Jimmy Lillstrom stopped by over the weekend, in the course of his daily loop on the bicycle. Jim is a veteran ski industry marketing guy, a relic of the days when Head’s factory ruled North Boulder. He’s still a lean, mean cycling machine, carrying about 1% body fat.

But he doesn’t ski much anymore. A cycling crash years ago put a hairline crack in his femur, and in fixing it the surgeon took 3cm off the leg length. Since then he hasn’t felt comfortable in his normal boot size — everything seems to cant to one side. When he does ski, he uses an oversize boot and sacrifices control.

This is something that can be fixed. There’s a lot that can be fixed by a smart bootfitter. What can’t be fixed is skiing with good control and finesse in an oversized boot. Half the problems I see on the hill are due to skiers slopping around in boots just one size too big. A boot that’s too big is, by definition, too stiff. You won’t know it, because you can feel the ankle flexing inside the shell, but the shell itself doesn’t flex much and there’s a long delay before your muscular input is translated into pressure on the ski.

A big boot isn’t even warm. You wind up compensating for the slop by overtightening the instep buckle. That squashes the veins on the top of the foot, cutting off the return of blood from the foot to the heart and lungs. Blood pools in the toes and cools. The toes then freeze.

The solution is to get into the smallest shell that will take the length of your foot, and then do the work necessary, on the inner boot and inside the shell, to make it comfortable. If the shell fits properly, you can ski with the buckles pretty loose — on the first notch most of the time. The boots flex comfortably, you get a sensitive feel of what the ski is doing, and instant response to edging and pressure changes.

Getting that snug, comfortable fit starts with the smallest shell, then depends on an accurately shaped footbed (not the flat foam product packaged with the boot) and, possibly, a good aftermarket innerboot.

The innerboot is, in fact, the single most important piece of ski equipment. I can put my innerboot into nearly any boot shell of the right length and ski comfortably. I use the Zipfit innerboot, but there are some other good ones out there.

I told Lillstrom to call Sven Coomer, the Mahatma of ski boot design, and talk over the problem of differential leg length. We’ll get him fixed up so we can ski together.

Today is Sept. 7. It’s supposed to snow the next four days in Vail. I received an invitation today to ski at Copper with the PSIA Demo Team in October.

Time to wax the skis.