Update from the XCD Knights

[bgregoire]

Ok. In the backountry. Freeheels. On skis. I'm at a loss here.

At least, that god forsaken golfer could be one of us if he had a pair of these under his feet?

[MikeK]

Ok. In the backountry. Freeheels. On skis. I'm at a loss here.

XCD.

At least, that god forsaken golfer could be one of us if he had a pair of these under his feet?

DXC*





*Dirt Cross Country

[lowangle al]

Mike, if you are comparing people who tour in plastic "Nordic" boots to AT skiers and splitboarders it not only shows your inexperience but it pisses people off. If you think all you can do is shuffle in big boots or that you can xc ski efficiently in AT gear my guess is you never tried it.

Why would anyone get pissed off over something so silly? If you want to get angry about that, then I can give the address for Ron's Nazi forum.

I think people who tour in plastic boots might be a bit overly sensitive to the humor and critical thinking of this forum.

Mike, I was more irritated than angry. Sometimes your thinking comes off more closed minded than critical. If you are unwilling to use at least a light cable binding or a boot burlier than the excursion you are doing yourself a diservice. I think you should have the same advantages as the 90% of the forum members who have heavy as well as light gear.

[MikeK]

Mike, I was more irritated than angry. Sometimes your thinking comes off more closed minded than critical. If you are unwilling to use at least a light cable binding or a boot burlier than the excursion you are doing yourself a diservice. I think you should have the same advantages as the 90% of the forum members who have heavy as well as light gear.

Why is everyone so invested in what I do? Is there a bet going on I don't know about?

I assure you my responses are critical, or just plain snarky. My actions may be closed minded, but I have my own reasons. Some people just like to make their lives hard for themselves, or so I'm told.

Again I'll point out the fact my wife has that equipment and I can see the stark difference in dh performance and touring performance.

Also I'm not the only one who doesn't choose to use plastic boots for XCD. Why not try to convert Teleman?

I will ski on plastic when I get my Telemark skis, but for XCD I'll always use soft boots as long as I can get them. It's one of the things I really love about it.

[connyro]

Mike, I don't think(?) anyone is trying to 'convert' you to plastic. It's just that to honestly assess how light plastic boots ski, you must try them out yourself. We went for a long tour yesterday in deep snow. I had a setup with SB bindings and Excursions and I was getting great K+G on broken trail, eerily similar to XC skiing! My point is that touring with free pivot binding, bigger scaled skis, and light plastic boots is not shuffling if you know what you are doing. It's not as 'efficient' as lighter gear/boots, but it's an awful fun way to ski if conditions dictate. It might not be XCD, but it's surely nordic touring...

[Cannatonic]

If you are unwilling to use at least a light cable binding or a boot burlier than the excursion you are doing yourself a diservice. I think you should have the same advantages as the 90% of the forum members who have heavy as well as light gear.

sound good to me….you buyin'??

[MikeK]

Well I will apologize if I called it shuffling. I think I may have been referring AT, and I don't have to try that to know what it is. I've seen people shuffle by with it, and there are countless videos showing people shuffling with it.

I see plenty of people shuffling with the gear I ski with. They just don't ski it to it's potential.

If you can wax up your AT gear and have a nice slide, go for it... but there is no way in hell I'll ever ski what I typically ski with equipment like that.

And I admit that my wife doesn't ski her Excursion with a free pivot, so I'm not seeing the whole picture.

Still I don't think, based on engineering assessment, that a free pivot binding was optimized for striding, it seems more advantageous for climbing. I'll say this because if it was, we'd probably see racers tossing out the rubber on the NNN binding and skiing it as a free pivot. NNN was obviously developed for striding. Engineering assessment, to me, is a no brainer and I've said it hundreds of times, it simply doesn't have the advantages a 75mm cable binding has for descending.

Also if you look through my old posts, and I've talked with you guys about this before, but I really question what is best for deep snow XC. It does certainly appear, and I can't imagine hundreds of people are wrong, that those fat boards do it better.

[lowangle al]

Mike we are invested in you because of the great enthusiasum you show by way of your posting. I don't think I would be as outspoken about what or how you ski if I didn't have a very similar attitude as you for my first 20 years skiing.

I'm not trying to convert you to plastic exclusively, I just think with the size of the quiver you have it should include a tele boot. Especially since you have those Atomic skis.

I think Tman is probably an expert skier and that when or if he tried plastic boots didn't stick with it long enough to get comfortable with it. Besides I don't think he is on these forums looking for advice.

[MikeK]

Oh for sure I'm going to ski plastic boots for Tele. I don't think I could handle those skis with any of my light boots. Really my only interest at this point in Tele is to ski on fake snow when we have a shitty winter and I'm jonsin' and to be a better XCD skier.

I try to keep everyone here happy - I never have interfered with anyone about their NTN or Tele gear.

Discussion about ski, boot, binding construction are merely mental exercises. I like to understand everything I can about skiing and hear about what works for other people. This whole Knight business, to me, was never about telling anyone how to ski or what they should ski... it was actually more or less some silly semantics about what constitutes XCD and what constitutes Tele. And I always found the Knights rather humorous since I heard of them.

AFAIK Steve Barnett was the one to popularize the term XCD. And I have the first edition of his book. I've read it a few times. It seems to me to be nothing more than a primer of techniques one might use for skiing in the mountains with your heels free so you can stride. He talks some about gear, but it's fairly outdated. Not much more than XC skis with metal edges and mountaineering boots adapted to 3 pin bindings. Much like Teleman would have liked it to stay.

I can't recall if I said it already in this thread, but I generally like to think of how I ski as Nordic Backcountry. I ski wherever there is snow. I'm almost always touring. The better I get, the more I tackle more challenging terrain. The better I get, actually the more XC I want in my equipment.

Everyone is going one way, I think I'm going the other...

I started Alpine skiing with plastic boots when I was about 12 years old and suspect I'll die with a lurk in my hand and feet lashed with leather straps to some crudely bent spruce planks with real animal skins lashed to the bottom.

[lowangle al]

Mike, I'm glad you see it our way .

Steve Barnett did popularize xcd skiing but for the most part those early adapters of tele were alpine skiers looking for better ways to get to the goods, with a little bit of curiousity about an obsure Nordic turn. I don't think they were too concerned about k& g efficiency, being happy to put on skins and hit the steeps asap.