The 2023 Blister Summit: ZipFit's Recap

Chris, Jeff, Turner Petersen, and Giray Dadali convened in Crested Butte for the week long event to showcase the ZipFit line up, offer liners for skiers to demo, and ski our faces off. What a week for it! The mountain was in phenomenal shape, with steady snow leading up to the summit and more snow during the week. Blister managed to bring in both world class athletes and ski enthusiasts who live and breathe skiing and gear. The combination brewed up a contagious energy that translated to stoke trains on the slopes and all time discussions in the lodge.

We showed up with our heating stack, a boot heater, some OMFit cork kits, and 50 pairs of ZipFit ski boot liners. Our goal: to give anyone who was interested an opportunity to ski in ZipFits for a couple of runs.

Our first morning of conversations and interest quickly led to a boot fitting schedule, demo check out list, and what seemed like 10 hours of continuous boot fitting for Jeff and Chris. What’s more, every skier who demoed a pair of liners told their friends about it and soon we had a list that extended through the end of the summit and included pro skiers for other brands, ski patrollers, school teachers playing hooky, and plenty of Blister Magazine staffers.

We had to tell Giray and Turner that we would need some additional assistance in the boot and they appropriately pushed back and met our request with their own, that we all get out and ski together at least one morning.

In the evenings, we tried to catch a few of the summit speaker panels in between boot fittings for the following morning. One highlight was looking up during an athlete panel and realizing that of the five speakers on stage, three were skiing in ZipFits. During another panel, four of the four speakers on stage ski ZipFits.

Giray Dadali was part of a panel on binding design, speaking about the past, present and future of ski bindings and his company Daymaker. Additional, friend of ZipFit Christoph Lentz was part of a discussion on ski boots that included the new Fischer RC4 Pro with a ZipFit liner.

We highly recommend you check out the Pro Skiers and Snowboarders: Stories from the Field video for some of the best Rory Bushfield stories we’ve heard.

On the final day of the summit, anticipation for another epic part of the mountain to open up had everyone out on the slopes. If our memory serves us well, CB loc-dawg Turner Peterson probably said something like:

”My dudes, they never open Teo three dawgs. It’s gonna be so epic. Last time I skied this line was when I was in the junior comp and Lars was judging the comp and now I’m gonna get to go smear some cream off the triple stack from staircase to body bag with Lars! This is gonna be the best day of my life. My mom is not gonna believe it. Can you believe I met Hoji?”

So yeah. Stoke was at an all time high. But, it was a cold morning and avy control took a bit longer than expected, which resulted in a group of superstar big mountain skiers ripping groomers like they were about to ski the Hahnenkamm. Christoph Lentz captured a fun video of the crew, including previous FWT champions, NCAA all Americans, Ski movie legends, and a couple of brand chumps.

All of this to say, the Blister Summit is an amazing experience. Blister and Crested Butte do a fantastic job curating a week of skiing, discussion, demoing, and fun. We are already looking forward to next years… Speaking of which, sign up:

Blister Summit 2024