Monkey off my back

Second weekend of January 2018 I was on a ski tour on hard icy slopes waiting to get into the sunny bits when this happened:

The Salomon Guardian touring binding broke due to stress on the drilled holes of the frame. The holes had some kind of pins keeping the frame connected to the toe piece but the metal frame fractured around the holes. Credit to Salomon that even after this, I was able to jam the binding back to skiing position and ski down. It did ruin the day a bit, and sadly my order for the CAST touring kit with Look bindings isn't ready for shipping yet. Once I have new bindings I will check if Salomon will admit that this is a manufacturing or design fault.

Saturday was a bummer so I decided to try some sunny park skiing in Ehrwald on Sunday. Plan was to get a certain backflip monkey off my back for this season:

With the broken bindings skiing in park was a bit risky and eventually they gave up on my first 720 spin in several years. Toe piece clipped out after a perfect landing. After a bit of a tantrum, swearing and throwing the gear around I decided to chill on the kicker and snap some photos instead.

The younger generations are doing cool things in park.

Then on the last run I was chilling on the blue but totally icy slopes back to parking lot when trying a sliding 180 to fakie I clipped an edge or something and got slammed hip first down to the ice. Scared some fellow blue piste riders with that one.

So, broke gear, got some backflips done and proper bruises but still smiling on the sofa with ice packs under my sore bum. Now I'm glad to spend the next five days in the office.

-Mikko