IN DEFENSE OF LEATHER
September 16, 1997

In some parts of the country leather tele boots are getting to be an uncommon site, looked at by some skiers as an anachronism, a style and construction long gone to seed, put out to pasture by the herds of plastic tele boots now grazing on the lush grasses of consumer desire for the latest and the greatest. Is leather dead? Are we simply playing the Ludite, unwilling to accept the inevitability of change? I don't think so. I changed from all wood skis (though I still have some, and they doooo ski nice) without much difficulty and, even though they still stink, I wear plastic clothes when I tour.

Yes, leather boots do get wet, and they will develop "leather lag", though depending on the boot and amount of abuse you heap on it, often not for years. All things being equal plastic will stay stiffer longer then a leather boot. Some plastic boots do leak but there's no question that the outers will not soak up water like leather will on a warm spring day.

So why stick with leather? One word. Flex. The single defining feature of what makes a tele boot a tele boot is the foot flex. It must follow, as closely as possible, the natural bend of the foot to allow the ball of the foot to pressure the rear ski in a tele turn. Plastic boot makers have been touting their product with phrases like "it flexes just like leather" since the first inflexible by mere mortals version came out. People paid big bucks for a boot that generally wouldn't bend and if it did many wished it would stop because it hurt so bad. Those days are gone. The more recent plastic boots ski much better, but if flex were color, the flex of a plastic boot is black and white compared to the rich colors of a leather flex.

Ski instructors often define skiing as a blending of skills, Edging, Steering, and Pressure. If you think of these skills like the knobs on a stereo tuner, you can adjust them to different levels depending on the type of skiing and the conditions. On hard snow holding an edge requires a stiff boot that transfers and maintains pressure to the edge without whimping out in the middle of the turn. Hard snow also favors lateral stability and weight focused on one foot, a parallel position or a front ski weighted tele. Plastic boots are great for this.

Entering the realm of soft snow changes the mix of skills. Pressure and steering become dominant and edging takes a back seat. Soft snow creates resistance that's often variable, making fore and aft stability tricky. The tele turn, with both skis weighted becomes a strong move.

Weighting both skis is one of the fundamental challenges of a tele turn, especially for front ski dominant alpine skiers. The closer a boot mimics the natural progressive flex of the foot the easier it is to find that 'spot' where the rear ski is weighted and all things are right in a tele turn. Leather boots are not preprogrammed to flex in a narrowly defined area, they let the individual foot establish the exact location and amount of flex. All this adds up to giving the leather user a sensitivity to the ski that has yet to be reproduced in plastic. This ability to feel both skis and adjust the weighting at any point of the turn is basic to skiing soft snow.

For some skiers and styles plastic boots work great. For racing or predominately hard snow skiing they are the cat's meow. The power of plastic is impressive and it often overshadows the subtleties of good foot flex, but many skiers, beginners and advanced alike, can't buy a tele turn in deep snow with plastic boots. Plastic boots may come around to the performance in foot flex in the years ahead but at this point "leather is for cows,..... and tele boots".