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Occasionally we get a skier who is completely turned around on how best to find a great fitting pair of ski boots.

Often this person has skied a boot too big, through no malicious means - perhaps they were in a hurry, or there was a great sale, or the salesperson was relatively new to bootfitting, or didn’t have the time to invest in selecting the proper shell and inform you how it is supposed to fit.

Start Haus staffers are amped up for winter, and getting ready with new gear. Below are their picks for skis, boots and bindings this winter - no particular category, just for fun:

James, bootfitter & buyer:
Dynastar Cham 117
Marker Jester
Head Raptor 130
"The Raptor is ultra responsive - it's stiff yet snappy with top-notch snow feel. The Cham 117 is a versatile powder ski that's great in blower, wind buff and heavy snow - it crushes it. And the Jester is a beefy binding that's also light weight - the strength to weight ratio is off the charts."

Jason, bootfitter:
Armada Invictus
Look Pivot 14
K2 Pinnacle 130 LV
"The Pinnacle is just a versatile boot that skis really well and fits my foot perfectly. The Invictus is a strong ski that's light and quick, great for a bigger guy like me. The pivots have great retention and transfer of energy."

Krystal, bootfitter & sales:
Rossignol Savory 7
Rossignol Axial 3
Nordica Dobermann 100
"I really like the air tip and tail in the Savory 7, it's

A question we get a lot at the Start Haus, both in-store and online, is "What's the best way to find new ski boots?"

There are a lot of ways to go about it, including the “shotgun” method of just trying on everything in sight. We don’t like that approach, however, because there are generally 3 to 4 boots - at the most - that will provide the best fit. Trying on 10 is often counterproductive to finding the best one. Finding out what those few “ideal” boots are is our job.

Some skis are all business - a precise and demanding tool for pushing the limits of the skier at top speed. Other skis, like the K2 Shreditor 102 and the women's K2 Remedy 102 - are built for fun. Those days you can't go mach 3 or get the best untracked lines, these 102 skis make the whole mountain your playground. They're perfect for popping off wind lips, snaking through the trees in search of left-over powder stashes and hitting a few features in the park.

Philpug walks us through their features in this video:

Testers loved the playful nature of the ski - the tip and tail rocker let it smear and pivot in tight trees, gullies and bumps, while the camber and construction made it poppy, perfect for lofting off natural or man-made features. The width was just right for some of our lighter skiers to call it a powder ski - while bigger skiers still had fun in soft snow stashes off-piste.

On the groomers, the Shreditor and Remedy had descent grip on all but the iciest slopes. K2's seem to hit

The K2 Pinnacle saw great success last year and has become a top-notch boot for all-mountain backcountry skiers.

Ski boot manufacturing is actually not new to K2; they had a line of boots in the 70’s, that saw mediocre success, and nearly a decade ago K2 launched the Full Tilt brand using the old Raichle Flexon boot molds. Through this manufacturing process K2 set up relationships with the Italian boot manufacturers, buckle providers, plastic sources, and liner manufacturers, setting up K2 to branch into boots and the market was primed.

K2 spent a significant amount of R&D setting the boots up right, 3-D printing and CAD software allowed engineers to have working samples in a day, test the product, make some tweaks, and have new designs. Much of what they were doing wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago.

K2 did their homework, and I’m pleased to say we’re ecstatic with the product. If you’re looking for one boot to work for you at the ski area and touring it’s hard to beat the K2

Don’t you just hate it when you walk into a ski shop or browse your favorite ski forum and you get a bunch of men telling you what you should or shouldn’t be skiing on? How would they even know? While some of the best all mountain skis in the men’s category range from 90-100mm underfoot, the bulk of women’s skis sit in this 80-90mm range.

It’s important to remember that picking a ski really depends on the skier, the type of terrain they typically ski, and the personal preferences of that skier. While the trend to go wider has made an impact on the ski industry as a whole, the need to talk about the narrower skis, not only for Eastern and Midwestern skiers but the westerners alike, is still important.

Starting a few years back, there was a significant trend among good skiers - particularly out west, to go wider and wider with everyday skis. These skis became more common, as did rocker - and pretty soon we were seeing skiers on the hill with 110-120mm wide skis on non-powder days. You'd here tips flapping and turns skidding - and for the most part, people were having fun. But technically proficient skiers quickly found they weren't really the best choice for hard or rough snow.

Now, as we head into the 2015 season, we find the trend mentioned above has started to reverse pretty significantly and many ski widths have started to come down out of the 120+ range. The fact that out west, we have now gone a couple of seasons without significant snowfall is no doubt one of the reasons for this. Another reason might be that the ski makers and skiers in general have figured out that for the skier with a decided soft snow bias and “one ski quiver” appetite, these mid 100s are pretty darned good. For sure, some skiers will still be very happy with wider skis than these for everyday use, and a lot of skiers will settle back to the 98-100mm range. These skis in the 102-110mm range have a more decided soft snow bias than the 98-100’s, but they do a much better job than “powder skis” when it has been some time since the last snowfall. It’s also fair to say that it is a pretty rare powder day that one of these skis isn’t wide enough to handle things.

There is a trend these days to say that the plus-or-minus 98mm skis are the perfect ski width for everyone in the west, and that is not necessarily the case. It’s important to remember that trends sometimes fail to recognize the skiers’ capabilities and their preferences.

There are plenty of skiers out west that are well suited by frontside skis and a lot more (maybe even most) that are best suited by the roughly 88mm skis. Naturally a quiver of skis is the best of all and more is always better. Where the 98mm ski fits in is for the skier with one ski, roughly a 50/50 priority towards packed vs. soft snow usage, and the capabilities to ski that terrain.

The 98mm ski can also fit very nicely as the middle ski in a three ski quiver for the west and could well be the wide ski for an eastern or Midwestern skier who doesn’t really need a specialized ski for deep snow.

As always, this category is loaded with talent and also with differences. The differences can range from relatively dramatic to very subtle, the differences are almost never about the width. The 5mm width difference from the narrowest to the widest of the skis we’ll review here are not definitive. Some of the skis in this category have been modified recently either in flex or in shape or in both for a little more bias toward softer snow while others maintain a roughly equal terrain and snow bias.

The 2015 Blizzard XPower 810TI is a new carving ski from Blizzard, designed for serious front side performance. Our testers were able to get on it early last winter, and were universally impressed.

Phil praised the ski for both having a tenacious grip and the ability to work various turn shapes, making it both powerful and versatile. We headed to Northstar first, putting the 174 cm length through the paces on a firm day that slowly softened as the sun went to work.

Warming up with medium radius turns, the Blizzard XPower 810TI wasn't punishing, popping back and forth with ease. But as soon as the speed picked up and the radius opened up, the ski started to display some real power, rewarding serious technique and a willingness to push hard. Really hard.

So while it's easy to initiate a turn on this ski, and it doesn't punish you at slower speeds, it really rewards powerful skiers most. On our spectrum from quick, finesse skis to stiff, powerful skis - it's definitely on the power end of

For ski racers and traveling skiers, a good ski bag and boot bag are key, whether you're flying, driving or just dragging a lot of gear to the bottom of the slope. Thule stepped up in a big way this year with their new bag line, ranging from backpacks to bike bags, but we're really impressed with the Thule Roundtrip Ski Bag and Thule Roundtrip Boot Bag in particular.

This is something easier shown than told, so we had Stan take us through the new bags in this video:

These are really well designed bags on their own, with stand-out features like the hard goggle case on the boot bag and the internal and external compression straps on the ski bag, but the fact that the two toggle together really makes the whole setup stand apart.

All the pockets and organization makes it so much easier to make sure you have everything you need for a day or a week+ of skiing without fumbling around or losing essential items at the bottom of a big duffel.

To learn more, go to our Thule page here, give us a call,

Foam liners are a performance upgrade to stock liners that are 100% custom fit to the athlete’s foot.

In this video we take you through the foaming process the Start Haus way.

Our owner and head boot fitting guru Jim Schaffner shows the proper steps for a successful foaming method from foot preparation to foam injection start to finish.

Foam liners are a solution for saving a shell that doesn’t have too much wear but has a liner that is packed out, or for those with truly low volume feet that need the boot tighter, like Alexis whose feet star in this video.

Foam liners last quite a bit longer than a stock liner and ski terrifically from a performance stand point. The kits we use at the Start Haus are firm enough for a great skiing experience and creates a nice tight environment, but is not so stiff it’s painful or lumpy.

If you have a number of painful bony spots on your feet foam can be a great solution as well. We would start by punching out the boot in those spots and in the foam injection

The K2 Minaret 100 is a new women's backcountry ski boot, based on the new-last-year K2 Pinnacle design, which has been a testers' favorite at Start Haus in the beefy backcountry boot category.

Our testers got into the Minaret at Mt. Bachelor, Oregon for the America's Best Bootfitters annual boot test, and were similarly impressed with the women's iteration. K2 spent a lot of time on boot fit when re-entering the boot world, and it shows - the lower in particular has a lot of anatomic shape that worked well for our testers.