UKC

Hi All,

I've recently bought Silvretta bindings, to allow me to ski in my Scarpa 6000's into alpine routes. What ski's have people mounted such bindings on for use as approach skis? I've seen people in Alaska using normal ski's with the back 50cm sawn off, and have heard of people using kids skis. Any advise as to which approach to design is best.

I can ski quite well on normal skis- so not learning to ski, but will spend some time practicing. Planning to use when approaching routes in the alps in winter/spring and when further afield. In the past I have always climbed in touring boots, but have definitely reached the point on routes where I wish I had been climbing in Mountaineering boots instead, and don't like carrying an extra pair of boots/swapping into cold ski boots left at the bottom of a route.

Cheers,

Will

In reply to Will_Thomas_Harris:

I used to do this quite a lot, it's not easy and made much harder if you swap between ski mountaineering boots and climbing boots as you get used to the support and it's hard to change back to virtually no support.
However if you just ski in plastic climbing boots you do get used to it and I could ski stuff like the fly paper quite easily.I used the Silveretta binding and found them very good, releasing no problems in all planes.
I just used a cheap second hand piste ski, the approach skis are too short for deep snow, and awful on icy slopes.
As you aren't going to carry the skis I would get a half decent second hand pair, its worth it for the ease of descent, and skinning up, which is why you are doing it in the first place.
I agree with you that ski mountaineering boots aren't good for climbing,especially mixed routes.
I had another pair of skis for touring.

In reply to Will_Thomas_Harris:
I use Hagan Off Limits ski 130cm and fat,[130mm / 90mm and c110mm at the tail, I think] with Silvretta 555 bindings (modern 404's).

A good compromise is to climb/ski in plastic climibg boots but use a ski boot inner boot/liner/ This hardly affects the climbing [keep ankle loosely taced] but helps a great deal when skiing [crank up the ankle support.]

I have a pair of size 27/42/8 inner boots that are oldish but never used [my spares] should they be of use to you £50 posted.

The Off Limits are about £170 new, but hard to find.

regards

In reply to Will_Thomas_Harris:

the classic approach ski (with no actual skiing performance) is an old beater short touring ski from Egay.de or your local ski-swap (mostly arcene kids downhill ski).

for those with more dineros, Hagan and some others do short approach skis. Or one of these gliding snowshoes (see Altai Hok, http://altaiskis.com/products/the-hok/ ), TobyA might give an opinion on something like those . Lastly the option might be just proper touring skis, possibly with even a scaled/crown bottom (say, Voile Vector BC http://www.voile.com/voile-skis/voile-vector-bc-skis-2013-2014.html ).

In reply to Will_Thomas_Harris:

Hi Will,
I've got an old pair of skinny lightweight touring skis (174cm, 103-68-90) with Silvretta carbon 500s and Montana skins, don't know if that's the kind of thing you're after? Drilled once previously for a pair of NX01's.
Cheers, Aly