The last Saturday in January was a great, great ski day. After snowing during the week the sun came out and most of the village decided to go skiing it seemed. We saw more of our neighbours skiing than I think we’ve ever seen before. The family next door also have chalet on the mountain, in fact we’d been up there the previous weekend on snowshoes in the dark for a raclette. They’d been skiing a nice off-piste pitch passing their chalet and I followed them. But part way down for no obvious reason I fell over, I didn’t feel any impact and I’d not been aware of reason to actually fall. The leash on my ski stopped it and without any hassle I tried to step back into my binding. But I couldn’t step in, there was no click as I stamped my heel down and when I looked at the binding (Dynafit TLT Speed Lite) I could see why; the top of it was gone!
In the powder I assumed that some screws had come out and kicked myself for not checking them on a regular basis. The powder was too deep to even consider looking for the missing piece so I locked my toes and skied out “free-heel”. Back home a more thorough look at the damage revealed that the plastic part of the heel unit had sheared through so it was beyond repair and I’m glad I didn’t waste any time looking for the broken bit.
I’d actually got the video camera rolling when it happened so you can see my fall and subsequent ski out on the broken binding.
I was lucky in being still basically inside the ski area and also that only the heel on a dynafit had failed leaving me the option to ski on the toe mount alone. The next day an American student at the university in Lausanne got lost off piste in Les Diablerets, broke a binding and got stuck on the mountain for 48 hours, he was extremely lucky to escape with only hypothermia.
I’d been swapping the bindings between two pairs of skis, Black Diamond Voodoos and Havocs, using some quiver killer inserts and initially thought I’d just get a replacement binding and upgrade to something like a Plum Guide with more metal parts and hopefully a more robust construction. It turned out that one of the pairs of skis had a tiny drilling error which the TLT Speed Lite had tolerated but was just a non-starter with the Plum. As both pairs were old skis I decided to bite the bullet and get some more skis. I’ve got some fatter 100mm+ skis which are pretty good and I use some slalom skis for piste skiing but I like to have a daily pair, something fairly versatile to deal with a variety of snow conditions and light enough to tour on at around 1000m ascent or so.
I hit upon the Dynastar Cham 87 High Mountain thinking it would be light enough for touring replacing the Voodoos and be usable on more variable or hard snow where the Havocs were great. So far, I’ve skied one day on the Chams but I’m really pleased with them. They’re certainly light enough for touring and I was really pleased on the rutted snow near the summit yesterday that they didn’t flap around like so many modern skis do. I did get them mounted with Dynafit Radical ST’s which are pretty good although I’m not entirely sure I don’t prefer a leash to a brake.
Obviously I needed to go and try the new skis and the very best place for that was Monts Chevreuils, it’s around 1000m climb from Moulins to the summit and there’s always some great, and varied, snow on the way down.
