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100 Days on the
NTN
For seven months, from
January through July, Big Tim Connolly and the author skied,
toured and climbed in Rottefella's pre-production version of
its revolutionary New Telemark Norm (NTN) binding-- and in Scarpa's
Terminator X NTN boots-- taking the new system out in nearly
every condition imaginable, and in terrain that varied from gentle
snow covered foothills and steep resort runs, to rocky volcanic
peaks... what follows is the long version of how it went... for
the short version, skip to the last sentence now....
by Mitch Weber
Above: one well used
NTN binding
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August, 2007-- We just wrapped up our eighth full
season, coming to you live on the Web since 1999, and yet, amazingly,
it's a story as old as Telemarktips itself, older still if one
goes back to the time prior to when we first told the freeheel
world about "the consortium's" plan to introduce an
entirely new telemark boot and binding standard. Cloaked in secrecy,
the NTN began as a collaborative effort involving just about
all of the major players in the tele market at the time. Progress
came in fits and starts, but the one constant was the curtain
kept tightly drawn around the project. Yet it was almost impossible
for a tiny few to keep their early enthusiasm in check, after
all, we were talking about nothing less than the promise of a
revolutionary development in the evolution of modern tele gear.
We worked these sources for all they were worth, relentlessly
trying for any scrap of information we might be able to pass
along to our readers.
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It got more difficult
as time went on, and the game had become almost comical by the
time, some four or five years back, when we followed one of these
sources out to a car in a dimly lit parking garage to get our
first look at a duckbill-less prototype NTN boot, fresh from
Italy. Frustratingly, it would be years before we even got a
look at a drawing
of an NTN prototype
(although we had put up Rottefella's patent drawings way back
at the start), and even longer still before we saw an actual
photograph. Then a couple of years ago, things really started
to pop. In a three part video interview we shot at a ski industry
trade show, Rottefella's Torbjorn Ragg enthusiastically showed
off a working prototype of the binding. Still, it would be another
full year before we would get our first chance to ski the NTN:
On a fine January 2007 day at Alta, Utah, we tore around and
put the NTN to as much of a test as possible in the limited span
of a single day. |
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A couple of nights later
over dinner and good wine, Rottefella's NTN program manager Øyvind
Aanes and lead engineer Even (pronounced Evan) Wollo surprised
us with an offer of a couple of pair of demo version NTN bindings,
and Scarpa's NTN boots, to ski on for the rest of the season.
We jumped at the chance of course, and I knew right then that
we would be spending a lot of time on the snow between that January
night through the first half of summer. And that's exactly how
it worked out. I put in about 80, while Tim managed around 50
days in our NTN boots. We ended up running 4 pair of bindings
on an even dozen pair of various makes and models of skis. Everything
from our 155/110/133 Custom ScottyBob skis, to a pair of Karhu
109/78/95, fishscale base, XCD Guides. To serve as familiar benchmark
boards, we even broke out a fresh pair of original Karhu Jaks
that I had brought home as souvenirs from my memorable 2002 visit
to the Karhu factory in Quebec, Canada.
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We learned a lot just mounting
skis.
For instance, it would
seem that the NTN's standard four hole pattern would make it
very simple to swap out bindings like the Cobra or Targa, but
in reality it wasn't that easy. The NTN binding fits very snugly
onto its mounting rails, with little clearance to spare, thus
the screw heads of the screws holding the rail to the ski must
be perfectly flush. If the screws go in at all cock-eyed, it
makes it difficult to impossible to slide the binding onto the
rails. The binding hangs up on the screws. Unfortunately, most
mount jobs are done with a hand drill, meaning that there is
a good chance that at least one or more of the 8 screws in your
old bindings may have been installed into a hole that was not
drilled straight enough to keep the screw head(s) flush.
Eventually we learned to
just drill a new hole into the ski at a mounting point on the
rail adjacent to the problem screw, but this whole process took
some figuring out, and in the beginning, mounting the NTN was
a little more difficult than we had expected. Obviously this
is not a big deal, but it's the kind of thing you don't find
out about at a one day demo, and it's good to know that you might
want to allow yourself a little more time than you may otherwise
have thought necessary when mounting the bindings yourself. |
A collection of some
of our test skis at Saddlebag Lake, Tioga Pass, last spring.
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Some terms used below: A: the front throw, B: tour mode lever (shown
in the "on" position), C: the "midpart,"
D: brake actuating lever, E: flexible plate or "flexplate,"
F: the "hook." Right photo: Under the flexplate. |
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Skiing the NTN
From the start, the "easy-in"
step-in feature of the NTN was a real pleasure, but as time went
on, using the grip of one of our ski poles to flip up the front
lever became second nature, as did the process of getting in
and out of the binding itself. Eventually we found that it was
about as quick and easy to get into and out of the NTN as an
alpine or AT style binding. The key is to avoid trying to kick
your toe into the toe piece, like we do when using most current
bindings. It's unnecessary with the NTN, instead you want to
simply place the toe area of the sole of your boot onto the brake
actuating lever, and then just ride that lever down and forward
into the toe piece. All that is left to do then is to push down
the front throw with the grip of your upside down ski pole...
and go skiing. We got it down pretty fast, and after awhile,
getting in or out seemed nearly as simple as a click!...
....click! of the front throws.
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The NTN marked the
first time for either of us that we had used a step-in type tele
binding that also comes with integrated ski brakes. Not only
did this make the binding super fun to use at the resort, step-in
with brakes is also a huge advantage in the backcountry.
It's a great feeling, especially after all these years, to no
longer have to bend over and mess around with heel throws and
safety straps. It's also a great feeling to stand at the top
of a steep bc run and know that a single false move, just one
bobble while putting on your boards, isn't likely to send one
or both of your skis careening riderless down the slope. No,
it's better than great, it's awesome.... and it's about time
that tele skiers enjoyed the convenience and security of a modern,
step-in type binding with brakes.
The more time we spent
in the NTN, the more we appreciated these features, they are
a must-have. Hopefully Rottefella's NTN marks the beginning of
an era in modern telemark bindings in which all new designs will
offer some form of step-in, along with integrated ski brakes.
If this were the only feature
of the NTN, it would be quite enough to put the new system into
a class of its own, the good news is that there is more... much
more.
Lets start with the connection
from boot to ski. Put simply, the under the forefoot attachment
point feels to us like an important breakthrough in the evolution
of the telemark boot-to-ski interface. The forefoot is the part
of the boot that should be attached to the ski in a system
designed for executing the telemark turn, and the NTN's flexible
plate, backed, incidentally, with a familiar looking dual cable
and spring cartridge design, allows the boot to flex naturally,
while providing the feeling of a large and solid platform under
the foot, upon which to push and control the ski. |
We had some wonderful
winter tours on the NTN, like this one, climbing and skiing above
Virginia Lakes in the Sierra Nevada.
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The "activity level"
(how much the binding gets involved in breaking the rear foot
boot at the boot bellows, providing that solid platform, as well
as ski forebody pressure at the top of the turn) can be adjusted
according to personal preference. By changing the spring cartridges
and adjusting the spring preload, the NTN can be made to mimic
the feel of the least active bindings on the market today, on
through and beyond the most active out there. The full range
of spring cartridges for the NTN will include Soft (color coded
green), Medium (blue), Rigid (red) and Extra Rigid (black). We
like active bindings and typically run HammerHeads in the 3,
4 and even 5 (pivot) position. In the NTN, we were happy with
the "Rigid" spring cartridges (the red ones) with medium
preload. We felt this setup gave us the feel of the HammerHead
with the pivots in the 4th position. We also ran some of our
bindings with the softer springs from time to time, and even
when it is setup to be a lot less active, the design of the NTN
still provides a nice solid platform under the forefoot, and
excellent control.
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Based on a few comments
we have read on our Telemark Talk Forum, it's probably a good
time to note that the NTN's flexible plate skis with a
feel completely unlike that of the rigid plate bindings
currently available. The Pebax plastic plate of the NTN serves
primarily to hold the "hook" (the under the forefoot
attachment point) in place, enabling the step-in function. The
NTN is in fact a cable binding. It's an exceptionally smooth
cable binding that also allows the boot and foot to flex in the
way that God and Paul Parker intended (despite the fact that
neither of these luminaries appear to currently be part of the
"NTN consortium," at least for the moment). And the
configuration of the NTN's unique attachment points allow NTN
compatible boots to be designed with a softer forward flex, without
sacrificing torsional rigidity. We will have more on this in
a future NTN boot review.
All of this adds up to
a system that skis very, very well. The short cable run and the
tight, no slop design work together to engage the binding early
and hard, delivering power and stability at the top of each new
turn, making it easier to find the groove, and to remain there
longer... for us, this is what telemark skiing is all about...
getting in that groove where everything is so right with the
world, and staying there for as long as possible. For us, the
downhill performance of the NTN improves upon the experience.
Of course in the backcountry,
the downhill groove is only part of the story, you need to get
up the mountain first, and the NTN's touring mode makes it far
easier and much more enjoyable. Mounted on fat skis that weren't
overly long, and with full width skins, the NTN's touring mode
made this modern rig feel like a winter snow climbing machine.
And in the spring and summer we had a lot of fun with the NTN
mounted on more narrow skis, including that pair of Karhu XCD
Guide skis with the fishscale base. Doing laps in the summer
corn snow was as easy as ski down, turn around, flip up the tour
mode lever, kick and glide up, and ski back down again. |
The Boots
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The boots are a big part of the NTN story. From a purely performance
point of view , they may just be THE big thing about the
NTN.
From the time the first Scarpa Terminators
rocked the freeheel world in 1992, telemark boot manufacturers
have done a fantastic job designing and delivering high-end boots
with an incredible amount of torsional rigidity. Ski designers
have long used torsion box-type construction to reduce twist
between tip and tail, and the lower portion of all modern ski
boots essentially consists of a similar sort of plastic torsion
box built around the human foot. Torsional rigidity and flex
is primarily controlled by the stiffness of the plastic used
in the injections, and fine tuned using various design elements.
The stiffer the plastic used in the "torsion box" around
the foot, including the bellows, the more torsionally rigid the
boot will be, more torsional rigidity delivers more precise control,
and the power needed to drive today's big boards.
Designers of high-performance telemark
boots have been challenged to find the right balance between
stiffness for overall torsional rigidity and softer plastic for
an easier, more natural forward flex while touring and tele turning.
Modern high end tele boots have tended to sacrifice a lot of
the latter in favor of the former... continued... |
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The NTN's
free pivot tour mode does not have the fuller range of motion
found in other free-pivot touring bindings we have tried, but
as one veteran backcountry media maven (and former publisher)
put it to us recently, "it's enough." He's right, it
is, and as a matter of personal preference, I liked the
feel of skiing in the NTN's touring mode very much, especially
the way it limited the extent to which the tail of the ski can
flop around while performing kick turns and negotiating switchbacks.
I used the tour mode a lot last season, and on a variety of tours,
probably at least close to as much or more than anyone else on
the demo-version train, and this is what I have to say: the NTN's
tour mode rocks, period.
Functionality and Durability
Okay, from our perspective
after more than 100 days on the NTN, we can say without hesitation
that the NTN's feature set rules, and that uphill and downhill
performance is, in a word, awesome. The question is, and will
be for some time yet, how reliable are all these features, and
will the binding prove to be durable? Overall, our demo version
bindings worked really well and held up to a lot of use, and
even some occasional abuse. They weren't perfect by any means,
but we didn't expect them to be. Before we even received our
NTN demo bindings, we were told that modifications to what would
be the production version were already underway.
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A key part of these changes
involved improvements to the heel piece to make it stronger,
and stay in place better in uphill mode, as well as to the baseplate
to allow snow and ice to escape, and reduce buildup.
We had some ice build up
issues while touring uphill last winter. We'd get to the top,
take our skins off and then have to clear snow and ice out the
area below the tour mode lever before we would be able to return
the NTN to downhill mode. At first this wasn't all that easy,
but we quickly figured out that the fastest way to do this was
to turn the ski upside down and use a ski pole tip to clear most
of the snow out of the cavity, then to tap gently on the piece
Rottefella calls the "midpart" to dislodge the rest.
Average time: 30 seconds per ski. Inconvenient, yes, a deal-killer,
not even close.
Happily, we see in one
of the production version illustrations (which we received from
Rottefella last week) that they have added a "knife edge"
to the bottom of this part, as well as a hole to give snow and
ice a way out of the mechanism. This should help, and even if
a little tapping is still necessary from time to time to remove
stubborn ice, the knife edge should make our method faster and
easier too.
While skiing and skinning
we also experienced some snow buildup under the flexible plate,
but even in the most sticky-icky tour of the year (fresh cold
snow in the shade on a warm, early spring day) it wasn't any
worse than any other binding we typically use. Still, Rottefella
made changes to address the issue. In addition to the larger
holes in the baseplate, the Norwegians modified the flexible
plate itself, adding "knife edges" and removing sidewalls
that had served to trap the snow. |
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Changes to the base plate: larger
holes are designed into the production version (bottom) to reduce
snow and ice buildup. Illustration
courtesy Rottefella. |
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A knife edge has been added to the
"midpart" to cut away ice that might build up in the
tour mode area, and a hole added to allow it to escape.. Illustration courtesy Rottefella. |
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We had another issue with
two of the eight bindings (in our four pair).
In this one the tour mode
lever popped open unexpectedly while descending in heavy, wet,
late season snow. It only happened 3 or 4 times out of literally
many thousands of turns, but obviously this is 3 or 4 times too
many, as going into tour mode mid-turn is a good way to get yourself
unnecessarily worked in a fall.
Once again, when we reported
our experience, Even Wollo and his team answered back that they
had already modified a key part (above) and changed the geometry
of another, which they say will significantly increase the force
latching down the tour mode lever. |
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Flexplate modifications to further
reduce snow and ice buildup. Illustration
courtesy Rottefella. |
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As we saw with HammerHead
designer Russell Rainey's very public demo version test a few
years ago, a good test program will reveal the weak points in
the system, and make it possible to execute necessary changes
before the final production version comes to market. Rainey's
demo test resulted in a complete (and very successful) reworking
of his entire original design. After so many years in development,
we expected Rottefella's NTN demo version to be far more refined,
and it was.Many of the bones of the NTN binding have been modified,
but wholesale changes to the basic skeleton have not been required.
A spreadsheet we received
last week (part of which is reproduced at right) details the
results of what appears to be a careful analysis of each and
every part of the NTN, and notes where changes were made. We
were very happy to see a few little things that we noticed could
use a little work, but never reported, received attention and
were the subject of changes. Not so much because we thought they
were important problems, but because it shows to us that Rottefella's
demo program worked as it should have, and that Even Wollo and
his team did not make the classic mistake of being so wedded
to their previous designs that they ignored the feedback they
received from the field. |
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Courtesy Rottefella. |
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I touched on this earlier,
but I'd like to emphasize that we knew going into our "100
day test" that it would be difficult to review the NTN on
its functionality and durability based on the results of a demo
version test, even a 100+ day demo test. We knew Rottefella
would be making changes to the final version which will hit dealers
shelves this fall, and we even expected to have trouble with
this part or that part--- In a limited manufacturing run it's
easy to make mistakes in production that would be caught and
corrected in a longer run--- but looking back, we had a relatively
trouble free time on the NTN. By the end of the season, we had
even returned to the point of not bothering to carry tools and
spare binding parts around in the Telemarktips mothership, a
luxury (and a statement) we had grown used to years ago using
the HammerHead. The step-in feature (after so many days on them,
we now regard the NTN's "easy-in" functionality to
be so close to true step-in that it's hardly worth making a distinction)
worked reliably in all conditions and became super easy to use
over time. We had many, many trouble free days on the NTN and
always felt confident enough to take the new system on long tours
into the backountry.
When I lost an important
bolt out of one of my NTN boots, I actually robbed the part off
of Big Tim's pair so that I could use the NTN on the next day's
tour! Yes, I stole a vital part off of my best friend's boots
so that I could keep skiing the NTN. I'm a little embarrassed
by the admission, but the story serves to illustrate a little
something about just how our 100 days on the NTN went.
We never wanted it to end.
Conclusion... and stuff...
Establishing a new system
in the world of telemark skiing presents a daunting challenge
to anyone crazy enough to try. The short, modern history of telemark
is littered with failed attempts, many rather spectacular, infamous
even, to create new and advanced freeheel bindings. To introduce
a new tele binding with so many advanced features that also requires
the buyer to purchase expensive new boots, well, that's simply
an audacious and very risky undertaking, nothing less.
How is it going to go for
Rottefella? We will have a much better idea in a few months when
the production version has hit the shelves, and we've had a chance
to gauge the reaction, as well as to ski the final binding ourselves.
That being said, we would like to offer a few of our thoughts
on the future of the system now, here at the conclusion of our
100 Days on the NTN:
- If the NTN production
version proves to be reasonably durable on the big stage, and
the functionality is as good or better than what we experienced
this past season, it'll be a big, big hit, despite the significant
monetary commitment.
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- Like fat skis, there will
be no going back. I was a very early adopter of fat skis, and
I saw it time and time again. Friends would take my boards out,
then come back and admit that yeah, the fat skis were fun, but
it was when they tried to go back to their skinny skis that they
were fully sold. So it will be with the NTN. Once tele skiers
experience the convenience of step-in, the security of ski brakes,
and the climbing power of a touring mode, all of which are integrated
into a high performance binding that can be adjusted according
to personal preference, returning to anything less will be all
but impossible for most.
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- We predicted last year that the
war between Rottefella and Black Diamond Equipment to establish
a new tele norm in the market place would be a short one, and
while the NTN looks and skis strong, and it appears to be totally
ready for prime time, BD's own ambitious effort seems to have
stalled, with the latest word being that BD won't likely be ready
to show and take orders for their telemark binding and boot system
until the 2009 Outdoor Retailer Winter Market Trade Show, about
a year and a half from now. This would put BD's system in stores
no earlier than two years from this fall. Unless Black Diamond
President and CEO Peter Metcalf can pull a rabbit out of the
proverbial hat here very shortly, somehow convincing partner
Garmont to stick with them, we expect Garmont will pull out of
BD's project very soon, and rejoin Scarpa and Crispi in making
an NTN compatible tele boot, perhaps even introducing a model
of their own as early the next Winter OR show. Without Garmont
on BD's side, there is no war.
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Rottefella's introduction of its advanced
NTN binding has been a long time in coming, and here is where
I'm supposed to write something traditional and cute like "but
it was worth the wait," which of course would be total nonsense.
It took nearly a decade and Black Diamond's credible challenge
to get the NTN program really moving, and to the point we are
at today. Still, Rottefella's hard work and accomplishment in
finally bringing an advanced telemark binding system to freeheel
skiing is something to appreciate, even celebrate. Moreover,
our experience during our 100 Days on the NTN would seem to indicate
that our friends from Norway have hit a solid home run. Now the
bottom line, and the only thing that really, really matters....
It worked great and we had a ball. |
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