Testers love the Challenger for the fact that it isn't much of a challenge to get it on, or buckle it up, or ski it well! Essentially it poses no real challenge to liking the boot all the way around—unless a skier were to mistake it for some sort of backcountry boot because it has a hike mode. That would be a challenge. The Challenger 120 is a ski boot in the classic sense—it's for skiing, not doodling around in fruit boots on wimpy sticks. The Challenger is for challenging yourself to see how many hard charging runs you can do and how many beers you can pound. It's a parking lot partying skier's sort of boot!
Testers like how smooth this version skis while maintaining a combination of stability and softness. The flex is on the soft, cushiony side of 120, testers said. Yet it is rigid laterally and torsionally to a fault—stability and edge control are its strong suit, even when testers accidentally skied it in its walk mode. That's a testament both to the strong character of the boot and to the limited range of motion enabled with the cuff release—not much, essentially.
Hedged over to the wider side of the medium-width group, the Perfect Fit liner allows for additional shape matching to the foot by a cook job inside the shell, so that the warmth in the shell and all the way through the liner allows for a better match between shell and liner as well as liner to foot.
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