The first time you go to transition from walk to ski or vice versa, you will be momentarily perplexed by the counter intuitive positioning of the brakes. They are at the toe piece not the heel piece. It means a little bit of fiddling to both lock the toe piece for climbing and secure the brakes in the same area of the ski. Austrian. Weird. But, once you get used to it, it is a well built product. I suppose the Austrians wanted to take the heel piece out of the equation for securing the brakes. I'm not sure that they have made a big improvement here.

Man, more people should be talking about this rebranded ATK Raider 12 2.0 binding. It's made from ALL machined aluminum. It's an alpine tech binding with elastic travel in the heel, adjustable vertical and horizontal release value, included brake, FIVE riser heights, you can transition into ski/walk mode without rotating the heel torrent, the riser flaps are fast and magnetic, there's optional AFD plate for the heel (to take stress off the pins while skiing really fast), AND it comes in an all-black, all-business color scheme. These things are so rad. It takes some learning to use the toe brake and understand how this binding works, but learning is fun. I would feel comfortable riding this binding through any conditions capable on skis. They are bombproof and hold up to extremely hard and fast skiing. So if you want to jump into the Freetouring World, let the Kastle Free Tour 12 2.0 be your vehicle of choice. Did I mention they weigh a scant 375 grams per binding.

The Free tour was an excellent pairing with my new Kastle FX96 skis. These skis were a beefy 2 kilo ski and I wanted to keep the binding light but still be able to drive them. They have been good to me so far in even terrible ski mountaineering snow. I removed the brakes and added the stomp pad under the back heel. Just ask the guys at CCBC and they can do this for you as well.