Praxis Powder Boards and touring...

[kingsskier]

How do (or do you think) these will do in a BC or side country type touring setup? Will the full U rocker make these a pain? I cant decide if I want to commit to a touring binding or an alpine binding.
Ideally I could just swiss cheese them and put two sets of inserts in, but I bought these from a mag on here who attempted inserts and got a spinner so he filled them. Three sets of insert holes is way too much swiss for me.

[kevino]

I toured about 8 days with them this winter on dynafits. They worked fine for the most part, occasionally they were a pain when the skin track had been compacted down after several laps by several group but I never fell. I mounted +2 of the line and it seemed to be a good spot for both skiing and skinning/kick turns. If there is already one mount and you want both style of bindings why not mount them with some plates?

[toast2266]

They'll be fine as long as you're walking in soft snow. They'll be a bit of a headache on well beaten in skin tracks and aggressive tracks with lots of kick turns. They'll be a larger headache when trying to kick in a side hill skin track if there's stiff snow or a buried crust layer. Wide skis + wide skins = not particularly light, but you probably already knew that.

[kingsskier]

Plates came into my head as i hit post thread. I have never used plates and dont know too much about them other than the broad sense of what they do. I guess I should look into them a little more.
As for weight, my current setup is ON3P Wrenegades with large dukes, so that by no means is a light setup. I wanted something a little less point and go (not a replacement, just another option).
You guys did however answer my question of how they handle in the skinning portion and I got these cheap enough to somewhat experiment with them with plates and if they arent for me, no harm done.
The only reason the bindings are an issue is, I already have a pair of STH16s ready to go on them and could easily use them for my machine guided trip in spring. But, I dont see myself justifying these at a resort especially after this winter and last. I would have to get lucky to use them for skinning this season but future seasons is why I questioned that.

[kevino]

The overall weight of my setup was not bad at all. I had the 190 pow boards and those are surprisingly light - especially with dynafits. Most of the skin tracks around the PNW are fairly wide so that wasn't usually an issue.

Lastly, I had 130 mm skins, which I never needed to cut and worked for the most part. You could get the BD 140 mm if you really want wall to wall coverage.

[toast2266]

As long as you don't mind the minimal increase in stack height, plates are a great option.

[SupreChicken]

I've got some R1 192 lotus 138s with plates on them now. Haven't taken them touring yet (stupid Juneuary, need some snow), but I think they'll be fairly similar to the way the pows would tour. I'll report back hopefully after this weekend.