Some folks like to characterize the readers of this wonderful website as a monolithic collective of tall-T wearing, rail sliding, Skullcandy Icon listening, Full Tilt boot touting park rats. And maybe, at one time, that was true. But all of us, as skiers change and grow in our relationship to this silly activity. So, if you’re a new school skier who likes walking uphill, and is interested in tech bindings, this is the article for you. The first section will elaborate on my Ultimate Touring Binding piece and then we’ll dive into even lighter options than that article covered.
Some background: I’ve long been a proponent of saving weight in your boots and bindings, before getting lighter skis. I’d rather tour on ultralight bindings with my inbounds skis, than ski burly bindings on a super light ski. So, yes, feel free to buy lighter skis and boots, but this binding conversation is going to assume that you have an appropriate ski (1500-2000 g per ski) and an appropriate boot (sub 1600 g with a good walk mode).
Your first tech bindings
In my Touring Binding Primer piece, I did my best to be objective, covering all of those bindings with factual information with just a splash of my own experiences. In this piece I will be more assertive.
If you are buying a setup that you primarily plan to tour on, and you are not a professional, or aspiring professional skier, you should probably be on a full tech binding. Cast and Shift are great for skiing inbounds, great for people that get paid to ski, and great for people who walk uphill occasionally. But, for lots of folks, the difference between touring occasionally, and touring a lot, is a lighter, more efficient setup. I am assuming that readers of this piece are already at that point, ready for a full tech binding and all the weight and efficiency upgrades it comes with. We are not going to talk about 50/50 bindings, or frames, or adaptors (ewwww) in this piece.
If you don’t have any pro deals, don’t want to read a lot of other words, and just want your first tech bindings, you should buy the Moment Voyager in the appropriate release value range for you. Just do it. It’s that good. It makes things very simple. I am not paid by Moment. I get better deals on other bindings. It doesn’t matter. The Voyager, in the parlance of the kids, fucks.
Kingpins are heavy, in need of a refresh, and no longer anywhere near class-leading. G3s break. A lot. Tectons and Vipecs are cool, but also very plastic-y, not that light, and get a lot of play and weird durability issues. They also have very steep ramp angles. MTNs have a very high ramp angle, a stupid RV system, and a u-spring. Radicals are fine, but Voyagers do what Radicals do, but better.
Some Variables
So, hopefully the folks who don’t want to read all this nerdery just bought Voyagers and went skiing. Now we go down the rabbit hole.
There are several features that differentiate tech bindings from one another. Some of them are easy to mod/adjust, some you’re left living with.
Weight
This one is obvious. It is what it is, but stop thinking about weight as a single number, but instead, see it as the sum total of the weight of modular parts.
Release Value
Not DIN, because it’s not certified like DIN is. Instead it’s an approximation that sort of lines up to what DIN you run. Don’t equate the two, but your standard DIN is a good place to start with your RV. On some tech bindings you can adjust the rotational RV, but not the vertical. It also matters how that RV is accomplished, u-spring bindings are more prone to wear, and less adjustable, than those with some other mechanism.
BSL Adjustment
Do you want to ski these bindings with boots with different BSLs, or are you married to one pair? This also can end up affecting…
Ramp Angle
Told you this was going to be some nerd shit. Ramp angle, or delta, is the difference in the height of your toe pins and your heel pins. There isn’t one perfect ramp angle for everyone, but you’ll probably prefer a certain range. Me, I like a pretty flat ramp, 5mm or less. It’s easy to adjust ramp to a certain extent. You can shim toes or heels, or use a BSL adjust plate to accomplish the same thing, while also gaining adjustment.
Heel Riser Options
Once you start flirting with the really light options, you’ll find that some bindings lack flat modes, and lots lack high risers. How big of a deal is that to you? If you’re always totally happy with the single Shift riser, you’ll probably be ok. If you have boots with a great walk mode, you’ll also probably be ok. Me, I’ve got crappy ankles, and I live in a place where dudes prove their manhood by setting skin tracks straight up stuff. I need at least a moderately high option.
Heel Spring Compensation
Ok, this one is sorta complicated. But, when your ski flexes, especially when you load your tails, it pushes the toe and heel of your binding together. If the heel is on a spring loaded track, it can move back, and keep your boot locked in better. If it’s not, you might come out of your bindings, or blow up the heel piece. Spring compensation is cool, but it adds weight, and heel height. Some bindings with spring compensation are “gapless”, AKA, the heel kisses the heel of your boot, instead of just the pins touching. On most tech heels though, there’s a gap, so that the ski can flex without causing the heel of your boot to impact the heel of your binding. Some folks argue that gapless bindings ski better, more like an alpine binding. In my experience, the presence or absence of a freeride spacer makes a much bigger difference.
Brakes
You need them less than you think you do. I know, I used to think I really needed brakes. And then I remembered that I’ve had plenty of skis take off downhill on pow days, even with brakes. And then I skied for a month or two with my brakes locked up, realized I didn’t need them, and took them off. If you still crash a lot, you might want brakes. Or maybe that means you shouldn’t be on tech bindings yet. But for most intermediate to advanced skiers, you don’t need brakes. You might need leashes depending on the situation. But you probably need those less than you think too (gasp!).
Vertical Support
AKA, a Freeride Spacer (thanks ATK for the name). Folks have figured out that if you’re just floating on your pins, it can feel like just that, a vague float. But, if there’s something under your heel, to push into, a lightweight binding can feel much burlier than it used to. In my experience, a freeride spacer of some sort can make an ultralight binding ski 85% as well as a Kingpin. Some ATK (or Moment) bindings have a built-in spacer. ATK also sells a separate spacer that you can mount to the ski on its own. Or you can make your own out of a polyethylene cutting board, and take your ligaments in your own hands.
So What?
It's up to you to figure out which of those features you require. I can only tell you my priorities, yours might be different. But, as a former park rat, who gradually transitioned to more and more uphill skiing, while maintaining a desire to jump off stuff and try to throw tricks, I think my priorities might align well with lots of folks on this site. Thus the Voyager recommendation.
Why Voyagers, not the original ATKs that Moment is rebranding? The Moment version has a flatter ramp angle (higher toe pins) than the normal ATK version. ATK makes a version with the flatter ramp now, but it can be confusing to figure out which of the approximately ten thousand ATK binding options it is. So, when in doubt, Voyager it out.
But, I’m a nerd, and I got COVID and lost my aerobic top end, so I’ve been messing around with lighter bindings. Here are my priorities, mostly in order:
Weight: sub-200g (Voyagers are 400ish g, so I wanted to cut that in half)
RV: I need at least a 10. I’m heavy and flaily
Ramp Angle: I like flat. Like, real flat, less than 5 mm of delta.
Vertical Support: It makes a big difference, and only costs about 10 grams
High-ish high risers: bad ankles. I can’t get away with a race flap that just covers the pins
No, I don’t need brakes, I’m experimenting with not having elastic compensation (so far so good), and I ski the same pair of boots for everything so I don’t need BSL adjustment.
Resources
Skimoco is a nerd’s best friend. Their pin height chart allows you to mix and match deltas, they list actual weights, they list riser heights, they list hole patterns, and they sell toes and heels independently. No. They are not paying me. I just use their site a lot, and then buy lots of things from them.
The TGR Sub 300g binding thread also has lots of info that’s helped me along my way, it’s just important to use that info to inform your own priorities. Don't obsess over what other folks want out of a binding, instead look for what you want.
Where I’ve Landed
After a lot of nerding out on the internet, here’s what I’ve found: Ski Trab makes the coolest toes on the market. They’re light, and non-traditional. You do have to hold them open to get into them, but that’s fine in practice. They ski better than they should. They have a certain elastic feeling. Instead of feeling bolted straight to the ski, like a traditional tech binding, they feel like they can absorb impacts more like an alpine binding. And they stay on better than ATK toes in my experience. The pins move with each other to compensate, instead of popping open immediately when you try to do some dumb new school stunt. And Trab offers a 5 mm shim so you can mess with ramp angles.
But, Trab’s heels don’t work for what I’m trying to do. Their Titan Vario 2 heel is sweet. It’s gapless, so hypothetically it skis better, it has a high enough riser option. But, it’s really tall, you end up with an 8.5 mm delta, with the 5 mm shim installed. I skied a day on the full Titan Vario 2, and I wish I hadn’t, but I noticed the delta immediately. I felt like I was on high heels. Maybe you won’t notice it, maybe you’ll like it. I did not. So I tried to shim the toes, but man, 11 total mm of shims under a toe is weird and sorta sketchy. So, I sold the Vario heels and moved on.
The other binding that caught my eye initially was the ATK Haute Route. It has cam style heel pins, no u-spring, adjustable vertical and horizontal release, and a nice low pin height. So I bought just the heels from Skimoco. Boom! Big fan. This heel, combined with Trab toes and a homemade Freeride Spacer weighs 180 g, is pretty flat, and skis really, really well. I’ve been making some dumb decisions, trying some backcountry nosebutters, and jumping off fairly big rocks into fairly flat landings for a few weeks now with this combo, and it’s been awesome. The only thing this heel is lacking is elastic compensation. As far as I can find, it’s impossible to get that without getting a much taller heel, and gaining a bunch of weight. Enough weight in fact, that you might as well just get a Voyager. So elastic heel compensation is my sacrificial lamb in this experiment. Sure, the high riser could be higher, but it’s fine for what I do.
You can hypothetically run a Dynafit Superlight 2.0 heel to accomplish the same thing, and some folks argue that it has a better return to center than the Haute Route, so it’s less likely to pre-release. But it’s a u-spring binding, with more plastic, and a weird hole pattern that requires weird adjustment plates. So I stuck to the brand I know better, ATK, and now have more modularity between skis since all my heels have the same hole pattern, and Trab toes have the same hole pattern as the lighter weight ATK toes.
I’m running this combo on two skis: On a Moment Deathwish Tour, I’m running the heel BSL adjust plate, and the 5 mm toe shim, and on an ON3P Jeffrey 118 Tour, I’m running the same combo with no plate or shim. Both lead to a basically (within 2 mm) flat setup.
I initially tried a Trofeo with a modded high riser and a freeride spacer. That combo was fine, and a hair lighter, but the high riser was sketchy, and I much prefer the independent pins of the Haute Route heel to the u-spring of the Trofeo. They’re adjustable, easier to get into, and are hypothetically safer. So the Trofeos are going on my blades.
A note on Freeride Spacers
They make a big difference in how a ski/binding combo feels. If you’re used to burlier gear, I highly recommend either buying a binding with one built in, buying a stand-alone spacer, or building your own. The ATK stand-alone one is great, but is a little fragile, and is pretty tall - it won’t fit under the lower stack bindings I’m running. So I’ve made my own out of a polyethylene cutting board. I made sure that the height is similar to how you’d set up a regular AFD, I can slide a piece of paper between the spacer and my boot sole on the bench. They are probably making the release value of my bindings less consistent, but these are tech bindings, there are no safety guarantees anyway, and these make them ski well enough that I’ll take it.
Conclusion
Running your stock bindings is totally fine. They’ll ski well and walk fine and you’ll have a grand old time. But, if you’re a nerd, mixing and matching toes and heels is a blast, and can leave you with a setup that skis and walks well, and is much lighter than the alternatives. Figure out your priorities, figure out what elements of which bindings match those priorities, and then get weird!
Some background: I’ve long been a proponent of saving weight in your boots and bindings, before getting lighter skis. I’d rather tour on ultralight bindings with my inbounds skis, than ski burly bindings on a super light ski. So, yes, feel free to buy lighter skis and boots, but this binding conversation is going to assume that you have an appropriate ski (1500-2000 g per ski) and an appropriate boot (sub 1600 g with a good walk mode).
Your first tech bindings
In my Touring Binding Primer piece, I did my best to be objective, covering all of those bindings with factual information with just a splash of my own experiences. In this piece I will be more assertive.
If you are buying a setup that you primarily plan to tour on, and you are not a professional, or aspiring professional skier, you should probably be on a full tech binding. Cast and Shift are great for skiing inbounds, great for people that get paid to ski, and great for people who walk uphill occasionally. But, for lots of folks, the difference between touring occasionally, and touring a lot, is a lighter, more efficient setup. I am assuming that readers of this piece are already at that point, ready for a full tech binding and all the weight and efficiency upgrades it comes with. We are not going to talk about 50/50 bindings, or frames, or adaptors (ewwww) in this piece.
If you don’t have any pro deals, don’t want to read a lot of other words, and just want your first tech bindings, you should buy the Moment Voyager in the appropriate release value range for you. Just do it. It’s that good. It makes things very simple. I am not paid by Moment. I get better deals on other bindings. It doesn’t matter. The Voyager, in the parlance of the kids, fucks.
Kingpins are heavy, in need of a refresh, and no longer anywhere near class-leading. G3s break. A lot. Tectons and Vipecs are cool, but also very plastic-y, not that light, and get a lot of play and weird durability issues. They also have very steep ramp angles. MTNs have a very high ramp angle, a stupid RV system, and a u-spring. Radicals are fine, but Voyagers do what Radicals do, but better.
Some Variables
So, hopefully the folks who don’t want to read all this nerdery just bought Voyagers and went skiing. Now we go down the rabbit hole.
There are several features that differentiate tech bindings from one another. Some of them are easy to mod/adjust, some you’re left living with.
Weight
This one is obvious. It is what it is, but stop thinking about weight as a single number, but instead, see it as the sum total of the weight of modular parts.
Release Value
Not DIN, because it’s not certified like DIN is. Instead it’s an approximation that sort of lines up to what DIN you run. Don’t equate the two, but your standard DIN is a good place to start with your RV. On some tech bindings you can adjust the rotational RV, but not the vertical. It also matters how that RV is accomplished, u-spring bindings are more prone to wear, and less adjustable, than those with some other mechanism.
BSL Adjustment
Do you want to ski these bindings with boots with different BSLs, or are you married to one pair? This also can end up affecting…
Ramp Angle
Told you this was going to be some nerd shit. Ramp angle, or delta, is the difference in the height of your toe pins and your heel pins. There isn’t one perfect ramp angle for everyone, but you’ll probably prefer a certain range. Me, I like a pretty flat ramp, 5mm or less. It’s easy to adjust ramp to a certain extent. You can shim toes or heels, or use a BSL adjust plate to accomplish the same thing, while also gaining adjustment.
Heel Riser Options
Once you start flirting with the really light options, you’ll find that some bindings lack flat modes, and lots lack high risers. How big of a deal is that to you? If you’re always totally happy with the single Shift riser, you’ll probably be ok. If you have boots with a great walk mode, you’ll also probably be ok. Me, I’ve got crappy ankles, and I live in a place where dudes prove their manhood by setting skin tracks straight up stuff. I need at least a moderately high option.
Heel Spring Compensation
Ok, this one is sorta complicated. But, when your ski flexes, especially when you load your tails, it pushes the toe and heel of your binding together. If the heel is on a spring loaded track, it can move back, and keep your boot locked in better. If it’s not, you might come out of your bindings, or blow up the heel piece. Spring compensation is cool, but it adds weight, and heel height. Some bindings with spring compensation are “gapless”, AKA, the heel kisses the heel of your boot, instead of just the pins touching. On most tech heels though, there’s a gap, so that the ski can flex without causing the heel of your boot to impact the heel of your binding. Some folks argue that gapless bindings ski better, more like an alpine binding. In my experience, the presence or absence of a freeride spacer makes a much bigger difference.
Brakes
You need them less than you think you do. I know, I used to think I really needed brakes. And then I remembered that I’ve had plenty of skis take off downhill on pow days, even with brakes. And then I skied for a month or two with my brakes locked up, realized I didn’t need them, and took them off. If you still crash a lot, you might want brakes. Or maybe that means you shouldn’t be on tech bindings yet. But for most intermediate to advanced skiers, you don’t need brakes. You might need leashes depending on the situation. But you probably need those less than you think too (gasp!).
Vertical Support
AKA, a Freeride Spacer (thanks ATK for the name). Folks have figured out that if you’re just floating on your pins, it can feel like just that, a vague float. But, if there’s something under your heel, to push into, a lightweight binding can feel much burlier than it used to. In my experience, a freeride spacer of some sort can make an ultralight binding ski 85% as well as a Kingpin. Some ATK (or Moment) bindings have a built-in spacer. ATK also sells a separate spacer that you can mount to the ski on its own. Or you can make your own out of a polyethylene cutting board, and take your ligaments in your own hands.
So What?
It's up to you to figure out which of those features you require. I can only tell you my priorities, yours might be different. But, as a former park rat, who gradually transitioned to more and more uphill skiing, while maintaining a desire to jump off stuff and try to throw tricks, I think my priorities might align well with lots of folks on this site. Thus the Voyager recommendation.
Why Voyagers, not the original ATKs that Moment is rebranding? The Moment version has a flatter ramp angle (higher toe pins) than the normal ATK version. ATK makes a version with the flatter ramp now, but it can be confusing to figure out which of the approximately ten thousand ATK binding options it is. So, when in doubt, Voyager it out.
But, I’m a nerd, and I got COVID and lost my aerobic top end, so I’ve been messing around with lighter bindings. Here are my priorities, mostly in order:
Weight: sub-200g (Voyagers are 400ish g, so I wanted to cut that in half)
RV: I need at least a 10. I’m heavy and flaily
Ramp Angle: I like flat. Like, real flat, less than 5 mm of delta.
Vertical Support: It makes a big difference, and only costs about 10 grams
High-ish high risers: bad ankles. I can’t get away with a race flap that just covers the pins
No, I don’t need brakes, I’m experimenting with not having elastic compensation (so far so good), and I ski the same pair of boots for everything so I don’t need BSL adjustment.
Resources
Skimoco is a nerd’s best friend. Their pin height chart allows you to mix and match deltas, they list actual weights, they list riser heights, they list hole patterns, and they sell toes and heels independently. No. They are not paying me. I just use their site a lot, and then buy lots of things from them.
The TGR Sub 300g binding thread also has lots of info that’s helped me along my way, it’s just important to use that info to inform your own priorities. Don't obsess over what other folks want out of a binding, instead look for what you want.
Where I’ve Landed
After a lot of nerding out on the internet, here’s what I’ve found: Ski Trab makes the coolest toes on the market. They’re light, and non-traditional. You do have to hold them open to get into them, but that’s fine in practice. They ski better than they should. They have a certain elastic feeling. Instead of feeling bolted straight to the ski, like a traditional tech binding, they feel like they can absorb impacts more like an alpine binding. And they stay on better than ATK toes in my experience. The pins move with each other to compensate, instead of popping open immediately when you try to do some dumb new school stunt. And Trab offers a 5 mm shim so you can mess with ramp angles.
But, Trab’s heels don’t work for what I’m trying to do. Their Titan Vario 2 heel is sweet. It’s gapless, so hypothetically it skis better, it has a high enough riser option. But, it’s really tall, you end up with an 8.5 mm delta, with the 5 mm shim installed. I skied a day on the full Titan Vario 2, and I wish I hadn’t, but I noticed the delta immediately. I felt like I was on high heels. Maybe you won’t notice it, maybe you’ll like it. I did not. So I tried to shim the toes, but man, 11 total mm of shims under a toe is weird and sorta sketchy. So, I sold the Vario heels and moved on.
The other binding that caught my eye initially was the ATK Haute Route. It has cam style heel pins, no u-spring, adjustable vertical and horizontal release, and a nice low pin height. So I bought just the heels from Skimoco. Boom! Big fan. This heel, combined with Trab toes and a homemade Freeride Spacer weighs 180 g, is pretty flat, and skis really, really well. I’ve been making some dumb decisions, trying some backcountry nosebutters, and jumping off fairly big rocks into fairly flat landings for a few weeks now with this combo, and it’s been awesome. The only thing this heel is lacking is elastic compensation. As far as I can find, it’s impossible to get that without getting a much taller heel, and gaining a bunch of weight. Enough weight in fact, that you might as well just get a Voyager. So elastic heel compensation is my sacrificial lamb in this experiment. Sure, the high riser could be higher, but it’s fine for what I do.
You can hypothetically run a Dynafit Superlight 2.0 heel to accomplish the same thing, and some folks argue that it has a better return to center than the Haute Route, so it’s less likely to pre-release. But it’s a u-spring binding, with more plastic, and a weird hole pattern that requires weird adjustment plates. So I stuck to the brand I know better, ATK, and now have more modularity between skis since all my heels have the same hole pattern, and Trab toes have the same hole pattern as the lighter weight ATK toes.
I’m running this combo on two skis: On a Moment Deathwish Tour, I’m running the heel BSL adjust plate, and the 5 mm toe shim, and on an ON3P Jeffrey 118 Tour, I’m running the same combo with no plate or shim. Both lead to a basically (within 2 mm) flat setup.
I initially tried a Trofeo with a modded high riser and a freeride spacer. That combo was fine, and a hair lighter, but the high riser was sketchy, and I much prefer the independent pins of the Haute Route heel to the u-spring of the Trofeo. They’re adjustable, easier to get into, and are hypothetically safer. So the Trofeos are going on my blades.
A note on Freeride Spacers
They make a big difference in how a ski/binding combo feels. If you’re used to burlier gear, I highly recommend either buying a binding with one built in, buying a stand-alone spacer, or building your own. The ATK stand-alone one is great, but is a little fragile, and is pretty tall - it won’t fit under the lower stack bindings I’m running. So I’ve made my own out of a polyethylene cutting board. I made sure that the height is similar to how you’d set up a regular AFD, I can slide a piece of paper between the spacer and my boot sole on the bench. They are probably making the release value of my bindings less consistent, but these are tech bindings, there are no safety guarantees anyway, and these make them ski well enough that I’ll take it.
Conclusion
Running your stock bindings is totally fine. They’ll ski well and walk fine and you’ll have a grand old time. But, if you’re a nerd, mixing and matching toes and heels is a blast, and can leave you with a setup that skis and walks well, and is much lighter than the alternatives. Figure out your priorities, figure out what elements of which bindings match those priorities, and then get weird!
