Waxless Skis for Approaches

[pu]

Anyone here have lightweight AT bindings mounted on waxless skis. It seem like there is quite an offering of skis out there that have some real sidecut and waxless bases. In my experience most of my approaches could be accomplished on a waxless ski instead of using skins. Anyone used the Alpina Lite Terrain? I suppose the next question is will these skis tolerate having Silveretta 500's mounted on them? Of course the info on them says any NNN, 75mm, SNS, blah blah blah. Experience???

 

Thanks,

Joe

[Frikadeller]

I have used, and still use a pair of "backcountry" waxless skis for just touring stuff.. Mine are mounted with a 3 pin binding though. I don't see why you could not mount some funky AT binding instead, as long as those skinny skis will allow it.

 

Just make sure your kick wax is not too excessive, and you'll be fine.

[jhamaker]

Ah, the central Alaska outfit. Warm, plastic boots mounted on Randone bindings on light double-cambered skiis. Works great. Look for a ski w/ a good strong (Aluminum)top-plate/mounting plate.

 

If you are doing more that just 10mi of rd/glacier skiing I'd reccomend the new NTN boot/binding combination (when they get the bugs worked out). This, in theory, will allow you a real kick and glide, cut down on blisters. It should also allow thousands of feet of front-pointing w/o undue fatigue from a large duck-bill hanging off the front of your tele boot.

 

I find that a lot of Cascades stuff is just skin up, ski down, in wich case a traditional randone setup works great.

 

Annother option for flat approaches is light (skating) gear - and carry the heavy (plastic) boots for the climb.