Bootfitter's Notes: Intuition Liners (Video)
At Start Haus we get a significant amount of people every season coming in hoping to buy a new liner for their ski boot. There are many custom liners on the market and strong opinions for and against each of them, the most successful of which is the Intuition heat-moldable brand. In this short Boot Fitter’s Notes we’ll examine the Intuition liners a bit more closely.
The Intuition has been around for several decades and is the preferred liner for telemark, alpine touring boots, snowboard boots, and are used as an upgrade for many alpine ski boots. Intuition offers several versions of it’s liner from ski touring specific with a free moving flex-zone in the back for articulation, to tongued “Race” liners. At Start Haus we’ve tried many of the liners and find for our money the Alpine Power Wrap is the best of the bunch.
The Intuition Alpine Power Wrap is a wrap design liner made of their densest closed-cell Ultralon foam. This foam is quite dense and firm, and has almost no anatomical shape out of the package; therefore if you try it on before hand (which we don’t recommend) it won’t feel good. Once Properly molded to your feet and boot, the difference is staggering.
Molding an Intuition liner is an art in and of itself. A good boot fitter will pad the bony prominences of the foot to take up room and create long lasting relief and comfort. Whether the liner is an aftermarket product or lasted for the boot in conjunction with the manufacturer will determine whether the liner is cooked in a convection oven or on heat stacks, lastly the liner and boot are placed on the client’s foot and allowed to cool. We recommend watching our video on heat molding an intuition liner:
If your existing boot is already a very, very tight fit an Alpine Power Wrap may take up too much volume in the boot. However, Power Wrap’s should work just fine in a snug fit. So who should upgrade to an Intuition? We recommend Intuition liners to anyone who struggles with fit issues or even after a shell has been altered the boot still doesn’t feel quite right. I’m particularly enamored with the amount of relief they can offer someone with a painful instep. Intuition liners have no plastic or hard materials on top of the foot and can be heaven for someone who’s struggled with pain in that part of their boot for years.
A properly molded Intuition liner is truly a thing of beauty, the closed cell foam picks up every nuance of the foot and can increase comfort dramatically. If you are after absolute skiing performance there are after market liners that certainly ski much better than Intuition liners, but for some feet they can be brutal to break in and to make more comfortable.
If you’re looking for all day comfort, and want to see your boot fitter once a year only the Intuition liner could be exactly what you are looking for.