Choosing a binding

All the different shapes and sizes of cross-country skis call for bindings that match the proportions of the ski and its intended use. They also have to match the brand and model of the boot.

Once again, the industry is not the best friend of either the consumer or the retailer. As bad as it was with Rottefella's cheesy NNN system duking it out with Salomon's more solidly made and better supported SNS Profil and Pilot systems, things got worse when Rottefella convinced its manufacturing allies to adopt the NIS plate that only accepts an NNN binding.  While a mounting method that requires no jig and no drilling eliminates most of the problems that made NNN so failure-prone, it also eliminates consumer choice in an obvious move to monopolize the market.

To make matters worse, Fischer and Rossignol decided to stab Rottefella in the back and introduce their own plate, the IFP, that excludes Rottefella bindings and cannot be drilled to mount a Salomon binding on top of it at all. With many -- perhaps most -- skis coming with either a Sin plate (NIS) or the even more heinous IFP plate, consumer choice gets funneled down to just what a couple of manufacturers are willing to provide. These decisions are made by accountants, not by skiers.

Fortunately, the IFP binding takes a regular NNN boot. We haven't quite returned to the System Wars of the 1980s.

Salomon offers their skis pre-drilled to accept any of their own bindings. They also sell an NNN-compatible boot and binding system for skis without a plate. As always, Salomon's version is much better made than anything produced by Rottefella's manufacturing partners. This keeps a shred of choice left in the marketplace for consumers who want or need to mix and match. 

But wait, there's more. 

If you have chosen a moderately heavy ski, perhaps with a metal edge, you will have better control with a beefier boot and binding. The only heavy system binding widely available is Rottefella's NNN-BC. You can get boots for NNN-BC ranging from something slightly heavier than a regular touring boot up to some gnarly models with buckles and external cuffs designed to drive and control the new generation of shorter, wider off-track skis. This is still well short of the state of the art in downhill-oriented backcountry skis. Telemark equipment has reinvented the alpine ski,  making the free heel aspect of the turn completely irrelevant. 

You can still find boots for heavy 75mm bindings.  These were generically referred to as three-pin, even though some models had no pins at all. Some cable bindings used a slide-in toe piece with a fixed bail. If you really plan to take touring skis more than a couple of miles from where you parked your car, use 75mm bindings and boots. They're a proven workhorse. If you prefer touring in semi-refined environments like snowmobile trails, then the NNN-BC system will allow for somewhat more fluid striding -- at least as fluid as you'll get with a chunky BC boot sole. 

It gets tricky on skis that barely reach the threshold of heavy, such as the Fischer Spider 62. Available either as a flat top or with a SIN plate, Spiders are easily skinny enough to use in a set track at a touring center. But the metal edge on the Spiders makes them a trifle heavy for the cheapest and lightest touring boots and bindings. If you don't push the skis very hard,  you might not notice any control problems, but then what was the point of buying a ski with a metal edge? When you jam on the emergency brake, you want it to dig in. Salomon's two-bar Pilot binding gives a lighter boot more lateral control than a basic single-bar binding would. If you're looking at metal edge skis 62 to 70mm wide, choose the Pilot binding or a BC system binding. If nothing else, make sure you get a manual binding rather than an automatic step-in if you go with light touring boots on a ski like that.

It's disheartening to see the suppliers of the cross-country ski industry fighting over market share like a couple of street dogs scrapping over a half-eaten carcass in an alley.  Economic competition does not necessarily favor a better product, only a better marketed product. I guess they all control a ski better than a leather strap across the toe of an elkhide mukluk. In the modern era, it's not about getting large numbers of people to enjoy the physical and emotional benefits of an activity. It's about getting the largest number possible to spend the largest amount of money on it. 

Just when you thought NNN couldn’t get any cheesier...

This doughnut box of NNN Basic bindings just arrived from Fischer. The Big F shows no qualms about throwing in with No!No! No! regardless of what tumbles out of the pipe.

The front end has one less screw securing the toe piece. And they've gone back to a completely detached heel plate. So drilling remains more complicated, just to attach a less secure binding. They get kudos for consistency.

In the end I suppose it only matters as much as which way you have the toilet paper come off the roll. Of course I have an opinion on that, too, but it's no more a winnable argument than the much stronger one against NNN. For some idiot reason the system thrives in the marketplace. Since it basically does what it says it does, holding your boot on the ski and imparting some measure of control, its inferiorities survive under the aegis of marketing. Make it cheap and available and you will sell a bunch. Sell a bunch and you will be viewed as a serious contender.

Rottefella may have realized that most skis get purchased and set aside. They might get used a little at first and occasionally thereafter, but why lavish materials and good design on something that is going to spend most of its time leaned up in a corner before being donated or unloaded at a yard sale. Since the screws are probably the most expensive parts in the binding, eliminating one from every binding adds up over the course of a production run.

Really early season

Eight inches of snow fell here in Effingham on Saturday night, October 29. On Sunday morning the sun hit the wet, clumpy mess. It didn't look like it would be any fun at all. I tried to ignore it and hoped it would go away, except for the three-ton berm I shoveled out of the mouth of the driveway where the plow had blocked it. I knew I had to get rid of that before it set up during the cold night to come.

Monday's sun melted some more of the ground cover, but an amazing amount remained. We didn't get anything like the dumping some towns got, with more than 20 inches in some places. I'm just as glad, since the ground has not frozen and the leaves are still on about half the trees.

This morning the coverage was holding up too well to ignore any longer. I wasn't going to get a bike ride. I might as well seize the novelty and go out on skis. I used my trusty Trak Edge traditional-length skis with a partial edge. They were Trak's clone of the Karhu Kodiak from the early 1990s. For boots and bindings I have Asolo Snowpine 75 mm boots and Rottefella Super Tele bindings.

The surface was still slightly crunchy when I set out. In places it was actually almost fast. These were actually some of the better ungroomed conditions I've been on in the past couple of years. A lot of our snow storms have been warm and sticky even in the real season. The timing of freeze and thaw has not been very convenient for me even when the weather has gotten cold enough to freeze wet glop solid. So I had a surprisingly good time. It wasn't time to lay down a bunch of turns through the trees, but it was a sporty shuffle in places.

The skis I used have served me well for this sort of skiing, whether I go for a half-hour or most of a day. The industry has promoted a different approach, but I've seen glimmers that the simple, durable touring ski is not dead. Madshus has one or two models. I haven't poked around to see what else might be out there. And 75 mm staged a bit of a comeback a few years ago after almost drowning in the tide of system bindings pushed by Rottefella and its allies, and by Salomon. In its thick-soled back country version it provides the best control of a heavier ski with the simplest, most durable binding. It would feel like trudging toil on a good groomed trail, but the ski setup for a good groomed trail would feel like a flimsy toy in rough, ungroomed conditions.

That being said, there's no guarantee that 75 mm will be around next year or the year after that. If someone figures out how to get people to dump money into Nordic the way they do into Alpine, the race will be on to get all the cheap-ass bark-eaters to update all their gear. But I guess that's true of any industrialized activity.

In the past decade I have seen a lot of furrowed brows out on the trails as people try to work with the mutating winter conditions in the northeast United States. Even in the mythic old days winter could take some odd twists in this region. Now it's downright wacky. It makes a mess of any regular training system. Now it's even reaching out to cramp the end of bike commuting more than the typical heavy flurries or sleet might have done. It pays to be creative and versatile. Unfortunately not everyone can bend their routines to accommodate the whims of weather. That's what keeps various kinds of indoor fitness center in business. I just don't have that kind of discipline or sociability.

Binding Placement

For a few years, Salomon and other authorities have been recommending mounting their bindings on high performance skis a centimeter behind the balance line regardless of whether it's on a skating or classical ski.

Folk wisdom had held that skate skis should be mounted neutral or tip light. Classical skis should be mounted neutral or with a slight tip drop.

As usual, it turns out to be more folked-up than you thought.

If you look around for advice on placement you get a range from dead on the balance to 1.5 centimeters back. You'd think that 1.5 cm back would make the tips thud to the snow, but that placement still makes them light at the tip.

It turns out that the weight of the binding plate has always overcome the inherent balance of the ski. The only way to make any ski tip heavy would be to mount the binding far enough back to overbalance the weight distribution of the binding itself. This generally shows up around two centimeters. We've been skiing tip light all along.

Experts advise moving the binding back to improve gliding performance. The amount is negligible, but supposedly quite noticeable. At the most, it probably won't do any harm to fudge a half or a whole centimeter back.

The only advantage to the NNN NIS plate is that neurotic or phenomenally sensitive skiers can tweak the binding forward or back to suit snow conditions and their mood. The overwhelming disadvantage, of course, is that the plate requires an NNN binding.

How about a universal plate to return binding choice to the marketplace? That way we can return to the freedom to mix and match brands instead of getting trapped in yet another monopolistic product line.

More Great Backshop Work from Elsewhere

These skis came in for waxing. No mention of the hack job someone did installing the bindings. This is the sort of thing that happens with NNN's pointlessly adjustable steering plate. Because the shop grunt drilled wrong and did not have the wit to re-drill, he had to glue the rear section down with Gorilla Glue and hope it stays long enough for the customer to go far, far away and forget where he bought them.

The skis had no stickers, but they had ski straps with the logo of a shop called Skinny Skis, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The customers brought two pairs for waxing, one with Salomon Pilot step-in bindings. Both sets had matching ski straps. But they could have gotten the skis themselves from anywhere and bought the straps as a souvenir on a trip to Jackson Hole.

Pilot vs 666

Friday we tested skating skis equipped with the two competing systems, Salomon Pilot and Rottefella NNN. It was not the NNN triumph our Fischer rep had hoped to achieve.

We put the boots on at least four people. Only one thought they had potential to become comfortable on his foot. He also liked the ride on the skis with NNN, but has not skated extensively on any technique-specific equipment. Anything would feel more precise than pushing himself around on 200+ cm classic skis with low-topped, soft racing classic boots.

In the rigid-soled boots, on that strange, flared binding plate, I felt isolated from the ski and the snow. The boot didn't hurt as much as I thought it might. It would have hurt if I'd skied a long time, but we wanted to compare the two systems back-to-back to get the sharpest impression.

NNN suffers from the inherent handicap of any single-bar binding for skating. The boot is rigid and the binding has those wings on it to make up for the tenuous connection provided by only a single bar. If they have to stick to a single bar, perhaps they could place it farther back under the foot to limit lift and maintain sole contact to increase lateral control. It would not have to be more than a couple of centimeters to achieve this effect. On the down side, the strain on that bar would be considerably greater than on anything currently in use. But hey: that's what engineers are for. Figure it out. Helpful hint to start you off: the boot sole would have to be a bit springy to enhance the spring of the binding itself. This flex would also increase the comfort of the boot.

To the laboratory! Quickly!

Skiing the Salomon felt as supple and sweet as ever. Until the Rotten Fellas get a better act together I know where I'll be. Unless I'm somewhere else entirely.

Comparing Skating Boots

The Fischer rep dropped off pairs of skate skis with Pilot bindings and NNN for us to compare. Because we don't sell No!No!No! boots, he had to leave us those to try as well.

In my experience, Fischer has been incredibly consistent with their boots. Every pair I have ever tried on has been hideously uncomfortable. That record remains unblemished.

I haven't had a chance to ski on this equipment yet. I anticipate distracting levels of pain from my feet while I'm skiing the 666 stuff.
The Fischer/Rottefella alliance is just one more move in the Nordic game of world domination. It's made worse by the new NIS (SIN spelled upside down) plate that only accepts 666 bindings.

The heavy, rigid, uncompromising boot on my foot gave me an idea. It wasn't comfortable to stand in. It wasn't comfortable to walk in. But maybe, just maybe...

Yes!

It felt very solid and commanding when I goose-stepped in it. Kicking those space-age jackboots high like a fascist thug felt just right.

By contrast, my Salomon boots made gentle, knowing love to my feet. They felt as soft as slippers, but held me in a firm embrace. For skiing motions they felt reassuringly supportive. When I tried to goose-step they made me look like a wobbling idiot. Rather anti-fascist.

Vive la France. I'm sticking with the Resistance.

Nordic Skiing Caught in a Bind

Once skiing became recreation instead of Scandinavian transportation, it became a relationship between professionals and the leisure classes in the the countries to which it spread. As such, the ski industry was basically a shady enterprise designed to separate wealthy fools from their money so the professionals could pay for their own skiing lifestyle.

When skiing was re-democratized in its purely downhill form in the 1960s as family fun, the relationship between industry and customers was already established. The middle- and working-class skiers just represented another pool of chumps to exploit.

Industry ski bums envision spending a great deal of time on the snow. For a time it was true. For the most part, we professionals do get to spend a lot more time skiing than most of the customers ever will. Even the leisure classes spread their time among many gratifications. Only those dedicated to competition spend more time on snow than the lucky grunts living their hand-to-mouth existence for the sake of skiing.

Unfortunately for the ski bums, once large amounts of money come into play, the industries harvesting those dollars need more foot soldiers. The machine provides less time to ski while demanding more real business acumen and ruthlessness.

Cross-country skiing threw a twist into the ski industry business model by opening the sport to many new participants of even lesser means and by opening thousands of square miles of terrain to the floppy-shod masses looking for a place to shuffle. No longer did one need to work as an indentured servant to the corporate ski industry to get cheap skiing. You just had to master the deceptively simple equipment.

And so cross-country skiing nearly died. Touring centers worked on better and better grooming. Manufacturers worked on equipment that was easier to master. The public worked on clogged arteries and butts big enough to show drive-in movies on. The alpine ski industry embraced snowboards. Alpine skiers accepted $50, $60 and $70 dollar lift tickets. Anything was better than trudging around in funny little shoes on funny little skis up and over boring terrain while gasping for oxygen.

Even the Telemark revival movement of the early 1980s has gravitated back to fat, heavy boards and monster boots after initially trying to showcase the possibilities of only moderately heavy Nordic touring gear.

The crux of the biscuit is the binding.

The Nordic boom traveled in flexible shoes with duck-bill toes clamped to long skis by snap-down toe pieces. These evolved in a variety of widths, most commonly 75 millimeters across the toe, with 50 millimeter models used on skinny racing skis. The boot soles twisted under hard turning forces, leading to things like the wedge heel plate that fit into a v-groove in the boot heel, and a variety of wicked teeth and spikes on flat heel plates, as well as more drastic devices to secure the heel when the foot was flat on the ski.

By the mid 1980s many companies were trying to eliminate the duck-billed boot entirely and replace it with much more modern-looking contraptions. Out of that bizarre world of mutants emerged Rottefella's first New Nordic Norm binding, with a steering plate behind the toe piece and a rubber flexor to provide springiness, and Salomon's Profil system, which improved greatly on what Rottefella began.

Salomon used a flexor and a big, single steering ridge that ran the full length of the boot sole. The system used a fixed-length jig, so there could be no mistake in drilling the holes for mounting. Rottefella insists to this day on maintaining an adjustable-length plate which makes things more complicated to no advantage for the skier.

Now as the 21st Century no longer seems shiny and new, Salomon has moved on to more complicated attachment systems and Rottefella continues to put out annoyingly fragile bindings in a variety of pretty colors from a large number of licensed vendors. Imagine being buried in an avalanche of cheesy children's toys. They're cute, but you're still being crushed to death.

Snowshoeing is booming. Nordic is technologizing itself to death the way mountain biking did. For the dedicated addict, many of the new devices are really neat and desirable. For the average poor slob who gets to ski four or five times in a good year, eternally reliable 75-millimeter mediocrity would probably have been fine.

For the addicts to get their high-grade goodies, lots of other people have to buy up the rest of the production run. Otherwise the equipment manufacturers can't afford to stay in business to service the addicts' needs. This relies on a steady supply of incoming participants or old participants upgrading their equipment. Newbies will accept simplified explanations for the most part, but upgrading intermediates want things explained in more depth. Here's where it gets difficult. A shop employee has to explain the fine points of the new gear without overloading the mental circuitry of the customer.

To jazz up high-performance Nordic, some shops try to offer stone-ground bases and special hot boxes to cook the wax into the base material. Will this usher in a new age of Nordic participation? It's doubtful. The up-front cost for facilities like this requires a large clientele to pay it off. These shops have to use the Internet to farm customers from all over the country to try to recoup the investment. Meanwhile, you still have to get on the skis and exert yourself to make them go. How much was that lift ticket again? Doesn't sound so bad, now. Later we'll go snowshoein'.

Two days ago I was out on my classic skis in a heavy snowstorm, sliding past everyone, including a little convoy of the touring center's regulars. Back in the building, one of them asked me what I had used for wax. On the glide zones I was using stuff a full grade colder than the range we were in, because I'd put it on two days earlier and hadn't had time to change. For kick I had Start Terva Green we don't even carry anymore because the only Start wax anyone wanted to buy was Start Green glide wax. Do I hotbox my skis? No. Have they ever been stone ground? No. Would I do either one? I don't know. Probably not. Wax often. Wax carefully. Always handle your own skis.

I don't see Nordic racing becoming a big money category in the United States before the next North American ice age. There are too many more reliable ways to get your exercise and your competitive ya-yas. And you're not likely to talk anyone but a racer or a dedicated and well-funded poser into getting regular stone grinds. You are chewing base material off each time you get them ground. It makes your Nordic addiction that much more expensive, and, therefore, hard to sustain.

Know your bindings

Cross-country ski bindings have to do slightly different jobs on different kinds of ski.

Touring bindings are made for ease of use in classical technique. Classical refers to the walking-type motion also called the diagonal stride. Modern system bindings usually offer the tourist the choice to step in without having to manually open and close the binding.

Racing bindings operate manually. This helps make the binding a little lighter and eliminates the risk that someone else’s pole will punch you out of your automatic binding in the melee of a mass start. The flexors may be more firmly anchored for more precise handling. Sport tourists on lighter gear will appreciate that.

Among racing bindings there are two types, classical and skate. There are also two types of skate binding, the flexor style and the Salomon Pilot, using a spring-loaded lever that attaches underneath the boot sole rather than an elastic flexor at the toe.

The wider the ski, the wider the attachment of the binding should be. This has led to back-country versions of both the Rottefella NNN and Salomon Profil system. They use a heavier, wider attachment bar at the toe of the boot. Both come in manual or automatic versions.

Back-country is a bit inaccurate, since these bindings are best used on heavier touring skis in more civilized settings.

The best binding for real back-country is the heavy version of good old 75 millimeter, especially if you like to find little private hideaways to do a few turns. This is not the flimsy old 3-pin of the 1970s touring boom, it’s stronger, adapted to a thicker boot sole.

The BC system binding works well on touring skis from 60 mm to just over 70 in width. Don’t bother to trudge around on a wider ski than that unless you’re looking for some turns or breaking trail in deep snow, both places where 75 mm is far superior.