A backcountry boot for everyone is how our test team describes the Gea RS, and while experienced backcountry users will appreciate its solid-enough flex and massive touring range of motion, the beauty of the Gea RS is that it’s an easy lift for any skier who’s new to the skin track.
Testers like this most-current version of the Gea RS best—and its predecessors have performed well in many boot tests over the years. They say that the pre-molded but fully customizable Intuition Pro Flex Performance liner would serve the medium width foot and leg straight out of the box but it also offers higher volume athletes quite a bit of fit forgiveness by way of a full liner cook job.
They also like the supportive-feeling cuff that, while perhaps softer than the claimed 120-flex, didn’t collapse under heavy load—either from hard flexing or skiing with a pack. Testers thought the shin fit was well-distributed and the flex feel progressive enough that less-skilled skiers wouldn’t be tossed in the backseat. Lateral, edge change moves are made easy by the stiffly constructed, carbon-reinforced Grilamid Bio lower shell, and its low-profile design put the foot in close proximity to the ski, enabling a well-connected feel for the snow surface, testers reported.
Veteran testers were accustomed to the Gea RS’s trio of different buckles and the crisscross of various overlapping cuff components when getting the boot put on and done up, but they caution newbies to have some patience with initial boot entry when sorting out all the layers and flaps, which one tester said were more complicated than a woman’s anatomy.
What the less-experienced backcountry traveler won’t have any trouble with, testers assured, is the going up. The ease of cuff release and the natural feeling stride will feel akin to a modern hiking boot—or perhaps even more comfortable than many of those. The smoothness of the cuff’s fore-aft rotation and its anatomically correct point of flexion at the ankle joint had testers raving about how much more enjoyable the ascent was in the Gea RS than in other tested BC models.
Kudos
Caveats