I am a telemark skier who is filling out my gear quiver with AT gear. After receiving tons of silly and not so silly advice and a lot of "don't knows" this is what I discovered about these boots: I am an aggressive skier and they are plenty stiff, especially after telemarking for so long. I have narrow feet and high insteps, the boots are quite a bit wider than my women's specific Scarpa boots and needed some doctoring, even after foot beds and heating the thermo fit liner. I wish the boot came in 1/2 sizes, 25.0 seems a little bigger than my 25.0 Scarpa tele boots. The first buckle on the toe is very hard to unbuckle, it buckles in opposition to the other three and there is not enough purchase to get a good grip on it, thank goodness for good partners. The boot is light, has great traction on skree or hard snow. They seem fairly agile when I skip across the knife edge ridge that accesses the slack country associated with our resort. I maybe doing something wrong but the boot does not soften up as much as would be ideal when switched into walk mode. I also wish the boot came in 1/2 sizes, 25.0 seems a little bigger than my 25.0 Scarpa tele boots.