Snurfer wrote:

I’ve said this in other threads, and I’ll say it again. Soft boot manufacturers why do you make reward stride impossible? That is the point of having a high back on the binding. I guess you all don’t remember or haven’t been at it long enough to know why we have high backs. Hint: people used to ride in high top sneakers, soft Sorels, whatever they happened to have.

This season I dropped the highback from my rear binding on my solid board and have yet to notice the absence of it. My 32 boots have so much forward lean built in and are reasonably stiff which makes me wonder if highbacks are even needed. That said, for splitting, even removing the highbacks will not increase rearward stride with my boots.

Any feedback on the Salomon boots where the cuff articulates back? They are what $500. They look pretty good when you lock the cable in the loose position they look like a real improvement.

I’ve done a fair number of tours in the Wasatch without highbacks. Totally doable if you pick your days in a place like Utah, but then even no bindings work on those days. Although in the more trafficked areas, I would miss them pretty bad on heelside exit trails or if you were dropping inconsequential thin soft slabs on a crust in a starting zone up high. Like you identified Perm, it was always my front leg where I missed the support because you are trying to traverse on some scraped trail and weighting the front foot to track straight right.

I am from the Sorel era too, it was always forward lean you were reinforcing your boots for, no problem with the highback support, maybe you would add padding. It is a mystery to me why the redundancy in boot backward stiffness also, maybe it’s an industry leftover from the lowback trend. It seems like to make boots supportive forward, you in part need to lace up to a supportive back spine in the boot. But having the aggressive forward lean shaped into some boots is contrary that idea.

suemi wrote:

Ive been running sparks for the last 5-6 years and love them. Last year i started flirting with the switch to hard boots for efficiency but elected to try some driver x’s as a last ditch effort.

Ive always ran the heel cup way forward to fit my size 9 boots. They are a perfect fit for the way down. What this does though, is put the touring pins at the ball of my foot. Have i been loosing power for all these years? While researching hard boots i notice the touring hookups on tlt6’s are way more forward than my setup.

Has anyone played with boot to binding settup for more efficient touring? Where are your pins in location to your toes?

Thanks for any advice or experience…be safe.

Rich

I ALWAYS mount my pucks on the split as far towards the toe side as possible, you acchieve thia by flipping the single slot disc of the 2 Voilé pucks accordingly. I then center the boot by pulling the heelcup back. I am size 9 in Burtons, could probably go to 8 3/4 (?) in my adidas. My Pivot is under my big toe.

On my first DIY Split I went pretty far towards the toeside, with factory split and Voilé pucks I go as far as I can, I’d like to go further. I think the spark pucks would allow for a bit of more adjustment there.