address these issues, I did the following:
For the heel space, I put heel shims (I needed a few mm worth) in between my shell and inner liners. Once I felt like I had continuous contact from my forefoot to my heel, it gave me so much more balance and stability. Rad.
Moving material from my (apparently) high arch took two steps for me. First I tried heating up my inner liner, and molding it to my foot. After a couple tours with that and a giant lump still forming on the top of my foot, I brought my boot to Jim, and had him heat up the shell and pull it out just a bit. As I am writing this, I still have the bump, but I am hoping my foot will heal and the boots will fit snug!
Addressing the empty space still is yet to be done for me, but I plan on getting a bit of foam and attaching it to either the inside of my shell, or the inside of my liner. That is yet to be done, and I'll update y'all once I do it.
All in all, for a two buckle boot, I love how these perform. I expected performance to go down from my stiff, 4-buckle Geas, but honestly it didn't go down as much as I thought it would. I was skiing trips like my Basin Lake Couloir ski, Sheep Lake, and G-String no problem, and the uphill on those tours felt GREAT. As far as durability goes, I haven't had any hesitations - yet. I have only had them for a month or so, but I am hoping that I can get a good couple seasons out of them. I'll keep y'all updated.
Pros:
Fits my wide feet GREAT I love it.
Uphill travel is a dream. Lightweight, and if I strap the powerstrap to the inner liner on the uphill, the tongue doesn't slide down.
Downhill performance is great for a two buckle boot. I feel like I have great control.
Having the speed-nose makes the uphill more efficient - ya? Maybe... It is hard to tell.
Cons:
If you have narrow feet, you may easily blister unless you fill in the space
I wish the liners had laces, just so that the tongue doesn't slide down. Using the powerstrap on the inner liner works okay as a replacement for this, however.
Retroactive add: I've had these for a full season now and dang - I wore through those liners like no tomorrow. Granted I did ski 40+ days on them, but they didn't last as long as I wanted.
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