Pondering ski gear in the rain after learning something new in an outdoor shop

Braeriach from Craigellachie

Wandering up Craigellachie in the rain I was pondering ski gear and the novel, at least for me, experience of going into an outdoor shop with lots of questions and less knowledge than I thought I had. The shop visit was the follow-up to the discovery that my plastic ski touring boots were on the way out and needed replacing that I wrote about in this post.

My assumption was that I would replace the boots with a similar pair or possibly even the same model. I just needed to find ones that fitted my wide feet. But it had been twenty years since I’d last paid attention to ski gear, and I was to discover much had changed. I’d had a warning of this at the igloo building weekend where Andy Ince had shown me his current set-up – huge plastic boots, the widest skis I’d ever seen, and complicated new -fangled bindings – and said that’s what Telemark skiers were now using and that the old 75mm Nordic Norm three-pin and cable bindings were on the way out. I didn’t really take this in as I wasn’t looking for such a set-up anyway. If anything I wanted lighter boots, not heavier ones.

Cable-bindings & duck-bill boots. Out of date!

Then in Cairngorms Mountain Sports in Aviemore I was told that 75mm NN really was disappearing. I couldn’t replace my boots with the same model as they’d been discontinued as had similar boots. I aske about leather boots with clips and power straps. Gone years ago. My cable bindings were no longer made either and spares were unavailable so I wouldn’t be able to replace the cables when they failed (and they’re pretty worn, being over twenty years old). Oh. The Nordic touring system I’d been using since I learnt to ski forty years ago would soon be no more. It looked as though I needed new boots and new bindings. And to adjust my thinking. What was now available? 

My old duck-billed 75mm NN boots

The assistant showed me a new binding with a long-winded name, the Rottefella Xplore BC Offtrack Nordic Binding. It looked good and very different to 75NN. No more duck-billed boots! I examined some boots designed for this binding. They looked the type I was after.

I didn’t make an immediate decision. I hadn’t expected to discover that I probably needed a whole new system. I was glad I’d talked to an expert and he’d given me good advice, including that the new bindings were not that proven in Scottish conditions yet and maybe I should do some research online. (I have and found rave reviews from Norway and the USA but nothing from Scotland). It was decades since I’d needed such assistance in an outdoor shop and it was useful to be reminded how valuable it is to discuss with an expert gear you can actually handle in a bricks and mortar shop. Such places are well worth supporting.

Craigellachie birches

Leaving the shop I went for a walk up Craigellachie, that steep, rugged, mostly wooded crag that rises directly above Aviemore. Rain poured down. The paths were slippery and muddy. The woods glistening and fresh. Big stands of birch trees were silver and purple, waiting for the first pale green tinge of the coming spring.

In the rain

Once above the trees Aviemore spread out below me. My eyes though were drawn across Strathspey to the Cairngorms, to the dark cleft of the Lairig Ghru and the snowy corries of cloud-shrouded Braeriach. Dark, grim, grand. And probably not the place to be today.

The Lairig Ghru

I descended in the rain, thinking about new boots and bindings. I still am but it does look like the Xplore bindings – trying something new is always exciting – as long as I can find boots that fit both me and them.

Craigellachie birches