The Nitro Skylab TLS Boot Review

A Nitro team favourite, the Nitro Skylab TLS Snowboard/Splitboard boot is built to last. It is designed as the one boot to do it all, which it darn near accomplishes, in an incredibly light and durable package. From splitboard tours to bootpacks and resort laps, we took this boot everywhere and were thoroughly impressed with the performance.

Overview

• Boot Materials: Ecostep Vibram, Synthetic Materials, Space-age foam and stuff
• Liner: Cloud 8
• Lacing: TLS (Twin Lacing System)
• Weight: Record-setting minimum weight (all sizes) 

Who is Nitro?

Since the winter of ’89 Nitro has been devoted to driving and fueling snowboarding in a team focused, family forward manner. The people and products are what matter, and this keeps passion overflowing through the brand. Nitro is committed to core snowboarding and this is showcased – among other ways – through their production of board shapes. They’ve produced a swallowtail, or other powder slashin’ shape every year since their inception. In alignment with their core values, Nitro has a history of sound economics, and a grounded approach to environmentalism, where they strive to take an honest inventory of where the world is at in the process of manufacturing, and  live within their means instead of green-washing products and processes with marketable buzzwords. This IS their own language; What it looks like in real life is a commitment to making excellent products that are quality, longevitous, and durable, instead of using an “eco-friendly glue” – for example – to laminate a snowboard, which then gets thrown in the trash two months later.

What is the Nitro Skylab TLS Snowboard Boot?

Nitro’s Skylab TLS Snowboard boot is a lightweight soft boot designed for the everyday mountain rider who fancies ducking ropes, putting in a staircase in hike-to terrain, and/or wants to do some splitboarding. Nitro says they are “All mountain fit and ready to split”  – and indeed they are. The fit is ultimate.

I can say after 40 days of use, mostly splitboarding, the boot lives up to my expectation and their motto. My my, these boots are light. Like, record-setting, minimum weight light. In practice, this means after 1000’s of meters of touring, having been alleviated of most of their tensions, your hip flexors casually yawn for more in their state of inexhaustible spryness. Pop ollies over the moon yo.

The Vibram sole is made from a softer, stickier Vibram. Before sighing in angst and looking the other way consider this: No softboot splitboarder has toes with enough fortitude to kick steps in those frozen, alpine, wind torn slopes; As snowboarders, we live for comfort and enjoyment, hence the soft boots instead of plastic, foot binding, archaic technology [skiboots]. You’ll never get that steel-toed soft boot with edgable support – AND – that’s where this sticky sole comes in. What you lack in purchase, you gain in stickiness, which grabs hard, cold ice and does not let go. It also sticks to rock, which is a bonus in those desperate previously described boot-packing situations, or the mountaineering-lite scenario.

How the Nitro Skylab Fit, TLS

The boot fits true to size. Perfectly. They do so right out of the box. TLS stands for “Twin Lacing System” With this ‘zonal’ lacing scheme, the wearer has control of the upper boot, and lower boot independently. Though not exactly twin, the system allows for sovereignty in the footbed and the shin. What the quick lace system lacks in its ability to tailor specific regions of the boot (the toe box, or ankle for example), the operator gains in efficiency and convenience. A quick pull and the boots are tight. With a flick of the wrist, the laces are disengaged from their camming mechanism, and the laces are ready to be loosened using the patented “bail out system” – a tab woven into the laces which you can pull to loosen the boots easily, predictably, when, and exactly where you want looseness to take ‘em off quick.  I like this quick lace system a lot. It makes it easy to loosen the boots on the skin track, or in the lift line, then, yank and crank when you want that performance rally fit. 

Even though this style of lacing system has been around for over 20 years, and multiple brands have swung at it, not a single one manages the loose spaghetti of twisted starchy, de-sheathed laces gracefully or efficiently. You’ll try to wrap the laces around the molded ergonomic handles, but they will get twisted, not fit in the holsters, and from time to time frustrate you. Expect to stuff these in your snow pants, and observe them flapping in the wind behind you as you’re straight-lining out the bottom of whatever sick line you just prayed and pointed down. 

How the Nitro Skylab TLS fit, Cloud 8 liner

The liners are comfortable enough – Nitro calls them Cloud 8, and are quite nice, and yes, heat moldable.  but the comfort and performance are compromised by two factors. 

The first is the lack of a booster strap to keep the liner svelte, wrapped up and supported in the upper shin region, throughout your riding day. Nitro developed two systems to hold the liner in place and tighten it easily as the day progresses. Though they work, they don’t accomplish what a simple booster strap would, nor do they do so in an elegant fashion.

The second and most important is the inner ankle support. I know your geriatric ankle ears perked up, but lay those down Lassie. This thing is garbage – like probably (no evidence here, plus some greenwashing just because) literally recycled soda bottles.  This plastic, although hypothetically appetizing, never sits symmetrically, never tightens to the same place, is predictably uncomfortable at best, and sometimes hurts. This is exacerbated by the ankle strap, which ratchets down over it. Fifty percent of the turns you make [toe side] will crunch your ankle every time. Nitro has this feature in almost all of their boots, so it’s probably not as bad as I’m making it out to be. I’m a bit of a twinkle-toer, a bit dramatic, have a low tolerance for discomfort, and have elephant ankles. I am really just half a man… 

How do the Nitro Skylab TLS Feel?

The boot has a lot of features for effective walking and maximum speed. Ninety percent of these actually pan out as functional, lending to the supremacy of the boot. The “Hike ‘n Ride” system is a composition of features which lend themselves to a range of motion while walking (mesh at the top of the rear boot, where the calf’s range of motion would otherwise be limited), and the “Flex Link” design – a fancy treatment where the upper boot shell intersects the lower boot shell, minimizing bulking, clumping, and protrusion of fabric while the boot flexes forward. All of this works quite well, eliminating hotspots and wear points. A big crux of the soft boot is minimizing water penetration and permeability at this junction. Though this problem hasn’t been solved by the Skylab, it has indeed been minimized. This boot isn’t puddle-proof, but it is ‘slush resistant’ (slush of course has a specific water content in the snow science world… meaning the boot repels a certain amount of water at a given atmospheric pressure. Am I writing myself into a hole here?  Hold your horses while I get myself a trade-mark! – Nitro guarantees none of that..) 

What I don’t find to pan out are the following two features: The reinforced spine, and the durability and fit for crampons. The reinforced spine offers some torsional stability, but like with all soft boots, nothing in the boot itself will ever make you a better side hiller, or make side hilling more efficient in soft boots. The problem is not with the boots, it is how the boot fits in the binding. If you’re curious about supporting or detracting from this hypothesis, check out Karakoram’s highback wing thingies, or the adaptive high backs Burton [historically] added to some of their bindings for those jibster kids. (Product names are not accurate, descriptions might be)..

Who is the Nitro Skylab TLS for? 

The Nitro Skylab is a high-performance quiver killing boot. It was engineered to be good for all mountain riding, powder hunting, technical turns, and splitboarding. “the best do it all snowboard boot on the market right now” If you want a responsive, comfortable, durable all mountain boot, great for splitboarding and performance riding, complete with some sweet features and a classy look, this boot is for you.

Who’s it not for?

The Skylab is not for the faint hearted, park rat jibsters, billionaires who needs a different boot every day, hard-booting rando-racing contesters, those who like soft flexy boots and shredding slowly on sunny days with their jackets open, or skiers. These boots do not claim to accept automatic, or semiautomatic crampons. They, like all soft boots do not fit crampons well. They do boast a sensational amount of durability, but the soft boot truth is: all soft boots are just too bulky for your strap-on mountaineering crampon

If you are interested in burying your feet in a pair of Nitro’s Skylab TLS’, head on over the Nitro Website and check ‘em out!

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…Disclaimer…

BlackSheep Adventure Sports was provided with a free sample of the Nitro Skylab TLS. This in no way affected our opinion or review of the boots. Though we strive to use kind language, we by no means have been under critical or over generous with compliments, or wet with our [attempted] humour.