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Some backcountry ski trips go so smooth you hardly know they passed — others have at least one defining moment. Our recent Trooper Traverse had several such. The make-or-break point occurred when Mike was walking around a new campsite on his skis, and was startled by his Silvretta Pure heel unit sailing over his head and landing on the snow in front of him. Catastrophic binding failure — one of the worst equipment issues that can occur during a backcountry ski trip.
Indeed bad, but at least we were in camp, and within an easy day’s travel of civilization. The question: continue the trip or bag it? In winter the answer would have been easy, as having a field-repaired binding introduces a fragile failure-point in your already stressed system of body and equipment. But in spring, when most of the snow can be climbed or descended on foot, limping the route with a repaired binding was an option. We agreed Mike would try one day with the repair, and if it worked we’d continue the trip. While Mike couldn’t do more with the repair than tour uphill and make tentative turns on the descents, he still enjoyed the trip and we got it done.
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| Mike’s broken Silvretta Pure Freeride. A scary moment when you’re in the middle of the white wilderness. (Click image to enlarge) |
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| Our field repair of trashed Silvretta Pure Freeride. Ironic that we used a spare telemark binding heel lever, as tele bindings used to be the ones with the breakage problems. We did the fix such that Mike was lashed to the binding plate, and could tour or even latch his heel down (though he had zero safety release so we decided he’d avoid that). The “Voile” straps were incredibly useful for this repair, as they cinched down with huge elastic force and never broke. We all agreed a few more such straps would be part of our repair kits from now on. (Click image to enlarge) |
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As for Silvretta Pure, I’ll say it this way: Perhaps Mike’s binding had defective plastic, perhaps not. I checked the release settings and forward pressure (on the intact binding) and all looked reasonable. Air temperature was average cold, not cryogenic. The bindings were practically new, and as far as I know had not been traumatized in any way. One item of interest was Mike’s Scarpa Tornados, which have a somewhat thin alpine-like sole. The toe sole was worn from hiking, and at its lowest setting the Pure toe height adjustment still allowed a bit of boot movement. It’s possible this movement fatigued the binding plastic. If so, then the Pure is WAY too sensitive. (After all, the Pure Freeride is marketed as a durable binding for “freeride” skiing, and one would assume that includes using “freeride” boots such as the Scarpa Tornado or Garmont Adrenaline).
My only conclusion is that one should be cautious about using Pure bindings. They’re an elegant design, but possibly lacking in material strength as well as being overly sensitive to boot sole dimensions. I’d give the Pure a pass if you’re of average weight (Mike is a big guy), do not ski aggressively, use boots with unworn standard shaped AT soles, and are not traveling far from civilization, otherwise look elsewhere for backcountry skiing bindings.
In case anyone wants to accuse me of bias for covering this breakage in such detail, believe me, if a Dynafit, Fritschi or any other binding had broken at such a critical juncture of a major ski traverse, I’d be giving them the same treatment. (The rest of our crew had Dynafits and one tele setup, all with zero durability problems). Pure had durability problems when they first came out several years ago — Silvretta has had plenty of time to address these issues. To put it in different words than I used up in the wilderness while kneeling in the snow lashing Mike’s boot to his ski, “we are not impressed.”) As for Mike, I’m under the impression he’ll be switching to Fritschi Freeride or Naxo NX21.
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WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
6 comments
Scary! That is an awesome fix, though!
Any ideas as to where to find a Voile strap as large as the one that you used over the ankle/heel of the boot? It looks larger than any I’ve seen.
(Also, I’ve been looking for large Voile straps with a metal retainer…locally, I’ve only found smaller straps with the metal retainer or large straps with a plastic one. Any ideas?)
Hi Eric, yeah, we were thankful the Pure didn’t break in the middle of the Trooper Couloir, as with the snow conditions we had a lengthy fall would have resulted.
The orange Voile strap is a really long one. I believe they are available as crampon straps and also available from Voile as a 24 inch strap (with the metal buckle), see:
http://www.voile-usa.com/cgi-bin/plugins/MivaEmpresas/miva?plugins/MivaMerchants/merchant.mvc+Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=VEOS&Category_Code=VSS.
The black ones are two Voile straps hooked together. The plastic buckle on the black straps is incredibly strong, they never broke no matter how hard we yarded on them, or how harsh Mike was while using them for ski bindings. He skied some horrendous bush whacking on the repair and nothing ever broke. Too bad the binding wasn’t as strong as the repair!
While I’d probably prefer to have the metal buckle version in my repair kit, the plastic ones do work.
your gerry-rig fix resembles gear used on the original trooper traverse. As for comments on the Pure, ya, but it sure is light.
Mountain Quest in Avon carries three different lenghts of Voile straps; up to 24 inches. They also work as a great replacement strap to lash your rear wheel to your roof rack.
Glad the binding failure didn’t nix the trip altogether. I’ve dealt both with binding failure and failure of other gear, and ingenuity can salvage things so that really good outcomes result even amidst serious difficulty.
We’ve had a lot of failures this side of the Atlantic too… the most recent being problems with breakages of the heel unit plastic not dissimilar to your’s (must be a spring touring thing). Given that the freeride version is not that interesting from a weight viewpoint I wonder whether the Diamir bindings are really a better alternative ?
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