Fischer BCX Europa 109 Tour

[Bohemian]

So, finally I got round to taking the E109s out for a spin on fresh snow on forest roads with the leather ski march boots.
Parked at close to 900m, climbed via forest roads to 1330m @ Hochficht ski area, Boehemian Forest, Austria (close to the 3-country point D-A-CZ).
Got quite far with grip wax: equivalent of blue ski slopes and only higher up & steeper I put the skins on.
20-ish cm fresh powder on top of hard pack & crust with only on wind exposed slopes some old slabs of ice.
Slowly getting the hang of skiing down with these ankle boots. I was surprised to see how well these very narrow skis float! Should only improve when I swap the bindings for lighter 3-pin.
No need for S-bounds until I get much more time on these toothpicks
As for the boots: my feet are simply too skinny, despite my beer diet (as ordered by my friend doctor)
Perhaps I should try with a 2nd pair of socks or those EZfit things. I have the same problem with so many boots including safety boots at work...

[Bohemian]

Old BD bindings taken off.
Now the big question: WHERE to mount the 3-pin front plates of the -pin hardwire set (without using the spacer plates) :
Pin line on balance point?
Pin line on chord centre?
There is a triangular mark on the side of the skis, too.
Thanks for any input and apologies for my perhaps stupid questions, but I'd prefer to drill only once and avoid creating another Swiss cheese !

[fisheater]

I would mark balance point and chord center. I would also determine where the most narrow part of the ski is. Ideally chord center and balance point would be very close. Hopefully when you set your boot pins on BP, ball of foot will be on that waist of the ski.
I find pulling my hair out for a couple days doesn’t help, but I do that a lot.
When in doubt I lean to pins on balance point for XC oriented skis

[Bohemian]

I would mark balance point and chord center. I would also determine where the most narrow part of the ski is. Ideally chord center and balance point would be very close. Hopefully when you set your boot pins on BP, ball of foot will be on that waist of the ski.
I find pulling my hair out for a couple days doesn’t help, but I do that a lot.
When in doubt I lean to pins on balance point for XC oriented skis

Thanks!
Guess what! Balance point and chord center line up exactly!
But 2 of the old holes are too close to put the pin line on CC/BP. If I reuse those holes I'll have the pin line about 5mm aft of CC & BP. Guess I have no other choice.
At least the width of those 2 holes is the same as in the 3pin pattern.
Drilling can wait another few days, I'm now far away from skiable snow but at least I've got the stuff with me.

[John Dee]

I have been blown away by how good these are both at XC and telemark. I have them dry fitted with Voile Mountaineers, so I'm just doing some gentle testing, but I also skiied on them briefly with the Rivas. I'm more interested in them as a gentle cruising ski because of their narrow width, but its amazing to think that they could also fly down stuff.

Today, I went to help somebody groom their trails. The trails were pretty soft-groomed, and I found them to be very pleasant for that, with good glide, while obviously not excelling at it. I couldn't hit the gas because of my Ski March boots. I don't care too much about groomed-performance with a backcountry ski, but it just shows how versatile these are.

I have also found them to excel at breaking trails in the 10-12 inches or so fresh snow that we have. They have enough float to be easy and fun in the snow. I might like them better than my sBound98s for this.

I also noticed that the center and bp were very close when I switched the bindings. I remember people talking about that as being a very good attribute. Its interesting to hear that they are exactly lined up.

Now, the SUPER URGENT QUESTION: When I unscrewed them, it looked like the screws were set in a black plastic material as far down as I could see... 1/4"? I went to the hardware store to buy some Gorilla Glue, but it didn't list plastic on the label, and actually said that it wasn't reccomended for polyethylene. What does that leave, epoxy? I have some 20 year old west system epoxy that was left in a barn. It did a pretty could job filleting some kayak paddles, so I can use that if I have too.

[fisheater]

I’ve used Titebond III with plastic Voile risers and 3-pin Hardwire bindings on two sets of skis.
No science behind this, but no problems

[Bohemian]

Last Saturday I got the first tour done with the front plate of the 3-pin hardwire bindings mounted (instead of simple 3-pin), this time with the Scarpa plastic boots as the tour was quite long (for me) and I didn't feel confident enough yet on the ski march boots.
20-ish km and about 650~700 height metres up in varying conditions: parked the car at 800m ; until 900m it was extremely icy, worse on the way back ; around 1000~1150m very nice on the paths in the forest ; wind blown higher up especially around 1200~1300m. Only needed the skins for one steep bit of 100 height metres, the rest on grip wax!
A normally fun downhill bit from 1330m to 1200m took me a lot of effort: just a tad too crusty for me? ; another steep-ish path lower down had fairly heavy snow and went much smoother than the higher bit.
On the last stretch down, mostly flat-ish it was icy enough to strip all wax off my skis... sheets of solid ice in places... Oh well... saves scraping later on! At least I kept control at all times! These were supposed to be XC tracks... Saw plenty XC folk struggling big time!
I was pleasantly surprised by the easy going on long flat-ish and uphill stretches, didn't feel slow.
Tomorrow the next one: 26km, if all goes well I'll finally make it to the Hochstein, Dreisessel and the 3-country point D-A-CZ. Planning to use the Scarpa's again as the ski march boots are still not 100% friends with my skinny feet, working on that! They're getting soaked with wet rags for a few days after a generous amount of Nikwax.
Hoping to do a 10-15km tour with the leather boots later this week, in the weekend or so.

[fisheater]

You’re becoming quite the beast! Not that I can talk, but photos would be cool. That’s from a guy that rarely takes photos!

[John Dee]

I've started doing an increasing amount of moronic shit while still having the same amount of perfectionism. I'm pretty sure the holes were all metal inside (or plastic?) so I cranked down pretty hard on the screw driver. I might have started to strip one or more of them. All of them felt oookay but one may have gone a little far. I put a bunch of epoxy in the holes and redid them lighter. It bothers me because these are no longer made.

[John Dee]

If it's plastic under there then I probably did them too tight... I could probably pull them out in the next 30 mins.