I skied in Mammoth from the 90s onward, and had many pairs of boots fit at Footloose, which was Sven's old shop. and my main bootfitter was directly mentored by him. Somehow I never tried ZipFits until this year. I was always too obsessed with plugs and/or injected liners. Not switching earlier was a big mistake on my part. I recently upgraded both my Raptor 140s and my XT3 140s with ZipFits, and I love the combination of firmness (and therefore power transfer), fit adaptability, and bomber heel lock. I particularly appreciate how it was possible to fill the Lange's tall ankle-box over foot by working cork into the forward channel of each side-pocket. While I still think that injected liners were good for racing, I should have tried Zips as soon as I was done with that. I think part of the reason I never tried ZipFits was because I didn't love SuperFeet cork footbeds (also invented by Sven Coomer), but I now realize that the mechanical requirements of a footbed versus liner fill are completely different, and ZipFit's cork goop works very well indeed as the latter. I'm guessing that the "pro athlete who's helping them at the summit" with 800-day liners was Giray from Daymaker?
As a ski tourer I'd be concerned about moisture being able to escape thru the cork composite, given you normally associate cork with stopping moisture escaping, as in a wine cork. Do you have any experience with this?
