Welcome to Louis (Lou) Dawson's backcountry skiing information & opinion website. Lou's passion for the past 50 years has been alpinism, climbing, mountaineering and skiing -- along with all manner of outdoor recreation. He has authored numerous books and articles about
ski touring and is well known as the first person to ski down all 54 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, otherwise known as the
Fourteeners! Books and free ski touring news and information here.
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Like wearing a belt and suspenders?
Seems a lot less elegant than a splitboard. As much as I hate to admit it, Voile really has the splitboard thing nailed, it is a reasonable alternative to AT.
as a snowboarder who never had any luck with splitboards (until spark R&D began selling their bindings), I guess I understand not wanting the traditionally poor performance of a split board on the downhill. Now that I’ve ridden bindings that make the board ride more like a single stick, I’ve fallen in love w/ snowboarding all over again. I hope for the guy in the video’s sake that he too tries the new split board bindings out….and puts his design efforts into something besides that ridiculous swiss watch they’re developing. over-engineering at it’s purest right there, yes sir-ee!
Looks cool….but could he not, just get a splitboard and get rid of that “Silly” weight he’s carrying around???????…….just sayin’……..
Well, consider this:
A splitboard does not ride the same as a solid snowboard. Period, i don’t care what kind of bindings you put on it.
You can ride any board you want for the conditions that day.
Transition time is cut in half. No skins to peel and store.
A splitboard with skins weighs 14lbs! A sold snowboard plus the weight of these skis is the same weight. You’re not caring extra weight.
Weight per foot is only 3lbs. 1lbs on your foot is what, equivalent to 6.4 lbs on your back?
That sure is silly!
This is silly too. http://vimeo.com/23682787
Sick! when can I get one?
There is a market for those approach skis, but I think it’s newb day trippers and jibbers more than bc addicts who are likely to be checking wildsnow.
The inability to ski sans skins on super mellow terrain would be a bummer. The weight issue gets complicated when your pack gets heavier. Certainly I wouldn’t want any more weight on my back during multi-day tours. The relative lack of binding support would seem to make firm snow side hilling an issue (this is an area where the newer split binders really have improved things). Any ski crampon options for those things? What about heel risers? On the flip, I wonder how those tiny skis would float a big dude when it’s deep. I remember having to do all the pow day trail breaking for a friend on approach skis back in the day. He did fine on the skin track but he could never have broken trail to the top by himself.
Personally, I would chose those approach skis over a snow shoes, but I would choose a split over the approach skis. Still it’s cool to see innovation.
It’s good to see that someone is looking for an alternative to the sticky mess that skins use. I don’t know how many times I’ve thought to myself there must be a better way than using some weird adhesive out there.
Lots of these options (Vert snowshoes, short approach skis) become popular in snow climates where the snow tends to be very supportive for most of the season. In places such as winter Colorado or interior BC, this type of gear is less effective and no match for a nice longish fat pair of skis with skins. So it’s viable, only one has to know what works for the snowpack they’ll be encountering.
Also, I’ve noticed that it’s become quite common for snowboarders to depend on skiers to make a skin track, which they then boot or snowshoe, or use tiny approach skis on. Sigh. I sure appreciate it around here when snowboarders use splitboards and contribute to maintaining the skin tracks (or even breaking trail first), instead of wrecking them.