Comments on: Dynafit Mod — Easy Switch Between Tour and Alpine Mode

By: Lou

Lou — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:51:56 +0000

Grasshopper, yes, unless done with a lot of finesse it is quite stressful on the binding. I recommend the ski pole grip method, rather than yarding on the binding with a three foot lever arm. As for backcountry.com, whatever. I tested the binding extensively last winter and didn’t experience any difference in that area. Would love to be wrong. Thing is, on backcountry.com, anything new is always better. Keep that in mind. Lou

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:43:21 +0000

Ah yes, it does work. Master, I see the true nature of Dynafit “enlightment”.
Humble student has one more question – is this stressful on the binding? Seems like a lot of pressure via the ski pole.

According to backcountry.com, the new dynafit models change modes more easily even with the brakes installed.

Much appreciated.

~Grasshopper

By: Lou

Lou — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 13:16:38 +0000

Steve, ah yes Grasshopper, the arcane and eternal mystery of Dynafit.

With or without brakes, simply pull up your boot at heel while rotating binding, your boot will pop up and out, then continue to rotate heel unit to touring mode position of choice. The problem is that with brakes installed, while doing this your brake will deploy and in many cases block easy rotation of heel unit. More, with brakes installed, it’s difficult to get the binding back into alpine mode without exiting, due to the need for the binding to force the brake to retract as it’s rotated. Thus, I’m of the opinion that the method does not work well with brakes installed, and don’t recommend it with brakes installed. Without brakes, it’s quite slick, works well.

We do this method by either rotating the binding heel with ski pole as designed, or else lifting heel of boot, with ski, up to where it can be reached with the hand, where we then insert a ski pole grip between the heel lifter and the rear of the boot. A quick tweak, and out pops the boot. Danger, especially when using ski pole, is applying too much leverage and damaging something. It’s an advanced technique that only clever and stunningly athletic people are capaple of, in fact, to do it you might have to be genetically gifted with certain DNA.

You can find some video about this here and there on the web. I think Andrew McLean had something lurking somewhere….

Pablo, in the conditions we’re in most of the time, it just doesn’t work all that well. I guess we have more pow than you do, ha ha ha (grin).

And yes, Onyx has a slick method of doing this by the heel unit simply sliding for and aft on a track.

And yes, some folks seem to obsess on this as a feature, while others really don’t care. I’m somewhat in the latter class, but I do understand how nice it is to easily switch modes if you do a lot of meadow skipping (grin).

By: Pablo

Pablo — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:55:45 +0000

Lou I think the assitance needed to stow the brake once deployes will be provided by the ground. Just by stepping a little down on the toe, the brake begins to stow a little, enough to just turn the heel and completely stow the brake.

Exception: the softest powder whrere the ground don’t offers a solid platform to step and cant assist the brake stowing

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 04:35:09 +0000

Lou, I don’t see how you can change from downhill mode in any Dynafit (where the heel is locked in) to tour mode without stepping out, even without brakes. So I don’t follow your comment about “To one degree or another, that’s always been possible with Dynafits”, since you have to take the toe out then the heel before rotating the post to go into tour mode.

It seems like the G3 binding allows you to change modes without stepping out, since the post moves back. Do you agree?