Bindings position

I remember in March I arrived in the baggage hall at Salzburg airport - picked up our bags - saw a sign saying something about picking skis up from outside the hall - left the hall - couldn't find our skis - looked back through the window in the hall and there were our skis, on the conveyor belt!! Mild panic set it very swiftly. Somehow we managed to sneak back into the baggage hall through the exit door and retrieve them.

This is another of those aspects of skiing that if you snowboard as well, you may get a different perspective. One of the advantages of a snowboard over skis is the ability to use almost limitless fore/aft weight shifts.

When a ski is flat on the snow, it is possible to lean forward or backwards to shift weight along it's length. The problem comes when the ski is tilted on it's edge more than say 45 degrees. The same fore/aft pressure on the cuff now will flex the ski, but won't pressure the front ski edge downwards into the snow. This is compounded by the need for hip counter to angulate properly. Hip counter actually lifts the toes into the air, making front edge pressure even harder to attain.

This problem can be compensated for by setting the bindings a long way forward of their standard position. This allows the skier to dig the front edges in the same way that snowboarders do when carving. Unfortunately this aggressive carving set up will not work on other terrain.

The new floating set ups are great for changing binding placement as conditions change. Just do the math so the numbers add up to your boot length. Both these bindings are set up for a 300mm boot. One binding is set 30 mm ahead of the other, plus another 10mm for the forward/central option (btw these are on different skis).


extreme forward set up


standard set up


Trencher

Trencher wrote:
When a ski is flat on the snow, it is possible to lean forward or backwards to shift weight along it's length. The problem comes when the ski is tilted on it's edge more than say 45 degrees. The same fore/aft pressure on the cuff now will flex the ski, but won't pressure the front ski edge downwards into the snow. This is compounded by the need for hip counter to angulate properly. Hip counter actually lifts the toes into the air, making front edge pressure even harder to attain.

The trouble I have understanding this is that an alteration in upper body posture will have the same effect. This is something that doesn't need a screwdriver and skiers ought to be able to do between turns.

Over the weekend I looked at my two pairs of skis (Rossignol and Salomon) and did a bit of measuring to work out where the balls of my feet actualy fell on the ski.

I measured the length of the contact point of the ski bases (the length before the tips and tails start to turn up) and drew a line on the ski at the half way point. I then, as best I could, worked out where the balls of my feet were located in my boots and drew a line on them. To my surprise the new line on the skis aligned with the line on the boots exactly! This was the same on both pairs of skis.

The original article I read about this did suggest that french skis were more forward than the germanic/austrian counterparts so perhaps this is the case.

The bindings on my Salomons are moveable without tools so I might still do a bit of experimentation in November.

ellistine wrote:
The bindings on my Salomons are moveable without tools so I might still do a bit of experimentation in November.

I've some railflexes on a pair of volkls that might be movable, I'll have to look at it.

ise,

Just been looking at your blog. Do you ski tour all year round? You're so lucky to be so close to the mountains. Are the skis you use for touring that much different from conventional downhillers?

ellistine wrote:ise,

Just been looking at your blog. Do you ski tour all year round? You're so lucky to be so close to the mountains. Are the skis you use for touring that much different from conventional downhillers?

I only ski tour in the winter, in the summer it's more general hiking and mountaineering.

I've a couple of pairs of tour skis, some stormrider XL's which are a standard freeride/off-piste ski with fritschi freeride touring bindings on them, all in around 6kg. I also have some ultra light stormrider PIT lights with dynafit TLT's (the pin binding), all in around 3.4kg.

Any ski will do with two caveats, very heavy skis are out, the XL's weigh 4kg unmounted which is pretty much the heaviest you want and second, very fat skis are not ideal. Fat skis aren't always very good in difficult off-piste, aren't ideal with skins. People try and push that boundary and get as fat and light as they can. There's an irony with ski touring though, on piste is the usual mix of people, near piste you have some guys with huge fat skis skiing "off-piste" and the further you get from the piste the bigger the beards and skinnier the skis get :D

Black Diamond or G3 are good examples of specialist skis for touring (and telemark).