XCd for kids

[BrentLahaie]

Hi, this is my first time posting here but I've been lurking and reading other people's posts for some time now.

I know this is an old topic but I took the advice lilcliffy previously gave to someone else to heart and just ordered a pair of 162 cm Panorama M62's (marked down to $130 at Icebox Mountain Sports! [url]hhttps://www.iceboxmountainsports.com/collection ... untry-skis[/url] for my kids to use. BTW they are running a lot of great deals on Madshus and Fischer skis over there right now.

I have a daughter aged 14 (around 110 lbs) and 10 and 12 year olds (both around 70 pounds). We do as much cross country skiing together as I can manage, and they find the most fun going up and down hills (like their dad), so I'd like to allow them to develop that skillset and progress to bigger and better hills.

I had assumed that given the light weight of my kids, NNN-BC would provide plenty of control downhill and be the binding of choice. However, I recently bought a secondhand pair of 159 cm Fischer S-Bound skis (a discontinued model with 88mm width at the tip) and they came equipped with Voile 3-pin cable bindings. This got me to wondering if the Voile bindings could be another option for the M62s? I plan to use this and mostly xCD (downhill oriented) skis. I don't have much experience with cable bindings or boots but it seems that locally anyway secondhand NNN-BC gear is much easier to find. I personally upgraded to XPlore for myself but I'm not ready to spend that kind of money on kids stuff even if they made it in their sizes.

On another side note, I found that the M62s have a softer camber compared to the S-Bounds skis, so despite being slightly longer may assign them to one of my younger two kids and let my 14 y/o daughter use the S-Bounds.

[BrentLahaie]

Also to follow up on my previous post from the other day, I checked the 159 cm S-Bound skis with my nine year old son and they seemed to be have the right amount of camber - I was able to slide a paper under his ski when he had both skis weighted but was unable to do so when he leaned all his weight on one side. And the M62s are noticeably softer than that!

[fisheater]

I like 75 mm cables for downhill oriented skiing, however the transition from cable to no cable can be a PITA for a full grown man, not something for a kid.
Without a cable attached to my heel, my Alaska BC (NNN BC) boot offers more downhill control than my Alaska 75.