Better Late Than Never: The Fischer Vacuum Boot is the Sh**

Pearson Neal and Chris Smith are master Compressor Vacuum boot fitters.

Slow to the line with this one, but hey, boots are tricky to judge.  The process is shown below, but here's the bottom line: it's awesome and you should seriously consider this boot.

To answer the most common questions I got:  Yes it works, and yes you can re-mold them.

The Fischer "duck foot" stance has been an integral part of their lineup since Fischer first introduced alpine boots back in about 2002, when they coined it the "Soma Stance" or "Somatech," whatever "soma" means.  Any Latin students in the audience?  9 years later, they've dialed in a pretty nice race boot that's available to the public, and a really sweet looking race boot that's not available to the public.

That not-available boot does not have the duck stance, or at least it's a much lesser degree of duckiness.  The boot that you and I can get is toe-out about 3-degrees.*

This was my first experience on the duck boot, and when I was running in a straight line getting off the lift, I noticed it immediately.  In my first few turns, I was amazed at just how quick it felt to the new edge.  However, I initially felt that it lacked power in the apex.  Somehow I just couldn't get the grip I wanted to really crush the ski.  The snow was soft though, so I chalked it up to the conditions for the time being and gave the performance of the boot a "maybe."

I wear a size 13 Adidas, and I have a 28.5 Head B1 as my standard footwear.  Normally, in a 28.5, I punch and grind the left toe, and just grind the right toe.  When we did the Fischer vacuum fit, we padded my left toe with one foam pad, and we didn't pad my right toe at all.  In retrospect, we should have padded the left toe double, and put one pad on the right toe.  My left foot is about 1 size bigger than my right foot.  The first day I spent 5 hours straight wearing the boots (with brand new liners) and they felt amazing all over, except for a little discomfort on the big toes.  If you get this done, I recommend one foam pad on the toe/heel if you normally grind in that spot, and two if you grind a lot there (or punch and then grind, as I do).  Based on my experience, I really don't see anybody but Sasquatch needing to pad the ankle or the 6th toe, just pad for length because the boot doesn't stretch that well in that dimension.

The second day, I spent 6 hours in the boots, but the toe pain overcame me after a few hours and I switched into my broken-in Head liners.  That freed up a little too much room in the ankle, but it took some of the pressure of my toes so I went with it.

That second day of skiing was a much more fair test of the boot, and I liked it.  I still felt a slight lack of *umph* approaching and leaving the apex, at times the edge just felt a little looser in the snow than I was used to.  But, there's research that suggests that loose is fast, so I'll let you be the judge.  Duck stance aside, the fit was absolutely dead on and felt like a snuggly yet business-oriented teddy bear wrapped around my ankle.

In some ways, the most impressive part of the fit is how it sits against the top of your foot coming into the ankle joint.  It feels perfect and the contour is dead right.  Someday, you'll spring for a nice set of wheels on your mountain bike and you'll have this feeling like "Hmm, I never even knew I was missing that."  That's what this was like.  You don't know how lonely that part of your foot is until you wrap some toasty plastic around it and let it cure.

The boot fitting process was simple and expedient.  I bet you could do the whole deal in under 20 minutes if you know what you're looking for, and nobody even has to wear safety glasses.  There are some pictures of the process below, but here's the rundown:

Things I liked:

• Incredible fit even with brand new liners.  Just perfect.  Except I messed up with the toes.
• Quick and easy fitting process
• The boot felt like it was RIGHT there when switching edges
• I love the cuff buckles
• The feel on the top of the foot is weirdly amazing

Things I didn't like:

• A little weak feeling when trying to hammer the apex, but it's possible that I just don't ski that well (this was also a 130 flex boot, a fair bit softer than my normal setup)

Here are the pictures I took during the process, like a nerd.  Huge thanks to Pearson Neal and Chris Smith for getting me dialed in on these boots!

Some shots of the "vacuum" machine:

The boots go in the oven:

Then you put them on and the cold packs go on over them, followed by the inflatable air bags. The cold packs get refrigerated in the machine's built-in freezer and are basically just medical ice packs.  They cool the boot faster so you don't have to wear it for hours on end while it cures.

Then the inflatable air bags get hooked up to the machine by air hoses, and then they inflate.  Technically, the system should be called the Compressor (or more likely, the Kompressor, but Mercedes already has that locked up) instead of the Vacuum, but Fischer's been in love with the word "Vacuum" since at least the early '90 's, so we'll let it slide.

You wait 8 minutes while all these nifty screenshots go by.  You can increase or decrease the air pressure to change the conformity of the fit.

Voila.  A new par of shoes.  The plastic is allegedly neither polyethylene, nor polyurethane.  Rather, they call it "Vacu-Plast."  We find this kind of hard to believe, as every other ski boot is made of polyethylene or polyurethane (or leather, if you're skiing on rocks).  It felt like polyethylene, but really, who cares?  Notice how the boot on the left is a little more contoured than the one of the right?  It was more noticeable in person, my photography skills are lacking.

The cost of the Vacuum boots is the same as the cost of the regular boots, so there really isn't any reason to get the regular boots.  Make your life easier (and more comfortable) and get the Vacuum boots!


*Unless you are on a National Team, you can't have the straight boot.  Unless you buy them from someone who is on the National Team...


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