Whether you base your research on personal experience and/or a compendium of (self-anointed) experts' opinions, the chances of you landing on the best possible choice are only slightly better than your chances of winning a World Cup event.
Lest this sound like the hyperbolic ravings of a curmudgeon who's off his meds, permit me to remind you that I examine hundreds of feet every season. I see mankind's follies firsthand. The recreational skier who can correctly predict the perfect combination of components to optimize his or her ski experience is an oddity in every sense of the term. Not even all the pros get it right.
Despite our line of argument, we aren't proponents of apathy or inaction. By all means invest some time in understanding your foot and what it requires to be supported at this stage in its decline. And allocate as much time to finding the best bootfitter as you would to selecting a cardiac surgeon.
Before moving on to other matters that matter, let's pause to highlight just why it is that boots are so essential. Distilled to its biomechanical essence, skiing is a sport of ankle range of motion (ROM). Somewhere between 12 and 22 degrees of ankle dorsiflexion is considered optimal for skiing. The proper boot helps define the most effective ROM - aka, a balanced stance - as it transfers the skier's energy to the ski and snow.
The inexperienced bootfitter is so concerned with achieving instant comfort and averting instant rejection that he often ignores the business of correctly containing and retaining the rear-foot. If the foot and ankle aren't being held securely, all hope of high performance skiing is lost before the first snowflake falls.
You Need a Friend
Since, as we just elucidated, you don't know what boots you're getting, it's hypercritical you patronize a shop with the personnel capable of matching you - not just your foot, but all of you - to your best boot. Finding a talented bootfitter not only matters, it perhaps matters more than anything else we'll discuss in this series.
Regardless of what boots you end up with, someone has to assist you with the initial fit process. The skills a veteran bootfitter brings to the fitting bench will have more bearing on your future comfort, confidence and control than any other factor you can name. Our advice is to make this a conscious, non-accidental, choice.
Every boot commentary on realskiers is linked to two other resources.* One is the on-snow evaluation of the boot test team assembled by America's Best Bootfitters. The other is a list of specialty shops that carry models in that particular brand family. The person you're looking for lies at the end of one of those links.
Coming next week - skis.
* Please note: links to dealers and on-snow reviews will be activated later this fall.