Category: Gear

First Look: Ion – G3’s take 2 on Tech

  G3 unveiled their new tech binding to the world today, Ion, to be available next autumn, 2014. More than just a follow up act to the Onyx, their much dismissed first foray in the tech binding world, the Ion addresses shortcomings in the tech binding world that clearly needed a fresh engineering perspective. Until …

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Review: La Sportiva’s Spectre

When you first lay eyes on La Sportiva’s Spectre you can’t help but think this is a specialized rando race boot. The svelte marketing photos do nothing to prevent that view. Considering it weighs around 3 pounds per boot (mondo size 26.5) and has a huge cuff ROM for longer strides while walking or skinning …

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Revelation with NTN

  Sometimes you need to make a wrong turn to know what the right way is. Or as National Lampoon pointed out several years ago, two wrong (left) turns don’t make a right, but three do. Such, it seemed, was my experience with the New Telemark Norm (NTN) system. But all is well that ends …

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First Look: Fritschi Diamir’s Vipec 12

  The new Vipec 12 from Fritschi Diamir appears poised to follow through on what G3 threatened to do – upset the landscape of the two-pin tech binding world dominated since inception by its founder, Dynafit. Two things separate this binding from the majority of tech bindings that are proliferating in the market. Elasticity to …

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Review: Thule’s EasyFit Tire Chains

  Last winter I was introduced to Thule’s Easy-Fit Tire Chains. The idea sounds almost too good to be true. Even if the voluptuously enticing YouTube video of a bikini clad lass putting them on makes you wonder if they’re trying to pull one over on you, that same video evidence shows that they are …

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Review: G-Form Knee Pads

updated 3may14 When you’re the minority player in the arena, you work with the leftovers and adapt products from other sports that are more popular. Such is the case of the telemarker looking for knee pads. When you’re dropping a knee, it’s not a matter of if you bash your knee on a rock, stump, …

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Review: Nordica’s Hell and Back

  Nordica first introduced the Steadfast and the Hell and Back a couple of years ago. At the time they were one of the first companies to heavily tout the lightweight “sidecountry” ski concept. Those two models have evolved into Nordica’s two best selling skis despite the nichey market position that they billed it as …

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