We wore these boots in a wide range of conditions to achieve a wide range of goals. We wore them on ice and mixed lines in Patagonia; the Canadian Rockies, Ouray, Colorado; Provo Canyon, Utah; and the Sierra Nevada. We climbed ice in crampons and rock without. Our main test crampon was the Petzl Dart which will fit every boot in this review. We also used models by Black Diamond and Grivel. We hiked many long approaches and stood around for hours at belays.
We found that the most objective way to measure one boot against another was to wear two different boots at the same time. While we often got strange glances and sometimes were questioned, we found that we could quickly rank the qualities of one boot over another.
We tested the weight of each boot by weighing it with our trusty WeighMax 2822. We weighed one boot (½ of a pair). La Sportiva, Scarpa, and Asolo all advertise the weight of just one boot on their websites, but some of the other companies list the weight of a pair. Our tester size is 43, some boot manufacturers use 42 or 42.5 as their reference size.
We feel that ultimately, good gear is gear that you don't have to think about, and we evaluated if the boots left us noticing that our feet were cold and wet, or if we were able to concentrate on the terrain ahead and the beauty around us and forget about the boots.
