suitable for skiing with mates on piste, a bit of off-piste, and a bit of ski touring?

tips on bindings and boots also helpful 🙂

Boots are a must IMO, get a pair from a good fitter (not Snow&Rock) and they will last you years. They will be much comfier than a hire pair and will improve your skiing.

Skis I am less sure of. Yes, you get a pair that you like and that you know but you also have to service them and carry them around airports. Unless you ski more than 2 weeks per year I’m not convinced buying is the way forward. If you hire you also get to try new stock that (if you pick the right hire shop) is well looked after as well.

lunge, have to challenge you there. My boots were fitted by Snow & Rock and they are utterly excellent, as was the whole service of getting them fitted. Mine were from Kensington. Ask for either Neil or Chris, both excellent fitters.

Other than that, you’re spot on!

Buy boots but rent ski’s unless you ski for more than 4 weeks a year – this way you can get the latest marketing crap technology every holiday.

Flash, fair enough, I can only go on my experience that was not great. Lockwoods in Leamington and Solutions4Feet in Bicester were substatially better IME.

I used to own skis when I lived in the Alps.
.
Now that I don’t, I don’t see the point really. If you are talking holidays rather than seasons. Then much better renting.

(the saving of Ski carriage charges on the plane and the servicing charges after/during use will pay a big chunk of top quality ski rental anyway)

no advantages.

get a snowboard.

Thank you all.

Is the advice not to buy skis affected by the fact that I anticipate predominantly using these for ski touring over the next few years (rather than package holidays)?

As above, not a lot of point unless you’re doing a lot of skiing. Also, the requirements you’ve listed would need quite specialist kit – for touring, you’d need a touring binding, maybe something like a Marker Baron that also skis pretty well downhill. You could get one setup to do it all, but probably better off swapping hire skis as required.

For touring weight matters and rental bindings weigh more(not a lot, but it’s weight on your feet). Another advantage is that your skis will be a known quantity – you won’t be able to use the excuse that the rental shop only had heavy / noodly / wide / narrow skis left.

jhw, that depends how long you play to tour for and how easy it is to hire touring skis.

Assuming you can hire them (and I’d be very suprised if you couldn’t) then I would still hire if you can. If you’re going from one place to another just make sure the hirer is happy to have the skis dropped of in another resort.

If you’re only doing a bit of light resort bashing you can get away with touring skis and bindings. If you’re goign to be doing moguls all day, hire dedicated resort skis and bindings!

Crossed posts there, but if it’s predominantly touring, that does complicate things a bit. Most decent hire shops will stock some touring kit, but you might be better off choosing and getting used to kit that suits your needs.

Thanks – is there an all-round ski/boot/binding combo which is also suitable for touring? (Marker Baron looks good).

My impression is that renting skis is generally for piste/resort holidays – is this a stupid impression – if I’m wanting to do a ski tour in Les Ecrins or the Bernese Oberland or somewhere that isn’t Espace Killy/Trois Vallees/Paradiski/PdS, will I actually be able to hire?

There are some great places doing rental of touring skis out there, dependent on where you go. For example;
http://www.latitude-rando.com/en/ski-hire.html in Serre Che. Lovely place to drool at kit, too!

I bought my Rossi S86s as everyone was raving about them being a do-it -all ski – but they are diffcult to find unless you are tall or short.

loads of places hire touring kit. Mrs Mugsy has hired touring kit; by the train station in Geneva, in Saas Fee, in Chamonix, in a suburb of Chambery, and in a tiny hamlet in the Vercors (well actually the Vercors was me when my boot buckle exploded…). In France most of the suitably located Decathlons hire touring kit. Touring kit hire includes skis, boots, skins, batons, ski crampons and ontop you can hire rescue kit i.e shovel, probe and arva.

However we had to abaondon a trip due to poorly fitting boots that Mrs Mugsy hired. Skied upto the hut, slept, and skied down from the hut… and it was a public holiday so we could not return the kit and ended up paying a fortune for a 3 hour skin and a 1 hour descent…..

You’ll be able to find hire shops wherever you go in the Alps. You’ll almost always be starting out from a resort or basing through a big valley town with hire gear.

For touring bindings, it depends what you want to do. If you’re doing big, out-there, multi-day tours, get Dynafits, no question. If it’s day tours with a fair split of up/down, Dynafits are still good, also look at Marker F12, Diamir, etc.

For side-country stuff (short climbs, big descents) and a binding which skis equally well on-piste, it’s got to be Marker Baron/Duke.

Boots depends on what fits – Garmont Shogun is fantastic and skis pretty-much as well as a downhill boot. A good boot-fitter who is prepared to modify the boot to make it fit is pretty-much essential with touring boots.

Skis depend on what you want to do. Pretty happy with my Movement Couloirs for mix of on/off-piste, short tours.

I’ve found that hiring decent touring kit can be a challenge, even in the big resorts; we had difficulty finding good stuff for one of our party even in Argentiere last year. Note that if you get the touring bug you’ll be wanting to go to more out-of-the-way places and this makes hiring difficult if not impossible. So if you want to tour you need to think about buying but it’s complex and you need to really know what you want so (a) give it a try first using rented kit and (b) find someone who does it and ask them. FWIW I use a pair of K2 Waybacks with Dynafit bindings for touring but there are many alternatives.

You really need to have your own boots, and if you want to tour you’ll need boots that will go in Dynafit bindings (or have 2 pairs!). Scarpa Maestrale is widely considered one of the best 4-buckle touring boots around at the moment (I have a pair) and it’s ok for piste bashing too, but the lighter touring boots are generally too soft for the piste. Lockwoods are good for both advice and fitting.

For piste skis I’d say its 50-50 buying vs renting, and a lot may depend on where you’re going and how you get there – it’s easy to bung them on top of a car but airlines are getting a bit expensive. I have Marker Barons on my piste skis so that I can do the odd bit of day touring but they’re far too heavy for serious touring.

I’d probably agree with Stevo RE gear, but why would you hire rather than own? The advantage of owning skis is that you can go skiing whenever you feel. If you have to hire, you can’t.

Boots can also be a total lottery when hiring, and if you’re completely new to touring, getting used to idiosyncrasies of different systems can be pretty hard work when you just want to be out on the hill. Having the same gear helps you get to know how to use it more effectively. However, putting a full setup together can be expensive even 2nd hand/ in sales (just helped a mate get an AT setup together for less than £400 – bindings (£70), boots((£65), skis (£50), skins (£65), telescopic poles (£30), tranceiver (£100), all good gear and just needs shovel and probe, but that was tricky).

I don’t know if you can ski already, but if you can, that sort of setup is probably most straightforward/ common. I’d avoid dynafit unless you are sure you want to do almost exclusively touring. I’d also not worry about touring specific skis if you want to use them for lift skiing as well – decent dh skis that aren’t overly heavy will be more than fine. Touring specific boots are a must though – but the fashion for touring has got so big recently that you can get quite a few crossover boots that are pretty handy dh/on piste and not so painful up.

If you can’t ski (or are willing to relearn) I’d go for a tele setup. In some ways its less compromised than an AT setup, and, given the current fashion for AT kit, often cheaper to find. If you want to go nordic, then that’s cheaper still and the least fashionable option, but your dh ability will be massively limited in comparison with the other 3 (AT, dynafit, tele) unless you are a superhero.

I wouldn’t recommend any specific gear, but I would never hire because I like to ski whenever I feel the urge – after work, before work, on the way to work (sometimes), afternoons or mornings off… And that being familiar with your gear is really useful, as well as the fact that I can’t really rely on hiring gear when/where I go.

Rio +1

I think a single set of skis and boots for both on piste and touring is always a compromise so you need to decide which way you are going to be leaning… Compatability between boots and bindings becomes an issue so choose with care. Some ski boots work only in Alpine bindings; some only in touring bindings; some have different footplates available so they’ll work in both with some modification.

For what it’s worth if you’re planning big days of all day touring (i.e 1000’s of feet of vertical) than I would go for a decent light weight touring set-up. Something for me that would work is a decent boot and a Diamir binding (like the Eagle). You can still use those for on-piste days but accept that you can’t hammer them in resort.

I’ve two pairs (Garmont Radiums and Dynafit) and Salomon DH boots on Salomon skis. I’ve used the Radiums / dynafit in resort a couple of times; for the first few hours it all feels fine but by the end of the day I really noticed the lack of support from the lighter kit.

I live in Canada currently so for me the advantage of owning is flexibility as well. If I want to go touring tomorrow then I can without having to worry about trying to find rental places etc.

I think a lot depends on how much use you intend to get per year… if only for a few dedicated weeks in a year then renting skis is probably worthwhile. If you’re planning on doing stuff for long weekends / at the last minute then having your own will reduce the hassle factor.

Also keep in mind Steomcd’s comment – touring kit includes skins, beacon, shovel and probe… which all add to the expense. It cost about $4000CDN to kit me out with “touring” kit. (Boots, bindings, skis, skins, beacon, shovel, probe and a week long avalanche training course) So you need to be sure before you commit!!

If your like Eric Hjorleifson then you can hit everything on dynafits…. 😯

http://vimeo.com/31047821

http://www.dynafit.com/product/bindings/tlt-radical-ft-130mm-z12

Fly swiss air and they don’t charge for ski carrige….so you can still take a main bag and skis 8)

If you drive to the alps then buying is more of an option, ski carriage is becoming harder to avoid by air and when you add that to servicing costs it all mounts up.

If you rent I would look to do it online well before you go, it does work out cheaper.

Of course there is always something to be said for buying shiny new things….

What you desire in a touring ski will not necessarily be met by what hire shops are capable of providing. Many of my friends who tour alot are happy to sacrifice light weight for more performance on the downs (in much the same way people choose heavier longer travel mountain bikes). Therefore if touring is going to be a major part of your total time spent, you should work out what works for you and then buy, if you have specific preferences which are outside the norm.

As far as downhill only skiing is concerned, I have owned the same pair of skis for 10 years, these have washed their face in terms of cost, but now, with the costs of transporting by plane, I doubt I would.