You get your Dynafit bindings mounted. With excited anticipation you latch the boot heel down for your final adjustments. Then you press the exit tab at the front of the binding — and nothing happens. Your boot seems to be stuck in there like a rusty bolt. You realize you can get the boot out by twisting the rear unit of the binding to the side, but you don’t want to do that at every transition while you’re on a ski tour. Here be the fix.
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| What happens in this situation is that the “trigger” on the Dynafit binding toe unit doesn’t have enough room under the boot sole to move up and allow the binding wings to open. Problem is, if the trigger has too much room you won’t be able to step into the binding and have it close. Thus, it’s a fine line between too much rubber in this area, and too little. So, what you do is mark the trigger area on the boot sole with a transfer marker such as a sticky paint pen (as shown above). You then latch the boot in the binding and press down the exit lever, which in turn will cause the trigger to leave a mark on the boot sole. In this case we’re working with a pair of very cool and efficient looking Scarpa F3, mounted on a pair of light and lively Trab Duo Freerando Piumas that Santa dropped by. Yum. |
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| Boot sole shown above has white mark transferred from the binding trigger. You can see how Scarpa tried to machine a divot in the sole that’s perhaps intended to remedy this situation, but it’s slightly out of position. In my opinion understandable, when you consider the fact that Scarpa is making boots that have to have a precise fit in another company’s bindings. Perhaps there is even a bit of culture clash? I don’t know, but my imagination pictures a guy in the Scarpa factory, running some kind of machine to make divots for Dynafit bindings, and thinking to himself “what the heck?” as he sips espresso.
Whoops, sorry, my imagination is getting away from me, as are my typing fingers… |
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| The tricky part is grinding out more divot as shown above. The way I do it is use a disk grinder with a sander/flap disk that’s been used enough to have a nicely curved outside edge. I then take perhaps a millimeter off at a time in the general area of the mark. After each pass with the grinder, I test and make sure the boot will still close the toe wings during step-in. I then latch down the heel to alpine mode and try to exit the binding by pressing down the exit lever/tab in front of the toe unit. After just a few hits with the grinder, you’ll find that a firm press of the exit tab will pop the wings open. Don’t remove any more rubber after that, or you run the risk of the binding not closing when you step in. That’s it, all done, now have some espresso then go for a tour and enjoy easy step-in step-out. |
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
