First Look: Slatnar Touring Bindings

By

Gavin Hess

Slatnar's new touring binding. Slotting nicely into the well featured, 300g category.

Slatnar's new touring binding. Slotting nicely into the well featured, 300g category.

A Brief History Of Slatnar

Slatnar may be new on the ski touring scene, but the company has a 50-year history in metalworking and carbon parts and, in the last 20 years or so, has been a leading ski jumping brand. The Slatnar family has run the company in Slovenia since 1972. As I’m sure readers can imagine, the ski jumping market is a small one—so small that Elan, a leading manufacturer of jumping skis, ceased its production in 2016. Slatnar took over the old Elan machinery and production to keep the industry afloat.

slatnar
Jumping skis, bindings and even carbon boots are the mainstay of Slatnar’s sports division. Photo: Slatnar.com

Fast forward to 2023, and a US Ski Jumping coach stopped by Skimo Co in Salt Lake City to show off a ski touring binding from the company that makes the jumping bindings many of their athletes use. This inside line meant that until very recently, Skimo Co was the only place on the internet with any information on the bindings.

Let’s get one thing out of the way early: with any new binding, there is certain to be chatter about various brands having a bad history with Gen 1 bindings. While Slatnar is not immune to this concern, their history in Ski Jumping is encouraging because they know how to make a reliable product, and the stakes of failure are high in jumping and touring. In some sense—we are here to verify them so our readers don’t have to feel like test dummies.

 

The Bindings

A single, large spring on each side of the toe piece. The crampon adapter is included and looks to accept Dynafit style ski crampons.
A single, large spring on each side of the toe piece. The crampon adapter is included and looks to accept Dynafit style ski crampons.

On to the bindings themselves. The best descriptor I have heard is that the Slatnar’s are akin to a super beefy Salomon MTN. It’s not so much super beefy in weight, which comes in at 335g/binding, but rather in appearance and features. The Slatnar binding checks many boxes we are looking for these days. It features magnetic risers with flat mode+2 risers without spinning the heel, a robust “freeride spacer,” a long adjustment track with 50mm of fore/aft adjustment, a wide screw pattern in the toe and heel, which should reduce torque and offer an extra solid platform on wider skis, and a zero gap setup with length compensation springs. What the Slatnar doesn’t have is brakes, adjustable release (though lateral and vertical release values are independently changeable with spare parts), or independent pins (it uses a U-spring).

Beefy Machined freeride spacer. Hight adjustable, sliding afd, good stuff.
Beefy Machined freeride spacer. Hight adjustable, sliding afd, good stuff.
Length adjustment happens via a 5mm Allen key - I wish it was T20 like the other screws on the binding. Also see the T20 bolts holding the top plate on - those wont be exploding like an old Speed Radical.
Length adjustment happens via a 5mm Allen key—I wish it was T20 like the other screws on the binding. Also see the T20 bolts holding the top plate on—those wont be exploding like an old Speed Radical.
Magnetic risers, attached with a bolt rather than a rivet/pin
Magnetic risers, attached with a bolt rather than a rivet/pin should be immune to “flippy riser syndrome.”
Spinning the heel is similar to the Salomon MTN, only the top portion spins. Cool to see the CNC finish along the baseplate.
Spinning the heel is similar to the Salomon MTN, only the top portion spins. Cool to see the CNC finish along the baseplate.

For this ski tourist, this feature set is exactly what I am looking for when I step up from a race style binding. Backtracking to the Black Crows Solis I am testing this winter, Julian Regnier emphasized the need for “good kit” and a solid heel piece on these stiff, precise skis. Upon seeing the Slatnar binding on the TGR Forum, I knew this was what my Solis needed. 

I will plan to keep readers updated as I get the Slatnar binding on snow, especially if I run into any issues. We are excited to have more brands enter the pin binding market–it pushes the whole industry to improve, which benefits all of us.

 

Slatnar Specs  

Weight: 335g (verified) 

Release Values: Fixed at 5-6, 7-8 or 9-10 

Ski Crampons: Dynafit compatible adapter included

Heel Risers: Flat + 2

Mount Pattern (WxL, mm): toe- 41×36, heel- 36.5×73

Delta (heel-toe, mm): +10.5

Responses

  1. Teague Holmes

    Fantastic review Gavin.
    So cool to see a small, fine machinist and ski equipment company, make such a beautifully simplistic design. It does look and sound very solid and well-made. And with that being said, I’m surprised it only has a release value up to 10 I’ll bet the binding itself could handle 12 or 14. But not 18. That’s right out.
    (I only shred the gnar. Exclusively.)
    Because they come from a long history of building, reliable ski, jumping bindings, and that they are a small machining company from a place I must visit, I would pick up a pair if they had a higher release value. Thanks for finding and writing!

    1. Gavin Hess

      Hey Teague! It will be interesting to see if Skimo has put the Slatnar in their binding testing rig. As we know at this point, one companies 10 isn’t always the same as another’s.

      Anecdotally, Slator and I spent a day last week ski testing at Snow King in dense, damp powder–I prereleased from an RV 12 Ski Trab slashing in the dense snow on the Fischer Transalp 105, but stayed in through many similar maneuvers on the Slatnar. Similarly, I find that a RV10 trofeo, or other atk’s set to 10 lead to frequent lateral prerelease at the heel. Again, my experience thus far is anecdotal at best, and maybe I don’t shred the gnar as hard as you, but I have been building confidence that the retention here is “plenty”.

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