Our women's test team is made up of a lot of skilled skiers who've spent time in the boot trenches, either as salespeople, bootfitters or on-hill pros like instructors or coaches who've worked in ski boots all season long, for many years. They're all very adept at getting ski boots on their feet. But, man, will they let you know how tough it is to get into one if it proves difficult--oh, the drama. Rarely do they get excited about how easy a boot is to put on their feet, but that was exactly what happened with the new Rossignol Vizion Elite 90 W LV. There were a lot of exclamatory statements made--with expletives, even--about how incredibly easy it was to get on. It practically jumped onto their feet, to hear them say it, but the takeaway was that if this is a point of excitement for our crew, there is something special going on.
Ease of entry is the entire point of the Vizion--Rossignol developed a new and unique rear cuff release mechanism that tips the back half of the boot cuff rearwardly, like an old-school rear entry model, but without the ridicule and poor performance. The release lever is a cleanly engineered, hidden-in-plain-sight affair tucked beneath the lower cuff buckle. Pull that lever into its unlocked position and the boot top splits into a welcoming chasm of white, faux fur and lets a skier's foot and leg slide right in. There's a pull loop on the liner but it's hardly a necessity--this is a hands-free entry, if there ever was one, once the boot is levered open.
The coolest part of the lever hidden beneath that cuff buckle, for our test team (and we think for a lot of good skiers), is the fact that there are three more of them. Buckles, that is. It's a four-buckle overlap design from top to bottom--it functions the same as any performance-oriented overlap shell, straightforward buckles, normal closure. Testers say it skis just like a top tier overlap boot as well, without any performance sacrifices made for the primary ease-of-entry feature. It's a regular old ski boot that fits and skis as well as other boots in similar categories, they said, except that it has this easy entry superpower.
One tester whose daily drivers are always the stiffest women's narrows or sometimes men's 130-flexes loved the Vizion Elite 90 W LV for the way it made everything easy, she said. Not just the entry, but the narrow fit was easy to love, as was the stance alignment, the flex feel and the skiing--this boot made skiing easy to enjoy, with no hassles or hiccups, she commented at length. She called the Vizion Elite 90 W LV slinky fun, and claims she's getting a pair for this season.
Kudos
Caveats