The Italian company Nordica has filed a patent for a ski boot to wear without hands: it can be customized and heated through an app for smartphones.
Anyone who has gone skiing at least once in their life knows that wearing boots is a quite complex task. Threading your feet into the hull and tightening the levers requires precision, a certain amount of attention and a good dose of patience. And don’t forget that gloves are on your hands to complicate matters. To help skiers, the Italian company Nordica has designed and patented a super-technological ski boot that is easy to wear. It’s called “HF” – an acronym for “hands-free” – because it can be worn without using your hands. The boot is equipped with an ingenious mechanism that greatly facilitates the fit. HF opens at the back and the foot is slipped “from behind” into the inner shoe in Primaloft. The latter is equipped with a bellows that optimizes the movements in both skiing and walking. The closure is automatic and adjustable through a washer and a front hook with 4 different positions. This mechanism allows you to modify the outer hull of the boot (with a margin of 4 mm) according to the anatomy of the foot of those who will wear it.
Nordic: patent for the first ski boot to be “worn without hands”
The hull of the boot is made of polyurethane. This material optimizes the performance of the ski and ensures a lightness unprecedented in the market: a pair of HF weighs just 3.4 kilos, compared to 3.9/4.5 of traditional track models. In addition to being very easy to wear, the Nordica patented ski boot also “thinks” of the comfort of the skier. Thanks to Therm-Ic technology it is in fact possible to “increase comfort even more through a small regulator inserted on the tips of the fingers so as to regulate the temperature inside the hull from your phone, thus keeping the heat during the coldest days,” explains Alberto Contento, product manager at Nordica. The hands-free boot will be available in four models – two for men and two for women – at a price ranging from 469 to 649 euros: comfort, you know, has its cost.