At Outdoor Retailer in January, surrounded by the hubbub of thousands of people and products, I sat perfectly still. I couldn’t move. My feet were strapped into Tecnica’s custom heat-molding machine as I endured being fitted for a test pair of the Tecnica Forge GTX hiking boots. First, Tecnica product manager Federico Sbrissa heated the boot’s insoles to 180 degrees Fahrenheit. When I stepped onto them with socks on, they felt comfortably warm, not hot.

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