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