Dec 06 2012

Current conditions in Lake Tahoe

Wringing moisture from the sky. One minute it’s snow, the next it’s rain.

It’s been an interesting beginning to the Twelve-13 season. We have snow, but not the fluff of dreams. Went out with a buddy on a short tour above Incline Village the other day. It was a great hike under heavy clouds that continued to wring moisture down. There was snow on the summit and rain at the bottom. The sweat up was great. So were the turns back down.

There’s a lot of glum faces even though there is snow. Nobody wants the karmic curse of being ungrateful for what we do have but oh if that rain had been snow, wouldn’t that be a harvest worth exploiting with a few sick days. 😉
Keep making backcountry turns

Dec 04 2012

First Look: Fischer Ranger 12

 

Fischer Ranger alpine touring boot for 2012/13

Fischer’s AT boot: Ranger. $800
w/Heat moldable liner and SHELL!

Everyone is getting in to the backcountry these days with ski boots that offer some form of a walk mode. Most don’t have much range of motion, but compared to none, anything is a welcome improvement if you’re hiking for your turns, or just want a more comfortable walk to and from the lifts, or apres ski at the lodge.

What Fischer brings to the table is something radically different from all the other hike boots. It offers a thermomoldable shell. It’s a proprietary plastic called Vacuu-Plast. When heated to just 170° F it becomes easy to mold throughout the entire shell. Fischer uses a vacuum molding process that draws inside the shell, and squeezes from the outside with inflated pads. It cools to the touch quite normally, but the molecules don’t become “permanently” aligned for at least 48 hours, with the first 24 being the most critical. If necessary, it can be molded multiple times.
Keep making backcountry turns

Dec 03 2012

Review: Garmont’s Prophet for NTN

Garmont Prophet - NTN ski boot

The Prophet, Garmont’s boot offering
for the NTN system

As an in-bounds, freeride oriented tele system, Garmont’s Prophet is a solid choice for the boot side of the equation. As a backcountry oriented system, like the Freeride binding it was designed to work with, there are better choices available.

Prophet uses one of the classic ingredients of alpine boots, overlap construction to deliver a boot with a progressive flex in the cuff. As a result, the more you drive the turn with your lower leg, the more power you can coax out of the Prophet. With a locked heel that’s great. However, with a bellows, the cuff can easily overpower the bellows, making them collapse easily and quickly. That may be why Jason, a friend with extensive tele experience and acumen called the bellows of the Prophet “coffee filters.” That is not a universal response. Cascade Frank admitted the bellows were soft, but felt the quick collapse of the bellows allowed him to engage the power of the cuff faster and better, since it was tied to the lower shell.
Keep making backcountry turns

Nov 29 2012

Review: Garmont’s Excursion

 

Garmont Excursion

Excursion is an excellent lightweight tele boot for going the distance while rippin’ turns.


The Excursion is Garmont’s superlight touring boot. In days of old it came with a thermomoldable Gfit liner and weighed almost a pound less than a comparable pair of T4’s. Sadly, it now comes with a preformed, alpine style liner with little moldability. However, as one of the very few lightweight boots with some turning muscle it is a worthwhile investment. You can always substitute a moldable liner if you insist.

After skiing in four buckle monsters for a while, putting these on is like slipping into bedroom slippers, but with far more control than your average fuzzy moccasin. Able to squeak by surprising terrain, ski and speed challenges, the Excursion is most adept in consistent snow on lighter boards in mellow topography. There are individual exceptions to this rule of course, made easier if you pair it with a free pivoting cable binding like Voile’s Switchback, or a more powerful three pin like step-in toe of Burnt Mountain Design’s Spike.
Keep making backcountry turns

Nov 27 2012

Review: G3’s Onyx

 

G3’s Onyx. Easy to operate, less fiddling.

When the concept of the Onyx was first floated across my path it sounded enticing. After all, what’s not to like about taking the best features of the AT bindings out there and combining them into one binding. In case you’re wondering, that would be a lightweight binding that didn’t sap your strength while skinning, had an easy to operate mode switch and held you in solidly for aggressive downhill skiing with a reliable safety release.

To be sure that mix of qualities is bound to impose some compromise in at least some, if not all of those features. Which begs the question, did Onyx achieve that? It depends on what your priorities are, but based on the response of the alpine touring market so far, that would be a big en-oh, as in NO!

Did G3 misread the market, or simply not execute well? I’ll venture to say a bit of both, but perhaps more importantly, maybe they had the right idea, but poorly targeted marketing. Their reputation is with core backcountry skiers vis-a-vis the Targa binding, skis and climbing skins. After using the Onyx it appears to be perfectly aimed at the budding backcountry aficionado who doesn’t need to be fanatical about weight, doesn’t want any tech binding fiddle factor, and wants to trim excess binding blubber. IOW – not the hardcore backcountry skier – not yet anyway.

Does that mean Onyx doesn’t have any redeeming features? Hardly. Allow me to explain.
Keep making backcountry turns

Nov 24 2012

Video Review: PW’s Chose Your Adventure

 

CYA delivers deeper meaning to ski porn.

Okay, I’ll admit I was wrong about ski vids. Well, not most of ’em. Most of ’em are just more time spent watching someone else skiing while I’m not. I can’t afford to spend that much leisure time watching any sort of video, let alone a ski video. On the otherhand, when I do bother to sit down to video out they can be the perfect escape – which pretty much sums up the latest flick from the PowderWhore crew – Chose Your Adventure.
Keep making backcountry turns

Nov 19 2012

Review: Rottefella’s NTN Freedom

Rottefella's NTN Freedom

NTN Freedom – open wide for willing,
compatible boots.

At first glance Rottefella’s Freedom binding pretty much rocks. It shares the heritage of NTN’s trademark superb control, both in forward resistance and edge hold, although in the case of the Freedom, less is more ‐ meaning a notch less tele-resistänçe gives a wider sweet spot – mo’ betta’ in deep snow.

Depending on the rest of your priorities, it pretty much rocks there as well. Though it isn’t DIN or TUV certified, it does offer a safety release that appears to work pretty well and which might, incidentally save your butt in the backcountry someday but I’ll save the details on that for later. What is bound to be most appealing though is how doggone easy it is to get in and out of.
Keep making backcountry turns

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