OK so I'm trying to dial in my new AT setup. This is really niggling details but thought I'd throw this out there. I traded out my old Freerides for new ones this year. The reason I'd originally gone with Freerides over Naxos is that I wanted a spring option in the binding. I'd demoed some Naxos and at a couple points the skintrack got steep and icy and required some sidestepping. With no spring, the ski tail just drooped and I could not maneuever myself up and over the sidestep sections. It was miserable and I had to use my pole to push down on the tips while picking up the ski to get my tail off the ground. Bad juju.
So I got the Freerides, installed some springs, tightened them up, and voila! Sidesteps were a breeze. However as I have advanced in my skinning techniques, I have discovered the energy-saving joy of the kick-heel-switchback-turn thingy in which you kick your ski around so that the tip swings underneath your knee and right into the uphill switchback. No 10-point switchback turns any more.
The problem I'm running into, is this maneuever requires a very low or nonexistant spring setting. So where's the balance? I set my springs pretty light when touring with Powstash the other day, and while I could do the kick-turn-thingy pretty well, I was having some problems on a couple steep icy sidestep sections. I'm sure there is a better technique for dealing with those w/o springs but I'd rather just have it work. In all honesty this is probably just something I'm going to have to experiment with and eventually find the sweet spot, but just curious if others out there have run into this issue and what your solutions have been.
