Montana Escapades: October 2013

A little more to say about the Sportiva Spectres after more use, along w/ the Dynafit Cho Oyu skis! http://www.montanaescapades.com/2013/12/camas-peak-area-tour-star-of-show.html

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I missed out joining Dave and Matt on their trip to Storm Lake in the Pintlers-Anaconda Wilderness the previous weekend (waiting on my pre-ordered boots), which included some sweet powdery turns down Rainbow Mountain, and Mount Tiny. Dave's epic write-up of that trip is located here: http://getoutridehard.blogspot.com/2013/10/crazy-early-season-turns-anaconda.html

After seeing that post, and having my new AT boots arrive the following Tuesday, I knew I had to make it the next weekend, even though the weather had obviously lowered the quality of snow there..

Anyways, the new boots I had pre-ordered, La Sportiva Spectres, took their time getting over the pond from Italy. All is well though, as I'm pretty sure CrippleCreekBC.com, an exclusive backcountry shop in Colorado, was the very first to get these boots. WELL worth the wait, and the owner, Doug, is phenomenal.

La Sportiva Spectre (size 28.5mondo)

I knew I was going to be in love with the Spectre's 60 degrees of ankle liberating movement over my previous Dynafit Ultralight Titans, but was this true love? I wanted a four-buckle touring/freeride oriented boot, but was having my feet molested by the narrow build of the Titans. The Spectres fit the bill perfectly, in fact I'm positive these boots are a couple years before their time.

These bad ma-ma jammas comes in at 3lb 4.2ounces (1479.85grams) for size 28.5 per boot as according to the household kitchen scale.

One can go from tour to ski mode in less than a few seconds thanks to their very unique buckling system. Unlock the four buckles in their entirety and still be free from annoying buckles flopping about. Brilliant, I suspect it's ingenuity like this that makes Italy excel at things like sports cars.

Mounted to a set of Dynafit FT Radicals

The base is rockered quite heavily. This makes them exceptionally easy to walk on the bare ground, could even run in them without too much effort I imagine. The yellow tongue piece flips open all the way once you unlatch the buckle pieces, to which have a bit of a learning curve by themselves. I'm not much of a gear reviewer, but these boots certainly deserved a mention.

My wife Merete seconds after stepping into her first touring setup.

Last year, I spent time as a bad salesman trying to convince my wife she needed to join me in the winter outings. The pictures/videos resulting from every outing I think aided her interest. This year it worked, got her some Dynafit Ones, Marker Barons, and a pair of EP Pro Shorty's and she's well on her way. After confirmation of her enjoyment of touring, we'll step her up into some Dynafit bindings.

Storm Lake - Pintlers

Starting off with an easy tour to break in our new gear, she found it quite enjoyable, with the exception of the obvious need to have her liner molded due to some hot spots developing on her feet during the trip. She's a full blooded Norwegian, so by trade she was born to do this sorta thing. :)

Yep, that is a basset hound hot on her tracks!

Since Dave and Matt had their epic tour, the snow had gone through a few melt/freeze sessions and was pretty well crusted out and we were debating on continuing up, to try and get some turns. Our doubts about continuing up onto Mount Tiny were confirmed when Marshall (our basset) began having troubles after falling through the crusty snow for the last 2 hours. We had lunch at the base of Tiny and turned around, all and all, a very fun early season tour to break in our new equipment!