Dave
Hey Markus (and Booker),

First off, long time no "see". Hope all is well with you.

Hi Dave, nice to see you too .

Markus, 4 or 5 years ago, you used to have some pretty instructive
pictures posted to the web of you and a friend bashing about.
This would be a great time to repost a url if one exists.

I seem to get involved in discussing backcountry forsest skis
almost every year, below's an extract from rsn last winter which
has some URL's. Each time it bugs me that I rarely carry a camera
(and when I do it's an analog one) and all the coolest tricks remain
undocumented. Some of the modern forest skis are strong enough
to allow powerful techniques that would have easily broken the old
wooden ones, but people in general tend to be unaware of this.

Perhaps me&co should some year do a forest ski&technique documention
trip. I might have a few old pics of the gear itself non-online,
and, if I can find them, I could e-mail them on request (the same
ones Dave got years ago).

: I don't know of any detailed online pics of the skis themselves.
: Below are some links to pics on the web pages of some of my
: friends, where various forest skis can be seen.

: Some of the pics show typical conditions, and others
: not so typical at all, yet others are rather old and
: obscure . Happy surfing.

: http://www.sll.fi/mpe/vodla/88Sy.JPG
: http://www.sll.fi/mpe/vodla/92K.JPG
: http://www.megabaud.fi/~jel/pp/sarjak1.htm
: http://www.kolumbus.fi/laaksonen.jou...nat/lemm98.htm
: http://www.sll.fi/mpe/sisa/smhl/index.html
: http://www.sll.fi/mpe/sisa/oo/003/index.html
: http://www.sll.fi/mpe/lapinmetsa/panoramas/index.html

Also, if you have any urls about NATO bindings and boots, that would
be cool too.

Unfortunately, still none. There's a good pic of old Swedish mil
bindings on old skis with new boots, though:
http://www.billingedalen.com/bilder/m90vkanga.jpg

Btw, Erä magazine of this month tested about all the off-track
skiing gear that's currently commercially availble in Finland.
Skis, poles, bindings, boots. The story isn't available online
though. Nato bindings were tested too, although it was noted that
the availability is bad. The Swedish bindings got the lowest
score of the lot in the forest category, btw, although they too
were found to be ok. The author was Jouni L, who's also found
in some of the old pics above.