After two years of single BOA boots on the market, this year’s test marked the entry of dual BOA technology to the alpine boot market. Our testers unanimously put the new Head Kaliber 130 MV GW BOA2 at the top of the group of boots that sported the dial on both top and bottom.
Let’s get the frivolous superficialities out of the way from the start: first, while Head’s dual BOA design shares a name with a crappy non-alcoholic beer it shares none of said swill's attributes, and second, the Head Kaliber is drop dead gorgeous—if you look at boots that way, and we do—the gloss and matte black butted up against each other with subdued aqua highlights on the reels and tongue…damn, that’s good, testers said.
Now, if two years ago we were visually drawn to the BOA reel itself, this year, as the BOA has crept up onto the cuff like a vine, testers were fascinated by the cuff BOA’s cable routing and pulley points, with a particular curiosity to see how each different brand’s take on how it untethered the system for entry. Testers liked the Kaliber’s simple pull cord release and what they said was an easier pass-through for the foot’s slide into the boot than other dual models they tested.
Some testers saw the mechanical advantage mechanism of a compound bow in the cuff BOA cabling and others compared it to a Z-Drag rope system for getting a raft un-pinned, but most testers agreed that the Kaliber’s cuff BOA did what lower shell BOA systems had not—closed loose areas more than tight ones. A click at a time, the Kaliber’s boot shaft wrapped the lower leg evenly, regardless of how the leg shape tapered below the calf muscle, or didn’t. That was pretty cool, testers agreed.
Boot brands are now positioning their boots based on the position of the BOA. On the lower shell? That’s for convenience. On the upper cuff? That’s for performance. How one chooses is a bit like deciding between steak or lobster on the menu, as they’re both good. Head Kaliber? That’s surf and turf, baby—we might as well have it all, big American style.
For many of our testers, the BOA reel is convenient, while for others the surprisingly loud sound of a ratcheting reel is like fingernails on a chalkboard. But most of our testers would agree that cuff BOA can be considered a performance feature so far as it may provide a good grip on the lower leg, which is a boon to ski control--and by the way, this came in spades on the Kaliber, said testers who plowed it through a mix of morning frozen slush, perfect midday corn and a few days of late season, thick pow at this spring’s test.
The dual BOA is definitely a strings-attached experience, and testers cautioned skiers who have anxiety attacks over fishing reel backlash, tangled Slinkys or wadded up piles of extension cords may want to keep that BOA on the convenience down-low (aka, on the lower shell).
After the novelty of two knobs to play with wore off, our test team realized that the Kaliber’s real surf and turf was fit and performance—two core elements that got upstaged by the BOAs but were really the stars of the show. Testers called the Kaliber 130 MV GW BOA2 Head’s best medium width boot, ever, and this is coming from guys who still mourn the loss of Vector, nearly a decade on.
As one tester put it: “No problems here, it fits perfectly and offers instant fun—I skied some gnarly stuff at speed and the Kaliber put the skis exactly where they needed to be, every turn.”
Kudos