I'm usually one who goes for the cheap solution, leveraging ebay, trying to get the best deal on whatever gear somebody else tried out and didn't like. Most of the time I am able to cut my cost of gear in half by doing that, but when it comes to boots that work in winter, I am starting to back off from that approach.
I just dropped $550 (and that was $200 off regular price) on my new winter mountaineering boots. Took me a year to make that decision, and it was after trying out everything "cheap" I came across first.
First I had some brand new Koflach Arctis Expe:
I grabbed them on ebay for a super nice price, but they were soooo big that I needed to get the size 12+ extension bar for my Petzl crampons, even though I just had a size 11 boot. Weight was close to my 1980s all leather mountain boots. I tried them for a few minutes in the snow last April and put them back in the truck before spending the rest of two spring weeks in the west wearing La Sportiva Trango Prime boots (also an ebay find, and I am keeping those).
The
Trango Prime is basically an insulated version of the mild-weather Trango Evo GTX I have used in the Sierra for years, with a stiffer sole for step-in crampons, but still leather without a removable liner and very soft in the ankle. For my use the support they offer is alright, but I got wet feet in them the first time out on Telescope Peak. There's a liner in them, but it's probably not Gore-Tex or even close to that in terms of water proofness.
With Doug's advice and a liberal application of SnoSeal to all the seams around the bottom, I got them to work on Whitney. Conditions were warm and wet one day, cold and crisp the next, and it was all good. No water got in, but I was worried about that the whole time. For anything longer than a 2 day trip in the white stuff, I really needed a different boot. If on a budget, look for used Trango Primes on ebay - I got mine for $180 with only one Rainier summit on them, so I can't complain. They are perfect for spring conditons.
Looking at the options available for more extreme conditons and my plan to ski the John Muir Trail in a year or two, I was wondering how well a light touring ski boot would work for trips without ski. If I ws to spend big bucks on a touring boot anyway, why not pick one that can be used for other activities as well? I found the answer just recently here in this two part blog post:
http://coldthistle.blogspot.com/2011/06/tlt-5-dynafit-series-part-i-of-2.htmlhttp://coldthistle.blogspot.com/2011/06/part-2.htmlSince my first pair of touring ski boots was a pair of $50 ebay Scarpa F1 beaters that need more maintenance time than I spend skiing with them, I was already looking at these boots, as they are by far the "best walking" touring boots available. They were so popular last season, that you could not get any discount on them anywhere, so I let it go and patched my Scarpas one more time (that $200 Intuition liner I bought better fit in the TLT5's as well!)
Snow is back (artificially made around here, but hey, it is slippery). Just a few trips to the ski hill showed me that it was time to get some new boots now. I went back online to study what was available this winter and saw the TLT 5 was still the boot to beat, and this year they were being discounted in some places.
So here's the game changer boot - my new platic winter mountaineering boot, about 20 ounces lighter than a pair of La Sportiva Spantik, and it can ski, too:
I will ski them for the next months at the resort here, and then take them out west in April for some ski touring, as well as some peaks where I will leave the ski behind or just do the approach on ski (e.g. skin up to Iceberg Lake).
