@VtVolk I’ve never had the chance to try the Travers but I imagine they are pretty similar to the backlands. When conditions are good or when riding powder I also never had any issues with the riding feel of hardboots. It’s rather when conditions are bad as in icy or chundery snow that I feel the difference to the more cushy softboots. So I guess the additional dampening on the highback is a welcome support for my old legs. As to opening them up completely, I personally could not ride in hard snow without highback support. ..but maybe that’s just missing technique 🙂

@mcgo3 thanks for sharing your update on the mods, quite interesting! How do they feel on the way up? Although I did all of that on the TLT6 I am rather hesitant in cutting any slits or lowering the shell on the backlands, just because the backlands are already that much softer laterally (at least to me?!). This to the point where I see the difference in ankle support on more difficult approaches. Your boots look great for the way down, curious to hear how they perform when touring, also in more difficult (icy traverse as classic example) situations?

How does one post an image here? After two years of tooling on my Backlands, I think I have finally achieved a level of perfection such that I can call them a finished product. If some one can explain how to post pics here, I’ll post a detailed write up. Thanks.

Cheers.

CB wrote:

I’d recommend uploading the pics to a shared Google photos or imgur album and then sharing the link. You are welcome to add to the one I created here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/EyRvqSBwCoKdZaZ39 .

Alternatively you can upload your images to imgur.com/upload (or similar) and put the image url inside of an “img” tag using the button at the top of the edit box. The actual tag will look like:

Thanks dude, much appreciated.

That is one seriously modifeied boot. Great work, interesting approach.

More pics of what you did to the lowers would be cool.

A few days ago I bought the Atomic Backland Ultimate boots, the white and orange ones.
I think the Atomic Backland Ultimate is a really good boot for snowboarding because it has a lot of flex, specially lateral flex. I tried the Atomic Backland and the Backland Carbon and they have a lot less lateral flex. I tried the Scarpa F1 (a really comfortable boot) and Scarpa Alien and they have almost no lateral flexibility. I tried also the Salomon X-alp/Arterix Procltoine and there’s a lot of lateral flexibility in this boots, but I didn’t like the lower strap position and there’s no Phantom Link for them. I also tried the Dynafit Speedfit and they have no lateral flexibility and are heavier.
To me lateral flexibility it’s really important when snowboarding, maybe because I’ve been surfing for almost all my life, and I have a really good feeling with this boots. In my opinion you can really drop the knee to the inside, as you can see in the picture:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1rVKLrtks_H4vu4wrGM1R8ZDm28tn9BN3
Following the advice from the Phantom guys, I size up. My real boot size is 28, and I bougth the 29/29,5 Atomic Backland Ultimate. I’m trying to sell the original liners which are really thin to get some money back 🙂 , because they are really like socks.
Then I bought thick liners, the 28 size Dynafit Beast liners. I also tried the Dynafit Radical, but there wasn’t enough volume inside the boot to fit them.
After the memoryfit process (boots and liners), the boots where comfortable but not perfect.
I have big metatarsals (with sporadically Morton’s visits 🙁 ) and the 98mm narrow fit is not good for me. I went to a good professional boot fitter in Barcelona (Sasco esports) and now the internal metatarsal wide is 110mm. I’m now more comfortable with the AT boots than I’ve ever been with my snowboard boots Burton Tourist (even with a size up boot).
I have ridden 8 days with the boots without modifications and the top strap with almost the less tension possible. I really like the ride. They are awesome with good snow, and acceptable with Pyreenes shitty hard snow .
I’m thinking about changing the Backland Ultimate’s lower strap to the “frictionless pivot point” as some of you have done, but I don’t know if then the skinning mode gets worst. What do you think? Do you feel a big difference downhill with this strap modification?

Any way, I’m f****** happy with my Ultimate’s and I can’t wait to try the Phantom link next season.

I wouldn’t be so happy if it wasn’t for the Phantom Team and John Keffler patience and answers, and reading and reading again this forum.
Thank you family!

Iu hyu wrote:

I’m thinking about changing the Backland Ultimate’s lower strap to the “frictionless pivot point” as some of you have done, but I don’t know if then the skinning mode gets worst. What do you think? Do you feel a big difference downhill with this strap modification?

hey lu hyu,

i can only talk from my personal experience but I’ve been quite happy with moving the lever to the pivot point on the backlands. Unlike with the classic TLT mod where you put both sides on the pivot, I decided to only move the lever to the pivot and leave the little cable guide piece where it is. With my lever/cable size this mod even was possible without any alterations as cable length was just enough to mount and leave some play for tightening adjustments. The cable position (angle) over the instep is almost the same as if fixation would be mounted on both pivot points. And to be honest, I had it on both pivot points on the TLT6 and it made for an uncomfortable feeling (at least for me / my feet) when doing steep steps or very long strides, as the cable was cutting into the instep section. I don’t have this problem at all now and do think that the mod helps out a little with heel hold while still providing tension on the forefoot.

Edit: Realised only now that the Ultimate has a different shell buckle setup, so don’t know if my info is of much value to you.. I do know that I tried a setup once which had the forefoot completely loose without any buckle/cable and did not like it (don’t want to exchange heel-lift for toe-lift :)) but this depends a lot on personal preference it seems..

Hi everyone,

I need some advices. I have 2 pressures point with my backlands (with link levers), especially on my right foot ; I’m regular.

As you can see, it hurt me a bit 🙂

It come from the green area. Has anyone experienced this before?
I also feel a pressure point on the inner side of my tibias (blue area).

All help is welcome.
Thank you

Same here, I had similar pressure on the inside of my ankle bone only in descending mode.

Two things helped:

1. Ditch the stock liners. I went with Intuition Pro Tour Liners, and they are WAY thicker and provide way more padding. They are expensive and well worth it, I’m guessing would remove the pressure on that blue area. Once I got them molded, this partially solved the problem, however I still had some pressure on my ankle bone. So then…

2. I went had the same boot fitter that fitted my intuitions (Sturdevants in Bellevue, WA) and had them expand the plastic as much as possible where it curves in towards the ankle bone right above the pivot, essentially removing where the plastic was curving in on the lower cuff and causing pressure on the ankle bone. Right where your green circle is. There’s limited space to do this because how the upper cuff needs to pass over the lower cuff in move in walk mode, but they were able to expand/push out the lower cuff enough to completely remove ALL pressure on my inside ankle bones on both sides. They did this with a heat gun and ski boot cuff expander (different size cylindrical shaped things to hold the boot’s shape while it cooled down).

Potentially narrowing your stance a bit and altering angles would also remove some of that pressure, but I went through 1 & 2 above because that was not an acceptable solution for me, as I wanted my stance to mirror my inbounds soft-boot stance angles and width!