One of the metal edges cracked after lotsa years on my favorite skis, so I’m about to buy a new pair.

All my AT boots are Dynafit-compatible. I own a pair of light skis with Dynafit and a pair of mid-weight skis with Fritschi, so I know I can make either kind work. I ski mainly backcountry.

I’m probably missing some point which is important for my decision about which binding to choose—which someone can tell me about.

So here’s my thinking so far . . .

(a) release safety:
Important for me. Two of my most frequent ski partners have broken their legs skiing on Alpine Touring bindings, one on Dynafit, one on Silvretta 404. Fortunately both were quickly rescued with mechanized transport—but I ski lots of times in situations where that might not happen for me. 

I like feeling that I can ski crud and crust confidently without endangering my legs. When I’m at a ski resort, I look forward to skiing bumps—and I find myself doing that more days a year, either with Sharon, or when training by skinning up a groomed trail.

I find that my Fritschi has lots more “travel-and-return” range of motion (esp. lateral, also vertical) than my Dynafit. Seems like I can ski crud + bumps at a much lower setting on my Fritschis without getting lots of releases.

It might be that the Dynafit has as good a release-safety capability as the Fritschi, but I don’t think that was the main design goal of the (brilliant) Dynafit design. And it seems like the community of Dynafit users has a much higher percentage of skiers who don’t care as much about release safety.

(b) weight
I do think weight attached to the feet is significant. But it’s not so important any more for me. Because I skin up on lots of days, so my legs get accustomed to the extra weight. And in pre-season I do workouts with weights around my ankles, so the specific muscles which need to lift the extra weight of ski + skin + boot + binding get specifically trained.

So for me, while the extra weight of a Fritschi binding over Dynafit surely slows me down a little, it’s not a major “bottleneck” for my climbing performance. I’ve had no problem doing single-day ascents of major peaks on my Fritschis—e.g. Mt Whitney, Mont Blanc, Dome de Neige des Ecrins.

I doubt the extra weight slows me down more than 3%, so for a long climb of say 8 hours, that’s 15 minutes. I don’t find it a big problem to set my alarm 15-30 minutes earlier.

(c) harscheisen / couteaux / “ski crampons”
The basic Fritschi have performed great for me in all kinds of situations: breakable crust, refrozen springtime hardpack, a little fresh snow over old hard windpack. Beautifully engineered to provide just the right amount of surface penetration, just when it’s needed. (Somebody gave me a pair of the new “convertible” Fritschi harscheisen, but I never tried them, because the “basic” ones have been so trustworthy.)
It’s been a lot of years since I’ve used my Dynafit harscheisen, and I assume they work well—and they surely are less bulky + lighter than my Fritschi. (Unlike the Frischis, they might drag in the snow between steps?)

(d) kick-turns
I’ve found the Fritschi Explorer + Diamir bindings are well balanced and designed for making quick low-energy kick-turns—as are Dynafit. (Why so many Fritschi users do not learn to use them to make quick efficient conversions, I do not know.)

(e) social
Seems like about half my partners are on Fritschi, half on Dynafit.  With no particular correlation of Dynafit versus Fritschi to faster versus slower. I’m not a racer, and I don’t see ski-rando racers very often in the places I ski.

So what am I missing?

Ken

Not much!

I find Fritchi bindings more robust and infinintely more adjustable e.g. easy to set up to different boots etc.

I have managed to break my Dynafit bindings twice. First time the internal mech had to be replaced. Second time the metal frame fixing the toe to the ski broke in half - Dynafit insisted on having the binding returned to them so I was without light weight skis for 10 days in the middle of the season.

Only other thin I have noticed is that getting on skis on very steep ground is easier with Fritchi.

All your arguments are sound and you seem to want to get Diamirs and are double checking you are doing the right thing, which you probably are. Are you re using existing Explores because otherwise it’s the Eagle for you. Which is not as tried and tested as the Explore but I have heard nothing untoward about it so far.

I have just gone the other way and fitted Vertical STs on my new K2s. I don’t disagree with the points you have raised but have no concerns about release or pre release with the Verticals so far.

I think the best point you raised is about kick turns. It was years before I learnt to do a proper kick turn and am now showing all my mates how to do them properly. Next year I am going to make a 5 min youtube about it and put it on my site. It makes such a difference.

Stu

Thanks for the point about Eagle versus Explore.
My main reservation about the Eagles is that on one website they seem to come packaged with ski-brakes, so I want to know if I can remove the ski-brakes easily.

When you make your video about kick-turns (French “conversions"), please post a link to it here.

There’s so much misinformation about kick-turns—public web pages that explain it badly. Fortunately in one of my smart French partners educated me on a couple of points. Then a couple of of years later one day following an English guy I noticed he had an elegant move with his Fritschi bindings that made it so much quicker and more effortless. But I’ve never seen this written down anywhere.

Ken

Stu - Facewest - 16 April 2010 05:28 PM

Are you re using existing Explores because otherwise it’s the Eagle for you. Which is not as tried and tested as the Explore but I have heard nothing untoward about it so far.

Thanks—I just purchased the Eagle.

Also purchased the K2 Backlash skis to substitute for my current ones with the cracked edge. I ski about 95% backcountry / 5% lifts—and that ski is heavier than lots of backcountry-oriented skis nowadays. My feeling is ...

I spent lots of years on lighter skis getting whacked around by all kinds of difficult snow conditions. Now I’ve been training seriously, and while I could use that to make me climb faster, I’m instead choosing to use it to lift a ski that’ll be more fun in wide variety of snow conditions.

I like that the K2 Backlash is not a ski that’s just heavier because the mfgr couldn’t be bothered to make it lighter. It’s heavier because they added two titanium sheets.

Ken

I would avoid the standard “convertable” fritchi crampons like the plague. They aren’t anywhere long enough. I ditched mine after using them once as on the middle raised setting they hardly gave any grip on softish but slidy snow. I went back to the original standard ones which I have never had a problem with.

One other area where the fritchis outperform the Dynafits is the brake. We did a bit of a test when I was away 3 weeks ago ( as a friend lost a ski along way down the hill in quite heavy snow and we were trying to figure out why) and the fritchis seem to be more effective at stopping a loose ski, the Dynafit brakes don’t always seem to bite into the snow, Not to sure if that is because their is less weight or the springs on the brakes are too soft. Although if you prefer leashes to brakes this isn’t an issue.

Bindings and skis arrived—separately (one of the problems of getting each component you want on short notice late season).

Diamir Eagle binding comes in the box with 80mm ski-brakes. I don’t use heel-brakes in the backcountry, so I took them off.

...(Anyway 80mm is too wide for my skis. Presumably if I’d bought the skis + binding together from the same dealer, a swap for a wider ski-brake would have been arranged)…

Not included in the box is a plastic insert to replace the ski-brakes (cover over the screw holes). Fortunately the plastic inserts from the Diamir Explore bindings on my old skis seem to fit perfectly. (Presumably Diamir dealers have such inserts available for customers like me).

...(No leashes come with the package—because of the ski brakes. Not a problem for me since I didn’t use the Fritsch velcro leashes on my old skis anyway. I just put a little clip thing thru the leash-hole on top of the toe-piece—so I can clip to a little loop on my boot—just like lots of Dynafit users)…

Then I put the bindings with all the mounting hardware on my not-very-accurate ####### scale. My not-very-accurate conclusion is that the binding weight officially given publicly is for the S/M size without any ski-brakes.

Ken