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I had a pair of barely used Voile Split Crampons just lying around after I switched to Dynafit toe pieces and I wondered if there was any sort of modifications I could make so that I could still use them on the rare occasions they’d be necessary.

As it turns out, the hole used for the Dynafit crampon bracket is exactly the same diameter as the Voile touring pins, making this mod much more realistic.

When mounted on the Spark Dynafit Adapter Plates, the Dynafits were just slightly too low to line up with the holes in the Voile Crampons when they were sitting flush on the board, so only thing modification I actually had to do was add a small plastic shim (about 2 mm? – haven’t measured exactly) underneath the adapter plates to get the holes to line up.



My one concern was that since the Voile touring bracket is so much wider than the Dynafit toe pieces, there might be enough torque on the touring pin to damage the Dynafit crampon mounting bracket, which is a notoriously weak spot on the Dynafit bindings. Although this may still be a concern in the long term, it held up quite well to my first real field test climbing a steep and icy couloir (see TR here: http://splitboard.com/talk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=11109).



Also, I was concerned that without the Voile touring bracket to hold them in place, the crampons may have a bit too much side to side play, possibly damaging the board’s side walls, but this also didn’t seem to be a problem in my field test.

One nice thing about this set up is that you can use them with the climbing bar up, since you’re usually using the crampons when climbing a reasonably steep slope.

I removed a small black tab from the rear end of the crampons and screwed it onto the center tab that allowed the crampons to be attached to the slider plate when used with a Voile setup. This allows the front of my foot to push down the crampon into the snow even with my climbing bars up:



Further improvements: I’d like to remove the spinning black piece and mount another heel lift for my forefoot to push down on the crampon. This should be easy enough, I just wanted to test out the idea before drilling into the crampons.

Friggin Sweet Mod

So do you just have regular R&D bindings along with the dynafit toe piece for going up? How do those bindings work with the hard boot?

Liz. You have to have dynafit compatable boots to work with the toepiece. the two pins lock into steel inserts on the front of the boot and thats it. no need for anything else.
the plates go in your backpack.
There are a few options that you can use there, voile plate an buy voile platebindings specificly for hardboots or voile plate and mount a hardboot plate binding on top.

Liz,

As vapor says, you carry the plate bindings in your pack. It's a bit of extra weight in the pack, but the dynafit bindings are so much more efficient for touring that it's well worth it.

I've switched from the Voile Mountain Plates to the newer Bomber Sidewinders (the difference is dramatic):
http://bomberonline.3dcartstores.com/Splitboard-binding_p_112.html

I can tour much steeper/hard packed terrain with the AT boots/dynafits than I would have in soft boots, but it's still nice to have the split crampons in the right situation.