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Here in Tahoe, the Start Haus tends to recommend 98 mm underfoot skis as the best all-around all-mountain skis for local conditions.

There are a lot of good skis in this category, but the one that both Sierra Jim and Phil Pug have held as the gold standard in the category recently has been the versatile Blizzard Bonafide.

It's won numerous magazine awards, sold out last year before January at the Start Haus, and this year, Blizzard is sold out nation-wide, so once they're gone, they're gone. We've got them in stock, but they're going fast. Click here.

Lange deserves accolades on many fronts in their history as a ski boot manufacturer.

Throughout their history, performance has been their highest value. While so many companies have gone off on wild goose chases in the ski boot world, (see rear entry boots) Lange by and large has stayed true to its core values with their elite racing heritage and building ski boots that perform well, no matter who you are or what your foot shape.

Boot fitting for the better part of the last decade, I have always counted my lucky stars that I have a narrow foot. Of all people who got the short end of the stick in the ski world, people with wide feet have by far the roughest go in the ski boot world.

Why?

Medium-wide ski boots have some serious competition in the last few years. When Tecnica built a new boot from the ground up, the engineers knew it had to be something totally different than they'd ever built before.

I was fortunate enough to go to the America’s Best Bootfitters test last spring at Mt. Bachelor, Oregon, and was more than interested in how the Tecnica Mach1 130 would stack up against the rest of the 100 mm-wide category, particularly the strong competition that has sprung up in the medium fit market.

I am pleased to say our clientele is, by-and-large, quite well educated about the ski products they are shopping for. As a boot fitter, as often as not the client will state their ability level followed quickly by a short list of boots their interested in trying on, and that list is made up of all the major models from major brands you’d expect, and then they will ask for a recommendation; “and anything else you think I should try on.”

When the client has a narrow foot and is an expert skier my reply is always, “Well you should definitely try on the Head Raptor 130 RS.”

Head as a brand has carved out a large niche in the race market in both skis and boots. They haven’t made the flashiest powder skis, nor best-selling all mountain skis. Instead, they’ve stuck to making the finest hard snow and race skis available, and the same goes for their boots.

We’ve been raving about the Head Raptor since it came out, as has the rest of the universe, and you may be asking, what is so good about it? In short, everything really.

The Nordica NRGY 100 and Nordica NRGY 90 are two new skis for 2015, replacing some of our personal favorites - the Nordica Hell & Back and Steadfast. Fortunately, the new skis did not let our testers down.

Walking the line between a metal-less ski and a full metal laminate ski, the NRGY series uses a skeletonized metal layer, giving them just the right amount of damping and torsional rigidity without being heavy or demanding.

Phil summed the ski up in one word after skiing them; compliant. We felt that the NRGY series are more approachable than some of the most advanced ski in the category for less aggressive skiers without giving up much in the way of top-end performance.

For three years the Lange RS 140 has been firmly at the top of the heap. Sporting great fit and function the Lange RS 140 has routinely received top marks from boot testers as a great skiing boot with a great fit as well.

What is it about the RS 140 that makes it so good?  Good stance and balance?  Great fit? Good responsive plastic? Yes, yes, yes, and definitely yes. Lange obviously hasn’t wanted to mess up a good thing, and thank goodness for that. The RS 140 rolled out three years ago and nothing on the shell has changed, save the graphic. For 2015 Lange has given the boot an all new race liner to give the RS 140 even more control and precision. The lace-up race liner is truly high quality and is the main fit difference between the RS 130 and the RS 140 reviewed here.

The performance characteristics of the RS 140 are off the charts. The turn is lightning quick and smooth; the plastic is dynamic, it responds and moves with the leg courteously and concisely.  It was a top pick of

The Nordica Vagabond is a new ski for the 2013-14 season and is one of many new skis from several makers in the 105-108mm width range.

The Vagabond shares the construction that has become the standard classic from Nordica on such highly successful skis as the Steadfast and Hell and Back. This is a wood/glass/carbon layup ski with a lightweight composite stringer down the center of the core to reduce weight.

The 2015 Volkl Mantra came as a surprise, reinventing one of the most popular all mountain skis in the industry - but its a rebuild in-line with Volkl's design philosophy - and after extensive testing - we think a really great ski for the right skier.

The old Volkl Mantra, 98 underfoot, cambered, with tip rocker and a stiff flex, was a Tahoe go-to for hard charging skiers who wanted a do-it-all ski for the various conditions we get out west. The stiff flex, especially in the tail, made it less accessible to some skiers though.

Enter the 2015 Mantra - Volkl upped the waist width to 100 mm and flipped it to full rocker, what they call ELP (extended low profile) tip to tail, much like the Gotama or the RTM series. It keeps metal laminate construction and a fairly stiff flex (though less so than previous generations).

The Start Haus crew got out on a wide variety of 2015 skis for 2015, getting a feel for the latest and greatest.

After an early season test had to be cancelled due to low snow, Sugar Bowl stepped up to host the event to give ski industry employees the ability to get the hands-on experience we need for next year's skis.

With a crew of five Start Haus testers on the slopes, we were able to put a wide range of skis through the ringer on groomers, in crud and in soft, heavy snow left over from a recent storm.

Highlights from the tester's notes included the Dynastar Cham 117, Blizzard Spur, the new Volkl Mantra, the Stockli Stormrider Pro 115, and the Nordica Nrgy 100 on the men's side, and  on the women's side, the redesigned Nordica Nemesis and Wild Belle, new Volkl Aura and Kenja, and women's Dynastar Cham 87 and 97.

I’d say “they'rrre baaaack” ... except of course, these frontside biased all mountain skis never really left. What did happen though, is that the trend of wider and ever wider skis gradually pushed this category of skis onto the back burner for a while.

Then, a not so funny thing happened. Out west, we’ve had three years in a row with unusually long periods of firm to downright hard snow. For sure, there were pockets and patches of weather here and there but we were all skiing on the snow rather than in it much if not most of the time.

So skiers were coming into the Start Haus looking for something better than their powder skis for prevailing conditions. And the skiers that really don’t ski off the groomers all that much anyway were starting to look at narrower skis than they might have just a year or two ago.

Looking for a narrow ski boot that steers like a Porsche? The Atomic Redster Pro 110 may just be the boot you have been looking for. From fit to function the Redster is a full package aggressive all-mountain ski boot.

Atomic gave the Redster the exact same look as its narrower, more aggressive cousin; the Redster World Cup. The wider pro is a lot friendlier to get in and may have been misappropriated as a “race boot” by fitters and skiing public alike. However, the Redster Pro has a way more mellow fit, but still skis like a boot made by a top racing brand.

The Head Adapt Edge LTD is a fairly wide-fitting ski 110 flex boot that will stand up to the advanced skier. At the Start Haus, the Adapt Edge LTD has become a go-to boot for those with wide feet and a high instep, or both.

The last couple of years the Adapt Edge has earned a valued spot in our boot stable as a got to fit option for those truly high volume feet, with a caveat; this boot skis well also.