AT/Randonee bindings

I will be leading a group of students on a mountaineering trip on the
Juneau icefields. We are looking for a cheap source of skis/ski
bindings (i.e. Silveretta, Ramer, etc.?) that we can use with our
plastic climbing boots. We'll need about 10+ pairs.
I already tried Play-it-again sports, but living in Juneau, our
options are fairly limited.

Does anyone have the abovementioned gear that they'd be willing to
part with, or can point us in the direction where we could acquire it
at a reasonable cost?

Thanks in advance,
Jacek

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In article ,
Jacek wrote:
I will be leading a group of students on a mountaineering trip on the
Juneau icefields. We are looking for a cheap source of skis/ski
bindings (i.e. Silveretta, Ramer, etc.?) that we can use with our
plastic climbing boots. We'll need about 10+ pairs.
I already tried Play-it-again sports, but living in Juneau, our
options are fairly limited.

Does anyone have the abovementioned gear that they'd be willing to
part with, or can point us in the direction where we could acquire it
at a reasonable cost?


_ Skis you can get very cheap depending on exactly how fussy you
are, there's little point in spending too much on skis as skiing
with mountain boots is really difficult. Buy $50 beater skis at
a swap sale and throw away the bindings.[1] As far as I know there
is only one binding available in the USA that works well with
plastic climbing boots. The Silveretta 500. They never go on
sale, but they have dropped to more reasonable prices
lately. Roughly $250.

_ You can get them at wwww.backcountrystore.com, but shipping to
Alaska will probably drive the price up considerably. Your best
bet might be to contact a local shop that deals with Climb High
and try and get a bulk discount.

http://www.climbhigh.com/

_ When the dollar was stronger, you could often get significant
savings on stuff by ordering over the internet from Europe. There
is also a lot of AT gear that never makes it to the USA that you
can get through these shops. You could try these sites

http://www.barrabes.com/

http://www.telemark-pyrenees.com/

_ Good Luck. I've done a lot of trolling for gear over the
last 10 years and you can always get skis cheap, sometimes
boots cheap, but I've never seen AT bindings on sale except
when they close out models with known defects. I really
think negotiating a bulk deal with a Climb High distributer
is probably your best bet. Shop owners are a lot happier to
give you a deal if they know that it's not going to sit on
the shelf for a year.

_ If you're really on a budget, you might consider snow shoes.
Not as fun as skis, but skiing in plastic climbing boots
isn't that much fun anyway.

_ Another alternative would be to rent AT boots and skis.
Light AT boots climb pretty well as long as you don't want
to do lot's of French technique.

_ Booker C. Bense

[1]- Shorter is always better.

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On 6 Feb 2004 11:11:54 -0800, (Jacek) wrote:

I will be leading a group of students on a mountaineering trip on the
Juneau icefields. We are looking for a cheap source of skis/ski
bindings (i.e. Silveretta, Ramer, etc.?) that we can use with our
plastic climbing boots. We'll need about 10+ pairs.
I already tried Play-it-again sports, but living in Juneau, our
options are fairly limited.

Does anyone have the abovementioned gear that they'd be willing to
part with, or can point us in the direction where we could acquire it
at a reasonable cost?

Thanks in advance,
Jacek


If someone offers you Ramer bindings, back away slowly, then run. Run
fast, run far. Biggest pieces of unreliable crap ever foisted upon the
BC community. I saw many a skier struggle with these awful things,
myself included.

Thanks for the suggestions.
Yeah, the skis are not a problem - lots of last year's models around,
cheap!
Basically the issue is finding cheap bindings, which as you note is
pretty hard.
We don't need any fancy, releasable bindings, just something to ski up
to some mountaineering objectives. They will be used with skins on
99% of the time, then 1% on the occasional broad slope descent.
I wouldn't put my students in snowshoes for a week on the icefield,
not if I want them to enjoy themselves...
Unfortunately we don't have a place to rent them from locally.

Jacek

_ Skis you can get very cheap depending on exactly how fussy you
are, there's little point in spending too much on skis as skiing
with mountain boots is really difficult. Buy $50 beater skis at
a swap sale and throw away the bindings.[1] As far as I know there
is only one binding available in the USA that works well with
plastic climbing boots. The Silveretta 500. They never go on
sale, but they have dropped to more reasonable prices
lately. Roughly $250.

_ You can get them at wwww.backcountrystore.com, but shipping to
Alaska will probably drive the price up considerably. Your best
bet might be to contact a local shop that deals with Climb High
and try and get a bulk discount.

http://www.climbhigh.com/

_ When the dollar was stronger, you could often get significant
savings on stuff by ordering over the internet from Europe. There
is also a lot of AT gear that never makes it to the USA that you
can get through these shops. You could try these sites

http://www.barrabes.com/

http://www.telemark-pyrenees.com/

_ Good Luck. I've done a lot of trolling for gear over the
last 10 years and you can always get skis cheap, sometimes
boots cheap, but I've never seen AT bindings on sale except
when they close out models with known defects. I really
think negotiating a bulk deal with a Climb High distributer
is probably your best bet. Shop owners are a lot happier to
give you a deal if they know that it's not going to sit on
the shelf for a year.

_ If you're really on a budget, you might consider snow shoes.
Not as fun as skis, but skiing in plastic climbing boots
isn't that much fun anyway.

_ Another alternative would be to rent AT boots and skis.
Light AT boots climb pretty well as long as you don't want
to do lot's of French technique.

_ Booker C. Bense

[1]- Shorter is always better.

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I used ramer bindings with satisfactory results skiing in the Alaska
range, and even up to 14k on Denali. There are a few tricks to them,
but they are adequate. We are not talking about doing any extreme
skiing, just moving from one climbing objective to the next.

Jacek

Arthur wrote in message
If someone offers you Ramer bindings, back away slowly, then run. Run
fast, run far. Biggest pieces of unreliable crap ever foisted upon the
BC community. I saw many a skier struggle with these awful things,
myself included.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

In article ,
Jacek wrote:
Thanks for the suggestions.
Yeah, the skis are not a problem - lots of last year's models around,
cheap!
Basically the issue is finding cheap bindings, which as you note is
pretty hard.
We don't need any fancy, releasable bindings, just something to ski up
to some mountaineering objectives. They will be used with skins on
99% of the time, then 1% on the occasional broad slope descent.
I wouldn't put my students in snowshoes for a week on the icefield,
not if I want them to enjoy themselves...
Unfortunately we don't have a place to rent them from locally.


_ Stubai makes a kind of strap-on plate binding
that looks a lot like a Grivel crampon with the points cut
off. As I recall it was fairly cheap and looked like it would
be okay for trudging around. Here's a picture of it

http://www.globetrotter.de/jpg_prod/s/st75001-.jpg

_ 80 euros is a decent price, particularly if you
can get them without the VAT.

_ There's always the Pika Sastrugi Ski Binding
binding, but even for students that's kind of cruel and
IMHO spending another $100 for the Silveretta is well worth
it.

_ The Marines have a special winter torture school in which
they put people on white heavy skis with Mickey Mouse
Artic boots and some kind of weird binding. You can often
get the surplus skis cheap, maybe you can find the bindings
as well.

_ As a very last resort, you might consider taking a old
telemark cable binding and retro-fitting them with a
spare crampon toe bail[1]. Old Rottefella cable bindings without
a cross bar might work best. I've heard of people using
them with leather mountain boots with some success. I'm
not sure how well they'd work with plastic boots that
don't flex at the ball of the foot.

_ Booker C. Bense


[1]- Drill holes in the sides, you'll probably need a
least a couple experiment pairs to get it right.


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On 9 Feb 2004 10:05:06 -0800, (Jacek) wrote:

I used ramer bindings with satisfactory results skiing in the Alaska
range, and even up to 14k on Denali. There are a few tricks to them,
but they are adequate. We are not talking about doing any extreme
skiing, just moving from one climbing objective to the next.

Jacek

I found them adequate as a mountaineering approach binding too, but
the rear release (Classic) was woefully inaccurate, and they would not
provide you with extra leaf springs if you bought from Ramer. They set
them up supposedly for you and that was it. I had to modify mine for
almost no rear release to do any skiing whatsoever, or else the
prerelease on the rear would have me cartwheeling constantly. The
front was no fun to try to put back together after release but as you
said, there was a bit of a trick to it. My modification consisted of a
heavy rubber donut under the leafs on the back. Adequate for some
larger skiing objectives, but repeated switching between walk/ski mode
would loosen the interference fit between the lock and the plate at
the back, compromising ski control. And it wasn't easy to set up
again. You either got good downhill control or easy switching between
walk/ski mode. The 2 were mutually exclusive with the design of the
lock mechanism.
With modifications to allow adequate skiing control, I didn't
trust any but the most careful skiing in mountaineering boots, because
of their low height and the subsequent potential for serious ankle
injury.
Would I accept a pair if given to me for approach bindings?
Probably. They certainly were light. Would I use a set for anything
but approach? No. Too many annoying problems.



Arthur wrote in message
If someone offers you Ramer bindings, back away slowly, then run. Run
fast, run far. Biggest pieces of unreliable crap ever foisted upon the
BC community. I saw many a skier struggle with these awful things,
myself included.

Older versions of the Silvretta 500 are usually available on e-bay and
seem to go for around $100.

Sorry to ask this question in possibly inappropriate newsgroups,
but if I were buying a new pair of downhill skis, for use both in
lift-served areas and the backcountry, why would I not want to get
an AT binding such as the Silveretta 555? Cost isn't much higher
than a regular downhill ski binding, it's lighter weight, and much
more flexible due to heel release.

Are the current crop of downhill bindings safer? More durable?

Yep, lots of good deals on used Silvretta 404, and also the 400 --
same as 404 I think, but w/ different boot sole length adjustment, or
something like that? Of course, be sure they're in good condition,
which can be tricky over eBay.
Sometimes you see the old 300 for sale, but I think this had no
release mechanism whatsoever, which sounds kind of scary (even for
approaches up and snowplows back down).