Category: Gear

Outlaw NTN updates for 2016

As a beta binding you expect some failures. Even when manufacturers don’t acknowledge it, like with first year bindings, it isn’t realistic to expect no problems. It’s worth repeating, 22 Design’s transparency with beta status deserves a medal. With any luck, that medal will be evident with a trouble-free launch and healthy sales of what …

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Waxless Metal-edged Ski Roundup

  It was over a decade ago that Fischer broke the mold with waxless metal edged skis when they introduced their S-Bound series. In the interim, Karhu pushed the envelope with their 78mm wide Guide, then Voile picked up the ball where Karhu left it, and kept expanding the waistline to 115mm with their Charger …

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PR: AvaTech launches crowd sourced AvaNet

Editors Note: The following press release comes from Backbone Media, Avatech’s public relations firm. Ordinarily I’d rewrite the information a bit, but this is a fairly straight forward announcement of a software platform that has the potential to dramatically improve the understanding of the snowpack in regions that we like to ski. The key to …

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Inserts: Weak link of the 2-Pin Tech System

  What started out as a simple test of the Meidjo, a telemark binding with a 2-pin toe and NTN clamp, turned into an investigation of tech toe inserts and what makes them good or bad. Tech systems are an interaction of components on a petite scale, so small variations can have big consequences. While …

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Tele Gear for Newbies

  There’s a really good chance you’ll think of my advice on picking gear for telemarking as just another died in the wool leatherneck recommending old-fashioned values just because that’s the way he did it. You’d be right, except that everyone I’ve ever seen who could tele well, all of ’em, had to go through …

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Review: Volkl’s VTA88

Even with a pair of one of the heaviest alpine tech bindings mounted to them, Marker’s Kingpin, Volkl’s new VTA88 is a bonafide welterweight. Without bindings you might even consider them to be featherweight, but that would suggest an absence of muscle that in reality, the VTA has no shortage of. Think of the VTA88 …

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Scott to add tech inserts to Voodoo