"Honestly these things are fire."
The first snowboarder ever to take home an Olympic Gold Medal in Men’s Slopestyle, Sage Kotsenburg is not only one of the best freestyle snowboarders but also one of the most remarkable individuals and best humans to have ever slipped sideways down a mountain. Hailing from Park City, Utah, this well-decorated park snowboarding superstar has since turned his attention to new limits and elevated experiences, rewriting the script for backcountry freestyle riding and bringing his high-impact, highly creative style to larger landscapes.
Sage’s signature snowboard boot, the Orton, is designed for high-performance riders pushing their limits. Redesigned for 2025, the Orton packs power with top-shelf technology and next-level design. Equipped with a dual-zone H4/M3 BOA fit system and snowboarding-specific TX3 lacing, it represents the pinnacle of BOA innovation, benefiting from over two decades of industry-leading design and development. The Orton’s ergonomically articulating Flex Zone paneling provides essential support while moving with your body. A definitive update on the new Orton is the one-piece rubber lower, which eliminates seams from the toe to the heel, ensuring extreme durability and complete waterproofing. Additional notable features include an asymmetrical lace cover that keeps snow out, a Harshmellow Pro footbed atop a Vibram V5 outsole (also infused with Harshmellow foam), and a heat-moldable Intuition Pro Foam 3D liner with Space Heater technology and sustainably sourced S’Cafe Coffee Mesh lining, keeping your feet cozy while reducing unwanted après-shred odors.
Sage recalls his beginnings with the Orton, “The original Orton was a stiff boot meant for hard-charging, long days, riding fast, and going big. It was a great boot, but it just wore down a bit quicker than we wanted it to, and there were a few other things that I wanted to do with it. When we started reconstructing the Orton, the word we used most was durable. We wanted a durable boot that could last me an entire season and hopefully way longer for the general consumer. I like to break in a boot and don’t want to change them out more than I need to. So, we took everything we liked about the original Orton; the existing outsole was great, for example, so that and the footbed stayed the same, but we reconstructed everything from there up, so now, from the whole toe cap to the back of the boot it’s one solid piece; so there are no seams up front that can rip or break or give you weird pressure points, and it’s 100% water resistant. We added in the lace cover boot gaiter piece, too. The main things we honed in on were being able to hang on long days, keeping the snow out, and just lasting. With the new construction and materials, it's the most durable boot I've had. One pair lasts me pretty much the whole season. I probably put 150 days on that boot, where in the past, I would have put 40, maybe 50 days on a pair of boots. I’m riding a lot, and I’m riding hard. Generally, I’d been going through at least two, maybe three pairs of boots a season, and now I’m down to one.”
At K2, we are passionate about raising the bar and continually improving the quality of our products, and with that, longevity is a major factor. We aim to ensure that everything we make serves its purpose on day one and over time while minimizing the need for replacement. This means a dedication to durable and efficient solutions that reduce environmental impacts. By focusing on functionality along with lifespan, we hope to foster a mindful approach to thoughtful production and consumption, emphasizing quality over quantity and developing environmentally friendly and economically viable products that rip. This approach guides innovation in design and development that supports a more circular economy, with resources being used wisely and responsibly, taking steps toward a better, more sustainable future.
Good ideas can come from the most unassuming places; Michael Rauenbeuhler, K2 Boot Development Engineer and avid PNW shredder, articulates the beginnings of the Orton experience from his side, “We were working on the first iteration right as Sage was getting on the program—an all-mountain, stiffer, zonal boot. When Sage came on, that was his boot from the go. He ran it for a couple of years, and then we started on round two a couple of years ago. This will be the third iteration. The Orton has always been a high-end, high-performance boot, but around the same time as we were looking at redesigning it, we had also developed a rubber toe for one of our lower-end boots, a rental boot actually, and when we got that boot back, I was like, wow, this thing is sick. I would run this as a regular boot if it didn’t look like a rental boot [laughter]. The toe of the new boot is one piece of rubber, eliminating seams and stitching and keeping it 100% waterproof. I was also wearing muck boots a lot at the time, just super utilitarian boots. Getting in and out of your snowboard boots in the Pacific Northwest … can be pretty swampy. So rubber boots are sick and functional; why not take this into more of our snowboard boots? So we did.” As simple as it sounds, the one-piece rubber toe is a first-of-its-kind in snowboarding and ultimately creates a warm, dry, comfortable, and durable boot.
The Orton’s precision BOA dials are laced up with TX3, a softer lace explicitly made for snowboarding that provides a more even fit over the body of the boot shell than the steel lace option. Michael expands, “It’s a static rope, so there is no flex to it, but it has a more natural feel than steel, and it's stronger than steel in terms of tensile pull strength. Tensile is a strength measurement used to gauge the strength of any material pulling on straight on, end to end. Shear would be if you tried to rip it, and tensile is just straight pulling; if you were to keep hanging weights on it until it snapped—that’s tensile strength.” Sage elaborates on his takeaways from TX3, “I feel like the TX3 lace is a little bit gentler. They’re stiff and strong, and the hold is solid—when you cinch ‘em down, they’re not going anywhere, but something about 'em feels less mechanical. A little less rigid. The Dual Zone ones are a game changer for me. When I’m riding and doing a line or going down an NST [Natural Selection Tour] run, dude, my boots are fucking cinched, but then I’ll unlace them at the bottom super quick just like a quarter of the way while I’m chilling, and then I’ll crank ‘em back down at the top. I feel like a lot of people are doing that now—cranking shit down exactly how you want it before dropping in, and then popping them off and getting some blood flow back to the feet afterward. I ride my boots so tight that I’m always adjusting my dials. I love it.”
Dialing in the details, Michael breaks down the dual-zone H4/M3 BOA Fit System: "The Orton is a dual-zone boot, which means two BOA reels work together but operate independently. There’s a high-power BOA reel on the outside, which controls the lower half, then a high-power BOA reel on the tongue, which controls the upper half—the reel on the tongue is also self-retracting, which is a really nice feature. These high-end BOA components flow better and hold stronger than the other offerings. They're the highest-end reels currently available from BOA.” The benefits of higher-end BOA are more confident locking, a more adjustable fit and feel, and general ease of use. Michael continues, “On boots with a lower power reel, in the lower zone, for example, I felt like I didn't quite have enough closing power there. These upgraded reels have a lot of closing power, more than you need. Or if you have a low-volume foot, they'll suck up enough of the boot that it'll form around that lower-volume foot.”
Expanding on the benefits of the Orton’s BOA fit system, Michael continues, “One of the nice things with the double BOA boots is you can be on top of something scary or serious and put your feet into ride mode—do the extra clicks, check your bindings, take those breaths, and drop in. Of course, you're not thinking about how your feet feel while riding because you’re so focused and tuned in; you notice it more at the bottom. So you get to the bottom, undo the binding to get on the lift, and undo the BOAs a bit at the same time. Or maybe you're going for a hike; if you're moving like that, loosening them up a bit is nice. With lace boots, you’re adjusting or re-tying what seems like at least once or twice a day, and it’s a pain. You can do it every lap with BOA, and it’s so easy. So now you're dialing in the fit and feel of your boots throughout the whole day whereas, with the lace boots, it's like, okay, we stopped for lunch, I'm gonna untie my boots, give my feet a break, and then I'm gonna tie ‘em back up.”
You can’t control the elements, but having the right product can significantly affect their impact on your day. Sage continues, touching on the crucial topic of temperature, “Say it’s a brick cold day in Jackson in the winter, with a long lift line, I’ll undo them in the line to get the blood going back to the feet, then you're getting close to the chair, and it's like click click done. I rock with them heavily. Having cold feet was always gnarly; I get cold feet pretty bad. That was something I dealt with a lot back in the day, and it's not something I really think about anymore. Between unlacing the BOAs and the other tech, honestly, these things are fire.”
The Orton’s precision BOA dials are laced up with TX3, a softer lace explicitly made for snowboarding that provides a more even fit over the body of the boot shell than the steel lace option. Michael expands, “It’s a static rope, so there is no flex to it, but it has a more natural feel than steel, and it's stronger than steel in terms of tensile pull strength. Tensile is a strength measurement used to gauge the strength of any material pulling on straight on, end to end. Shear would be if you tried to rip it, and tensile is just straight pulling; if you were to keep hanging weights on it until it snapped—that’s tensile strength.” Sage elaborates on his takeaways from TX3, “I feel like the TX3 lace is a little bit gentler. They’re stiff and strong, and the hold is solid—when you cinch ‘em down, they’re not going anywhere, but something about 'em feels less mechanical. A little less rigid. The Dual Zone ones are a game changer for me. When I’m riding and doing a line or going down an NST [Natural Selection Tour] run, dude, my boots are fucking cinched, but then I’ll unlace them at the bottom super quick just like a quarter of the way while I’m chilling, and then I’ll crank ‘em back down at the top. I feel like a lot of people are doing that now—cranking shit down exactly how you want it before dropping in, and then popping them off and getting some blood flow back to the feet afterward. I ride my boots so tight that I’m always adjusting my dials. I love it.”
The warm, comfortable, customizable Intuition Pro Foam liner in the Orton is our most luxurious and supportive liner. It features our breathable, heat-reflective Space Heater technology for added warmth. Michael details the next-level lining: “The Space Heater lining material is like one of those metallic-looking space blankets or emergency blankets in the liner. It's a reflective silver mesh lining that acts as a breathable little space blanket for your foot. It works with the lining under the footbed to efficiently retain and recirculate body heat.” Comfort is king; Sage co-signs, “Straight up, the Intuition liners make my feet happy. Once you heat mold them, your foot fits perfectly. A nice fitting boot and liner helps me ride longer.” The 3-Point Harness wrapped around the Intuition liner in the Orton is a traditional liner harness with a pull lace and three contact points that hug the ankle to provide additional support and unrivaled stability, helping to reduce fatigue. Michael expands, “It's a traditional three-point harness and the tallest one out of all of our boots, so your inner liner retention feeling of snugness is more prominent on this boot than on any of our other boots, which I find super helpful. This way, it’s not just getting tight around the ankle; it also tightens up towards the shin. You want support in a high-performance freeride boot and if you’re riding steeper, faster mountains like we have up here in Washington.”
The Orton uses Vibram’s V5 compound with Ecostep rubber with Harshmellow pods under the toe and heel to reduce noise underfoot for its outsole, the perfect combination of sustainability and performance. This provides traction, dampening, vibration absorption, support, and stability and uses 30% reground waste rubber. Michael elaborates, “We partner with Vibram for the rubber compound, but we still design the outsole. You see Vibram on all sorts of footwear, and it wasn't until I was doing this stuff that I learned it's just the rubber compound itself, not the whole outsole. Some people even think Vibram is a shoe company, but they focus solely on developing and supplying the rubber compound. We use Vibram’s EcoStep recycled compound. All the speckles in the outsole are little bits of waste rubber that are off-trimmed from other outsoles during production and then get recycled and mixed in with the virgin rubber to form the EcoStep compound. The Vibram outsoles are very durable and have great abrasion resistance. We've been running it on our higher-end boots for a while now.”
Michael highlights the custom Vibram outsole’s unique tread pattern and the thinking behind it: “The pattern comes down to creating smart spacing between the blocks. Snow on snow grip is actually pretty good. If you look at snow tires, for example, they’re slightly more spaced out because they're designed to fill up with snow. The other thing is to get as many different hard angles as possible, and if you look closely at the tread pattern on the sole, you'll see they're all facing different directions. Those are the big things going into the tread design and getting the right grip. From there, it's a balance of aesthetics and placement.” If you think about it big picture, snowboarding really comes down to aesthetics and placement.
Exceptional dampening and vibration absorption in the Orton are primarily provided by strategically placed pieces of Harshmellow foam; Michael articulates the benefits of the trademarked tech: “We’re always developing and integrating our proprietary technologies. Harshmallow foam is an energy-absorbing foam that's slightly damper than standard foam and is encapsulated throughout the sole. If you were to drop a ping-pong ball or a ball bearing on the Harshmellow foam, it wouldn't bounce very high, whereas if you were to drop the same thing on the more standard EVA—which is integrated throughout the rest of the outsole for structure—it would bounce a lot higher. By including the Harshmellow in key places and balancing out the use of the different foams together, we’re working to reduce the impact vibrations that your feet feel all day on the hill.” Snowboarding is bumpy—less work for your feet means less work for you, and comfortable feet equal a better snowboarding experience.
We have two primary goals for everything that we do at K2. One is to design and develop the best possible snowboarding equipment that we can so that you can have the best possible time out there doing what you love. Another is to transparently design, develop, and deliver that product in a way that negatively impacts the environment as little as possible. Both are challenging goals, and both are unflexible. One positive advancement is S’Cafe, a mesh layer incorporated into the Intuition Pro liner that absorbs moisture, curbs odor, and is made from old coffee grounds. Michael expounds, “S’Cafe is made from post-consumer recycled coffee beans. It looks and works like any other mesh, but it's half coffee grounds that are ground into a pulp that the fibers are made from. Those fibers become a string, and that string becomes a fabric. The fabric has good natural moisture-wicking properties thanks to the coffee beans. By making that change and incorporating S’Cafe in that way, we could remove the use of anti-mold chemical spray on the inside, which is great. So, we got rid of the spray, and it does an amazing job. It’s just half made from coffee beans instead of nylons and plastics.”
With a wide range of boots for all styles, abilities, and preferences, Michael had this to say about his rider recommendation for the Orton: “The Orton is for somebody who snowboards pretty avidly, somebody who is getting 30 plus days in a season. It's a high-end freeride, freestyle-oriented boot. For flex, we rate it at an eight out of ten, so it’s not a ski boot, but it’s pretty stiff out of the box. It breaks in nicely and holds up, but it's not geared for the rider who’s only going up a handful of times a season or the rider who's more focused on rails and stuff; it’s more powder and all-mountain-oriented. When designing and developing this boot, we were thinking about riders who are boot-packing, maybe snowmobiling, or split-boarding. The Orton’s category would be aggressive, hard-charging freestylers and freeriders.”
From the best parks to the tallest peaks and everything in between, the Orton works for Sage. With the amount of focus and energy going into his riding, Sage requires a lot out of his products. He needs to be tuned into himself and his environment and focus less on his gear's fit, function, or performance. The Orton is supportive and flexible in all the right places. He can lean into the boot when he needs to draw more power out of his board while having freedom of movement exactly where he needs it. It cranks down on the fly and loosens up in a cinch. For Sage, the Orton is the connection point between him and the board. The better that connection, the better the power transfer and the more the board begins to feel and act like an extension of the body. The better that connection is, the less stress your body feels from your feet up to your brain, enabling you to put more focus and energy into riding your line.