Rich Hill: The NY Ski Boot Fitter

Rich Hill knows ski gear. He’s a former college ski racer who started working in the ski business nearly twenty years ago. After having some ski boot fit issues himself, Rich took an interest in custom foot beds and other ways to make a ski boot fit and perform better.

Dick Hill the boot fitter

He trained under Jeff Jacobs of Foot Dynamics on foot evaluation and custom foot bed construction. He’s done extensive training with MasterFit, an organization that provides bootfitting education to ski professionals.

I visited with him recently to learn more about what skiers should know about boot fitting.

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Interview with Alex Honnold and Cedar Wright

Last year, pro-climbers Alex Honnold and Cedar Wright switched gears, embarking on their first bike tour, “The Sufferfest.” Along the way, they would summit all 15 of California’s 14,000 ft peaks, free-soloing any technical routes they encountered.

Sufferfest-2-Bike

This year, they hopped back on their bikes for Sufferfest 2, a fantastic three-week tour of the Southwest. The duo felt the need to raise the stakes; they hoped to free-climb 45 select towers along the 800-mile journey.

If that sounds like a lot for 21 days, that’s because it is. Especially when you consider all of the variables; 33 of the 45 of the climbs were graded at 5.11 or above.

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Portes du Soleil, FR: More Than Just Massive

As someone who’s positioned himself as a fan of low-profile, off-the-beaten-path ski areas, I always feel a bit conflicted when visiting and writing about resorts that are big, popular, and for lack of a better descriptor “mainstream.”

Morzine
Morzine at Dusk ©Gilles Lansard

That said, a cigar isn’t always a cigar and on a handful of visits to the Alps, I’ve been to several major ski regions that are not only big, popular, and armed with completely up-to-date infrastructure, but also charming, full of local color, and with a number of worthwhile bail-out options to avoid the hordes. The Portes du Soleil in the northern Alps qualifies as one of these.

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