Dynafit Mercury Tf Alpine Touring Ski Boots Review

I've written a bit about the Dynafit Mercury in a previous article for TGR. In brief, information technology'south an alpine touring kicking made by Dynafit that has tech fittings, is office of their 'Free Touring' line and therefore designed to be both nigh the up and down, has a retail toll of $800 and weighs approximately 1600g. The Mercury is the more affordable derivative of the Dynafit Vulcan boot.

Here are features of the Mercury worth mentioning:

• - Three buckle kicking with inner and outer natural language. Outer natural language tin be removed to subtract stiffness, but adds range of motion in the touring step.
• - Ultra-lock walk manner; i buckle closure to go from walk to ski style.
• - threescore degrees of floating cuff engaged via the Ultra-lock Walk manner.
• - Like the Vulcan, the lower shell is the exotic Grilamid plastic designed to be stiffer yet maintain the same basic experience through temperature variations.
• - The upper cuff is a reinforced thermoplastic polyurethane designed to be stiff all the same resist lateral flex. Information technology'southward not as exoticly sexy as the Vulcan'southward carbon upper.
• - Soles are not removable.
• - Two lean positions: xv caste and 18 degree.
• - Anaemic looking power strap. I don't even bother using them touring pow. I resort to them as a crutch and use them with the tongues when skiing inbounds.
• - Stock liner is 340 grams. Intuition Pro-tour liner was 220 grams, both with laces.
• - Tongue is 70 grams.

If you desire to read more than about the Dynafit Mercury (and Vulcan and One) and microparse every single finicky detail about the boots go here to the TGR Forums.

The Mercury is a three buckle boot. It can be used without (left picture) or with the tongue (right picture). Many are swapping the stock Dynafit liners (correct kick) with an Intuition liner (left boot) merely the stock liner is quite practiced so attempt them before splashing down coin.

In pulverization, I ski the Mercury without the tongues .

Lee's personal biases and test conditions:

I weigh 165 lbs and ski mainly in the Declension Mountains of British Columbia in the Whistler area. My skiing is usually in fairly high moisture-content snow. I am not a finesse skier. Accordingly, my preference is for bigger skis and boots. I ski virtually a 100 days a season, seventy% of which days involves some backcountry skiing. As of this review I've spent 16 days on the Mercury with four inbound days and the remainder touring in powder. My personal skis are G3 Zenoxides, BD Zealots and G3 Spitfires. My personal boots are the Scarpa Maestrale RS and the Mercury.

Anaemic ability straps are included with the Mercury. Per the accompanying kick manual, the powerstraps get through the webbing on the tongue; you tin can easily disassemble the powerstraps from the bootshells to attain this. I only use the powerstraps when skiing with tongues and do without when skiing sans tongues. Some have noticed power and feel comeback by substituting Booster Straps for the stock powerstrap.

Fit and the Intuition Liner

I have a traditional Asian foot. This means that my forefoot is wider so most and I have almost no arch. The Mercury has a flat kicking boot board then you tin can add together padding to become the fit you want. It's not the "performance" (ie tight) last of the TLT5 boot but feels more than akin to the same fit equally the Titan and ZZeus. It's less roomy in the forefoot than the Scarpa Maestrale offerings. My guess is that most people with anxiety that are somewhat "normal" will fit a Mercury with some tweaking. To add more data I'one thousand on a 27.5 boot (boot sole length is 304mm). I fit a Dynafit TLT5 Operation ZZeus, Titan and Titan UL in 27.5 and a Scarpa Maestrale RS, Maestrale, Mobe, Skookum, Spirit 4 and 3 in 27.

Note that the Dynafit liner provided OE with the Mercury is deliberately tightly lasted so it may feel tight in the store. Information technology's very thermomoldable so it will adjust well to your foot. My old Dynafit liners (the Mercury liners are made of the aforementioned material as the by 2 years of liners) lasted 50+ days so one shouldn't spring the gun and replace liners immediately. Having said that, I have my own Intuition liners that have pretty much worn in to my feet. And then after 3 days on the Dynafit liners I replaced them with Intuitions. I've written lots of articles nearly Intuition liners, am proud to say that I am a fanboy and call back they're pretty much the greatest matter you can practice for your feet so won't belabour the indicate other than to say that if yous have questions nigh them delight inquire on this TGR forum thread or better still check out their website and read virtually the liners.

The Mercury'south buckles are artful wire closures. Improving from the TLT5P the wire is affixed so they cannot fall off the kicking and consequently go lost. The bottom 2 buckles have micro-adjustments (the peak buckle has none). The meridian two buckles can too be adjusted by moving them around using a Torx driver.

The buckles are designed and then they don't take hold of on the snowfall or become knocked around when bootpacking. I haven't walked around on rock (just snow) at all so I'll take to report dorsum on how the sole wears over time. The sole rubber seems soft so my guess is that sled decks won't treat them too kindly.

Uphill:

The Dynafit Mercury is a wonderful touring boot. Not to diminish its downhill performance, but its fantastic touring pace is its predominant defining feature.

At a weight of approximately 1450 grams (I tour without the natural language and on Intuition liners) the Mercury is relatively light weight for the beefy boot category. The costless-floating gage and relatively light weight is actually all you need to know well-nigh why this is the instance. In my opinion, the full benefit of the touring range of movement is all-time experienced with the tongue removed. Yet, y'all still relish a relatively resistance-free walk mode even when using tongues inserted.

The buckles have a clean arrangement, so when opened, they stay out of the way and aren't susceptible to being broken off. This is a overnice attribute to accept for bootpacking and especially squeamish for transitions every bit you simply flip open up or closed the buckles for uphills or downhills. Having said that the Mercury does have some hitches during transitions. In particular, the square knob on the inner soft natural language of the boot which is meant to receive the harder outer tongue is high enough that re-inserting the tongue for downhills in deep pw is an exercise in frustration. Either cut off or dremel that square knob down or resign yourself to skiing with or without tongues during your day'due south tour.

Additionally, the black plastic closures of the upper buckle can sometimes catch on themselves while attempting to close the upper buckles. If you lot experience something catch, don't try to force that upper buckle airtight; but fold one plastic piece under the other and attempt once more.

Protour Intuition liners are fairly soft and feel great when paired with the Mercury in pow.

In more firm snow, the relatively stiffer Intuition Dreamliner or Luxury Liner works beautifully with the Mercury.If one is not blest with soft snowfall for touring, the stiffest liner Intuition offers is the Powerwrap. Information technology probably won't help with the touring stride range of motility, but information technology'll add some beef to the boot .

Downhill

The Dynafit Mercury is a stiff boot. If you want to know how information technology compares to other boots please inquire in the article comments. Suffice it to say that it belies the stereotype of three buckle boots not being strong by existence indistinguishable in stiffness from the previous stiffest Dynafit offering, the Titan and Titan UL. The all-time downhill functioning is, of form, with tongue installed. Without the tongues Mercury lost nothing in lateral stiffness but lost its functioning in fore-aft stiffness.

More importantly the quality of stiffness of the Dynafit Mercury was very satisfactory. Unlike many other alpine touring boots which have a harsh feeling, and lack small bump assimilation I found that the Mercury skied well; behaving predictably fifty-fifty in cutting upward inbounds conditions. Because the Mercury has then much lateral stiffness the boot felt most at domicile when laying skis (and kick) on its side and angulating, whether in difficult or soft snow. Essentially the Mercury is a kicking that enjoys lots of skier input. Drive the boot hard and it seems to perform best.

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Source: https://www.tetongravity.com/story/ski/Dynafit-Mercury-Alpine-Touring-Ski-Boot-Review-278

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