Espresso

The best all around touring liner ever made. A liner this light shouldn't have the downhill performance it does but somehow it's as good on the up as the down. Despite it's thinness it's incredibly warm and breathable, far superior to any other liner I've skied. The customization of cork with the tongue and heel pockets adds an incredible fit and heel hold. I can't say there is anything that I'd want added to this liner or taken off. It's got the performance of the GFT but the weight of a light touring liner. The do it all liner.

I'm POWDER Magazine's gear editor and I test a LOT of gear. This winter in the Tetons, I’ve been on the new Espresso liner in both the 4-buckle Tecnica Zero G Tour Pro and Dynafit Blacklight 2.0 ski touring boots to get a feel for how it works across a wide spectrum of popular ski touring boots, on long tours with demanding descents. In short, I’ve been truly impressed with these from a performance and durability standpoint and think this might be the best custom ski boot liner for light ski touring boots.

I have been on an ongoing journey to find the perfrect ski touring liner and have tried after market liners from Intuition, Palau and Sidas as well as a lot of the higher end stock liners from Tecnica, Atomic and Scarpa. When I heard about the Espresso brewing, I begged Jeff from Zipfit to let me test it and was so pumped when he said yes. I received one prototype last season and then I got a production version to take to New Zealand this fall, which I have subsequently used on all my ski tours so far this season. The first proto of the Espresso walked very well and was very comfortable, but I was disappointed in the ski performance and found myself reaching for other liners. I had high hopes for this liner so I was worried....Then I got the production version in October, took it to New Zealand and could immediately feel all the issues I had with the first version were fixed. I am SO stoked on this liner. It hits the perfect balance of weight, walkability and ski performance, that I want in a ski touring liner. The material updates are also so nice; the inside is more breathable and faster drying than the other Zipfit liners. The lace system is great as well. I use this inside my Tecnica ZGTP, but it also fits in my Scarpa F1 LT's. I have wanted to see a liner this balanced in the market for a long time. It will be the liner I use for everything except when I am taking the ZGTP traveling and will be resort riding I might also bring a GFT along. For those of you deciding between the GFT and the Espresso, I think there is absolutely room for both in the quiver, but for anyone touring in it over 50% of the time, I would absolutely choose the Espresso.

Touring liners matter! After years of chasing weight and constantly ripping through liners the espressos have been a revelation for downhill performance in light touring boots. For skinny calf endurance folks like myself the lacing system is game changing! They walk incredibly well and bring my boots downhill performance up a full weight class!

I first used the ZipFit Espresso on a two-week ski mountaineering expedition in Southern Patagonia and it fundamentally changed my view on liners. I've always used lightweight boots for these trips. The approaches are long (like 80+ km long...) the climbs are steep, the skiing is technical. I sacrifice a certain degree of skiability for the comfort of a boot I'll be living in for more than two weeks. Pairing the Espresso with a lightweight boot (Scarpa F1 XT) stepped up the boot's ski performance to a shocking degree while mainting the same degree of walkability, comfort, and climbing precision I'm used to in a lightweight liner. It's the perfect combination of precision on the up and down. I've since skied upwards of 40 days in the Espresso, pairing it with a variety of different boots (F1 XT, Maestrale RS, Quattro Pro), and have found that in every boot--from lightweight to hybrid--it dramatically improves ski performance while offering the walkability of a lightweight liner. Sure, it's heavier than a stock liner; but it skis much better, tours smoother, and climbs more effectively than any after-market liner, not to mention it'll last much MUCH longer. I went from not really caring about my liners to becoming a wholehearted ZipFit evangelist to all my ski partners.