13757181:snowpocalypse said:
For starters the 2.0 has a turnable toe which when in deep snow can be rather hard to step into. I have seen a handful of very experienced AT skiers break the heel when stepping down. It is very hard to line up the heel pins with the boot when there is movement in the toe. The G3 on the other hand has the best toe engagement in the game right now. Even in deep snow where visibility of the toe is very limited the placement and trap to the pins is effortless. The Heel in the 2.0 is not that different than in the past. What I like about the G3 is the ability to switch from hike to ski with just a smack of my pole. The 2.0 still requires a reach back. Not the end of the world for experienced ATers I will say I was and am still blown away by the ease and function of the ION.
Yeah..... The ION is freaking rad, and I do agree with everything you said, but I've had some pretty significant durability issues, where I have friends who go way harder than I do spending significant time on the Rad 2.0 and hucking hard with no issues.
Had a pair of last year's IONs, the heel would rotate and allow the brake to pop down while touring pretty often, this got really annoying. Eventually warrantied them, got a new pair, the spring in the risers wore out so that they flopped annoyingly and wouldn't stay in place, you had to ski strap them in place or else you'd go from flat to both risers accidentally every other step. Same thing happened to my buddies so we warrantied both pairs again.
Then, just an hour ago I hit a patch of denser pow and popped out of one heel, leading to a double eject. When I went to put them back on I found that one of the heels had slid back about 1.5cm from the brake, as far as I can tell the spring loaded track failed. That made it impossible to click in, so I ended up skiing own with one ski in tele mode, and then ski strapping my brake up to skin out.
I will agree, ION's are by far the easiest binding I've used as far as clearing ice, using the risers, and stepping in and out, but I'm much more confident in a binding like the Rad 2.0 or Kingpin (or maybe the BD Vipec) than I am of the ION, I've just had too many failures.
That said, I do have a pair of the new ION (which only supposedly saw small revisions to the risers shapes) that I have like 5 days on with no issues, but that's not enough time to convince me that I love them after all the trouble my buddies and I have had.
