heavy touring – cabane du Fénestral

The winter season is coming to a close around the alps now, most of the lifts will shut at Easter. It’s a time when we have a little more leisure time and coincides with end-of-season sales when we pick up new gear.

Julie has some new Salomon MTN Explore W ski tour boots, she’s been trying for a long time to find ski tour boots that fit so this is new and they’re about half the weight of her old ones. These are proving slightly problematic, they’re a lot shorter than her old ones and that’s increased the ramp angle on the skis. That’s basically because the dynafit heel pins are higher than the toe pins so the actual angle increases if you shorten the boot. There’s a certain amount of internet noise around this, for a bloke with feet my size it’s true that a shorter tour boot will alter the ramp angle compared to a freeride boot but mostly they probably need to bend their knees more and spend less time on the internet. But, for a woman it’s a potentially bigger deal, the smaller the foot the more pronounced these changes will be. For example, I changed from a Dynafit ZZeus to a Dynafit TLT 6 at the same mondopoint, and that dropped about 15mm off the boot length (BSL) which certainly does change the angle. Julie went from a Cochise 95w to the MTN Explores which dropped about the same in absolute terms, that’s not only proportionally more but since the angle is not a direct linear function of the BSL it’s altered the ramp angle hugely. Basiclly, the shorter the boot, the more degrees difference you get for each millimetre reduction. And she can feel it quite badly, so the toe of the binding will need a shim placing under it. It’s a pain to get this right and the danger is that you break the flat walk mode of the dynafits. I just mention all that in case anyone else has a similar problem and wonders why!

Personally, I’m used to vagaries of touring gear and my new gear goes the other way. I normally ski tour on some Dynastar Cham 87 HM’s (High Mountain variant) with Dynafit TLT ST’s and use Dynafit TLT 6 boots, I’ve an ambivalent attitude to whether the brakes are good or not but the Cham’s ski exceptionally in my opinion. For resort skiing, I use some Stockli Laser slalom skis or some old Zag Big 84’s. I’ve replaced the tech soles on the Zzeus with an alpine norm sole and they’ve been just fine. The Look pivots (bindings) on the Zag take the usual resort abuse but there are times I’m torn between taking them out or some touring skis out for short ascents. I also have some K2 Coombacks with TLT FT’s. But of course, the tech bindings just don’t stand the abuse of that sort of skiing, I tore an old TLT Speed apart a couple of years back in fact.

Of course, alpine gear is often cheap compared to touring gear so I dropped the idea of getting something like the Salomon MTN Lab boots with Kingpins for example. In part, I’m hearing the kingpins heel unit is tearing the MTN lab heel up so I wasn’t to keen to be testing that. I gradually came to the idea of having an actual alpine boot with a frame binding that’s really built for this kind of use. As I love the Cham’s I sized up to the Dynastar Cham 2.0 97. Fortunately, I can actually ski (a bit) and I don’t need a 120mm to ski powder so 97mm is quite enough and as I regularly ski on race skis I’m not able to kid myself that a 100mm+ ski handles just fine on piste – it doesn’t, it’s rubbish.

I then thought, “in for a penny, in for a pound” and decided not to mess around with the lighter frame bindings and went straight in for the Salomon Guardian MNC 13’s, I’ve only gone for the 13’s as I only ski at a lower DIN anyway and I’m not needing the max setting of 16 that’s required in a snowdome (apparently). These are supposed to ski like a real alpine binding although I feel I’ve heard that before.

For boots, I’ve always found Salomon are an out-of-box fit for me and quite fancied the Salomon QST PRO 120 but a quick test in a ski store showed I could probably overpower the flex quite rapidly so went for the Salomon QST PRO 130. I’d say the 130 isn’t ridiculously stiff either, it’s hard for me to judge having skied in tour boots for a while. I find most tour boots don’t flex well, it’s not progressive and I can just power straight through the flex. In good or average snow, I’ve enough control of my ankle flex to not really be bothered by that but in some more challenging snow, I crash through the flex and hard stop at the extent of the flex. In a shop test though it was clear that didn’t apply to the MTN Lab but that still didn’t flex like an alpine boot.

I would point out that while the MTN Lab is no doubt excellent, it’s only a bit over 200g lighter than the QST PRO 130 which performs exactly like full-on alpine, freeride boot because it actually is one and has an excellent walk mode. And they’re cheaper…

So, anyway, we racked all that lot and took a ski up to Cabane Fenestral from Ovronnaz, it’s about a 550m climb so about where I’d use this heavier gear, much more and I’d use my light gear. What I found was the walk mode in the QST PRO 130 is superb, at least as comfortable as my TLT6’s ignoring the weight difference. The walk mode of the Guardians is also just fine although there’s only one climbing bar which will take some getting used as will engaging it which is a faff compared to a dynafit. I was a bit cheap and didn’t buy new skins or crampons so the final few metres up to the cabane, while not ultra steep, were a pain on skinny skins. I was rather surprised to discover that this setup, despite the weight, is an absolute breeze to kick turn which must be related to the more limited pivot on the toe piece. A nice bonus given how little grip I was getting from old skins really.

Skiing, I can confirm that the Guardian absolutely does ski like an alpine binding in every way. I’ve had Freeride Pro’s before and I found them just fine but not truly comparable to an alpine binding. And really the Cham 2.0 97’s ski just as excellently as I knew they would from the Cham 87’s while the QST PRO 130 and Guardians perform exactly like full on alpine-freeride gear. Just pure fun really!

For completeness, I’ll mention I got some new Komperdell Fatso poles which apparently won a prize at ISPO, they’re quite good … as far as poles go. Nice foam around the handles.

The skiing was fine, we popped into the cabane which was closed but not locked, it’s a breezy spot and it’s nice to sit inside and eat your sandwiches. We may have been 30 or 40 minutes too quick, the snow was only just softening up but all perfectly skiable.