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The Head Kaliber Pro LV sits on the workbench like a piece of technical climbing gear that wandered into the wrong sport. Cable routes through the lower shell in a configuration that suggests someone either knows exactly what they’re doing or has made a spectacular mistake. Both BOA dials – the round plastic knobs that have become skiing’s most divisive equipment innovation since shaped skis – live on the upper cuff. Not one on top and one on the bottom like every other dual BOA boot on the market. Both on top.
The cable routing required to make this work looks like a pulley system designed by someone who really, really wanted to prove a point. Which, in a way, it is.
Head says this solves a problem: when expert skiers lay trenches at extreme edge angles, a BOA dial mounted on the lower shell becomes vulnerable to impact damage. Shear it off mid-run and you’re skiing the rest of the day in a boot that won’t stay closed. Move both dials to the cuff, Head argues, and you protect the system while maintaining independent adjustment of forefoot and shin.
The question isn’t whether this works in theory. The question is whether anyone outside of a very specific slice of the skiing population will ever encounter the problem Head is solving.
To answer that, we need to understand how we got here.
The Dial That Changed Everything
Gary Hammerslag didn’t set out to revolutionize ski boots. He set out to fix his kids’ snowboard boots in 1997, borrowing from his medical device background to create a micro-adjustable dial connected to a steel cable. By 2001, K2 and Vans had partnered with his new company, BOA Technology, to launch the first snowboard boots with the system: turn the dial clockwise to tighten in 0.25mm increments, pull it out to release tension entirely.
The system spread quickly through snowboarding, cycling, hiking, and eventually ski touring boots. But alpine ski boots remained stubbornly buckled. The reasoning was simple: buckles had worked since 1954. Why fix what isn’t broken?
The answer: buckles weren’t broken, but they created focused pressure points rather than even distribution. Overtighten them and you crush circulation. Leave them too loose and you lose control. BOA offered a different approach – wrap rather than clamp, with a cable constructed from 19 strands of stainless steel wrapped in 90 more, capable of handling forces exceeding 250 kilograms.
But bringing this to alpine boots required convincing an industry built on tradition that change was worth the risk.
Breaking Through: BOA Enters Alpine Territory
In February 2023, K2 made the call. The Recon 120 BOA became the first alpine ski boot to replace its lower buckles with a BOA dial. Three years of development, over 50,000 hours of testing, and a completely new BOA platform – dubbed H+i1 – engineered specifically for alpine skiing forces.
Early adopters split into camps. Converts praised the even wrap and elimination of hot spots. Skeptics complained about losing independent zones – with buckles, you could tighten the toe area differently than the instep, but BOA pulled the entire lower shell as one unit.
The market spoke. By fall 2023, Atomic, Salomon, Fischer, and others had launched their own single-BOA models. The argument shifted from “do we need BOA?” to “where else can we use it?”
The answer arrived in January 2025: everywhere.
The Dual BOA Wave
K2 and Salomon launched their dual BOA boots on the same day, taking the logical next step. If one BOA dial improved the lower shell, why not add a second to the upper cuff? The standard configuration split the dials between lower and upper – one for the forefoot, one for the shin. Independent zones of adjustment, zero buckles.
Industry positioning evolved to match. Brands began messaging that lower BOA was about convenience, but upper BOA was about performance. The cuff dial provided superior shin contact and leg control. Bootfitters, initially skeptical, started coming around. The cuff BOA solved a genuine problem: matching the boot shaft to the natural taper of the lower leg. Testers described it as mechanical advantage, comparing the cable routing to compound bows – configurations designed to close loose areas more effectively than tight ones.
Head joined with their Kaliber MV BOA2, following the industry-standard split configuration. The boot earned praise from bootfitters, who called it Head’s best medium-volume boot ever.
But Head wasn’t done iterating.
Both Dials, One Location
The Kaliber Pro LV BOA2, announced for the 2027 model year, breaks from the dual BOA playbook. While every other dual BOA boot splits the dials between lower shell and upper cuff, the Pro LV mounts both dials on the cuff. The lower shell gets closed by cables routed from above.
Head’s logic: racers and expert skiers achieving extreme edge angles risk shearing off a lower-mounted BOA dial when they dig trenches deep enough to make contact. Remove that vulnerability by relocating both dials to the cuff, where they’re less exposed.
The Pro LV – built on a low-volume 98mm last compared to the standard Kaliber’s 100mm – targets expert and race-level skiers who need maximum performance. The bi-injected shell uses stiffer plastic in the rear spine for power and softer plastic over the forefoot to work with the BOA wrap. The Synapse Pro liner incorporates graphene for temperature regulation.
The cable routing is, to put it mildly, involved. Both dials sit on the cuff, but each controls a different zone. Cables snake through guide channels, cross at multiple points, and require careful routing to avoid interference when the boot flexes.
Head says the system works. Bootfitter Mark Elling argued that cuff BOA provides “a genuine performance advantage” through secure, even grip on the lower leg that improves control.
But is Head solving a problem most skiers will ever have?
The Cost of Refinement
Let’s talk about money, because equipment costs matter.
The dual BOA boots that exist today – Head’s Kaliber 130 MV BOA2, K2’s Cortex, Salomon’s S/Pro Supra – run between $750 and $950. Compare this to traditional buckle equivalents at $600-700, and you’re looking at a 20-40% premium.
For some skiers, this is money well spent – if you’ve struggled for years with buckle pressure points, if you have a high instep that traditional boots can’t accommodate, the BOA premium might solve problems worth more than $200-300.
For others, it’s a solution in search of a problem. Buckles work fine if the boot fits properly. Skilled bootfitters have been achieving good fits with buckle boots for decades.
And for Head’s both-on-cuff configuration – pricing not yet announced, but likely at or above $950 – you’re paying for protection against a failure mode most skiers will never encounter. Unless you’re regularly laying the boot over far enough to make contact with snow or gates, the vulnerability of a lower-mounted dial isn’t your problem.
This is innovation at the margins. Ski equipment has reached a point where meaningful gains come in increments, not leaps. The improvements are real, but they’re narrow. And they’re expensive.
What We Actually Know
Here’s the honest accounting of what the Head Kaliber dual BOA delivers, based on testing of the standard MV model (the Pro LV hasn’t been tested beyond previews).
The bootfitter consensus: it works. America’s Best Bootfitters test team put the Kaliber 130 MV BOA2 at the top of the dual BOA category. The cuff BOA wrapped the lower leg evenly regardless of calf taper. The fit quality is high, the performance is strong, and the boot handles everything from frozen groomers to late-season powder without feeling outmatched.
What we don’t know yet: how the Pro LV’s both-on-cuff configuration actually feels, whether the cable routing creates issues during flex or entry, and whether the protection against lower dial damage justifies the trade-offs.
Who This Is Actually For
Let’s be direct: the Kaliber Pro LV BOA2 isn’t for most skiers. It’s for a specific subset of expert and race-oriented skiers who push equipment hard enough that edge angle and impact protection become legitimate concerns.
The Pro LV makes sense for racers and former racers who still ski with race-boot intensity, expert skiers who regularly achieve extreme edge angles, and low-volume feet (98mm last) that need high-performance options. Everyone else can benefit from dual BOA without the both-on-cuff configuration.
And for those still unconvinced that BOA solves problems worth paying for, plenty of traditional buckle boots remain excellent and cost less.
Where This Goes Next
Three years ago, the debate was whether BOA belonged in alpine boots at all. Now the debate is about optimal dial placement. This represents either progress or mission creep, depending on your perspective.
What’s certain: BOA isn’t disappearing. Too many brands have invested too heavily, and too many skiers have found legitimate benefits.
Whether other brands follow Head’s both-on-cuff approach remains to be seen. The irony is worth noting: Head developed this system to protect against impact damage at extreme edge angles, but the skiers most likely to achieve those angles – World Cup racers – remain stubbornly committed to buckles. Austrian racer Vincent Kriechmayr trained in a dual BOA boot but didn’t race in it. As former Olympic champion Benni Raich noted: “If someone wins a race with it, then we will have change.”
Until that happens, BOA remains a recreational technology with racing aspirations, no matter how sophisticated the engineering becomes.
The Mountain Doesn’t Care
The Kaliber Pro LV BOA2 will make expert skiers slightly better at the margins. The margins matter when you’re laying trenches at 60-degree edge angles, when small advantages compound into meaningful performance gains.
The best boot, as always, is the one that fits your foot, matches your skiing style, and doesn’t bankrupt you in the process. Whether that boot has zero BOA dials or two BOA dials on the cuff matters far less than whether you can actually ski in it without pain or distraction.
The mountains remain indifferent to dial placement. They just sit there, waiting to be skied, regardless of whether you close your boots with buckles, cables, or some future system we haven’t imagined yet.
