The Prime is Black Diamond's premier lightweight alpine touring boot-designed to tackle the world's most challenging ski mountaineering routes or simply to save your legs for one last powder lap. This is our lightest alpine touring boot, featuring a unique 3.5-buckle design that skis with the stiffness and control of a 4-buckle boot. Its state-of-the-art construction keeps weight to an absolute minimum, while our revolutionary Pivoting Cuff Technology delivers the ultimate combination of freedom of motion in walk mode and instant power transfer in ski mode.
Black Diamond Prime Ski Boot Features:
• Lightweight (1.64 kg) 3-buckle alpine touring boot with 4-buckle performance
• Triax Pivot Frame with Flex 110 and unmatched 40° of resistance-free touring motion
• Efficient Fit AT Light Liner with lightweight Boa closure system
• Rockered, rubber outsole with integrated tech inserts provides dramatic grip and durability
• Weight Per Pair: 7lbs. 4oz.
• Flex Index: 110
• Number of Buckles: 3
Here is mine:In the past I've spent a lot of time in ski boots. Over a decade working full time at ski areas in different jobs including pro patrol, avalanche control and a tiny bit of teaching. I've back country ski guided on 3 pin, tele gear and AT gearand heli skied. All of it in the NW or western Canada. Right up till this week.
I've had some great boots and some not so great boots. But a warm boot and one that fit my foot hasn't been all that hard to come by. I had orthotics made for me in the early '80s and continue to use a good footbed, custom made for my feet and stance.
So I was pretty stoked to get a new alpine touringboot knowing what was in store for me this winter in France. Having generallyskied in a competition style boot I was looking for ski/boot performance over a super light weight boot. Although I might rethink that decision on my next pair. No matter, comfort is the real key for me in any boot, climbing or skiing.
The Black Diamond Prime is a three buckle boot that uses a Y strap on the first buckle to avoid the 4th buckle and save a tiny bit of weight. But as a "new generation" AT boot, it is not light weight by any measure.
But theydo indeed ski very well.Pretty much like a performace ski boot from what I can tell. Nothing lacking on this boot for performance...I could use it on a pair of old school 207cm GS skis cruising at mach 1 and be happy with the support.
In the morning walking the 15 minutes to the Midi tram from my apartment here in Chamonix I curse the walk mode. My toes are banging, the rigid sole is....well rigid There is never enough flex in a ski boot to make them walk "well." They may walk but it isn't going to be a pleasure. The skiday hereisgenerally half dozenruns and 20 THOUSAND vertical feet if I can stand up that long. By then I am happy to unlatch and unbuckle for the walkfrom the train to the coffee house. And I love how easy the Primes walk then and the finaltwo blocks back to the apartment.
Life isn't hard on AT boots or your feet here unless you make it that way.
So they ski great, and they walk...like a few of the betterAT boots I figure. Which is well enough to keep you from crying at the end of the day here in Chamonix or on the long day trips at Rodgers pass...where the train is generally avoided.
Butttttttttt?! There is always a but. I didthree trips to my local boot fitter at home with these boots before I left. Which is excessive even for me.The inner boot was tight. Too tight. You get the idea....it was getting ugly. All to no avail. Each time we remeasured the shell. Remember I wanted a "performace fit". Each time we all agreed the shell was perfect. Calls to BD Custoemr service and discussions with guys there who actually wear the same size climbing boot as me, all...once more.....agreed on shell size.
Two of the trips to the boot fitter at home would have been ski days. But the boots were killing me. The third trip I just flatly ran out of time to ski in them againbefore flying to France.But they were a bit better with each visit. "Better" being a relative term.
First run herewas a 15K and 5000 of vertical down from 11K feet. Think skiing from the summit of Mt. Hood to the parking lot at Meadows...or whereever 10 miles and a 5000 ft drop in elevation would put you.
At 10K feet I had to have helppulling my boot off and message away a cramp. Unbelievably hard to get the boot off let alone back on at home. Imagine that in 40mph winds and -15C. I have never been happy with the Boa system on any boot I have used. And the liners on the Primes just reinforce that opinion.The Boa sucks. One of the most unplesant 4 hrs I have ever spent in any boot finishing up the Mer De Glace. and walking home from the train. And that includes walking off the summit of Rainier as my toes unthawed. This was worse that walking down from Muir in socks.
My next move was find a BD ski boot dealer in Chamonix. And most importantly someone who was REALLY good at fitting boots.Easy enough to do here. Ths place is over flowing with good gear shops and expert staff. (amazing really just how many and how good!)
No problem they tell me..10 Euro per boot. They take 20 minutes looking at, measuring and marking my boot shells and liners. I am a little worried. The guys at home are good and I am beginning to think this boot will never be comfortable on my feet. I'm in Chamonix for chrimney sake...I have to have ski boots I can wear just to get to the climbs. And the skiing? No place has skiing like Chamonix.
As I am leaving I notice that have several different models of Palau custom liners on one little corner wall. Palaus are kinda like Intuition Liners back in the States just better made over all. I own a pair Intuition myself. But I also have some Palau liners made for the La Sportiva Baruntse I use in my Spantiks. The Palau liner is amuch better liner that the Intuition imo. I turn around and we start the bootfitting converstion all over again.
Over lapping tongue on the Palau is much easier to get in and out of than the Boa on the BD liner. Liners are warmer as well besides the obvious added comfort (dbl tongue for example) even if the BD liner did actually fit.
The retail sales mentality is different in France. You aren't goingto be pushed into buying anything. Lucky in fact if you can get the sales staff to help you, let alone answer a question. Sometimes it is annoying. But I kind of like it generally. You can look at anything and no one will bug you asking, "can I help you?" Which can so often sound like "buy something or get the hell out of here!" in the USA. When I start asking questions on the Palauliners I am politely told they didn't want to sell me something I didn't need. But going on, in their opinion, as a BD dealer,all the BD boots came with liners too small for the shell. Which certainly would seem to be my problem when looking at and trying to fit my factory liners. And the boot fitter goes on, "almost every BD boot they have sold had the liner replaced with a Palau".
BD boots are notcheap here! But it does say something for the performance of the BD shell.
Theopinions expressed by theStaff after I was fittted and the liners were paid for were even more to the point. Sanglard, Chamonix's premier ski boot fitter.
20 minutes and 150 Euro later the Palua "Soft" liners were expertly fitted and molded with my orthodics. Same orthotics that I couldn't even get in the BD liners. The next day I skied 15K vert in 2 hours and spent a total of 5 hrs in my boots walking, eating a great lunch and skiing. I dropped off a nice bottle of wine that night formysales person/ boot fitter.
Happy now in his new liners on the start of the 15k run down from the Midi.
I now like my BD Primes. But it might wellbe a one night stand, 'cuz I aint in love.
Palau liners...designed, patented , serial numberedand made in France.
BD Boa liners.... designed in SLC, made in Thailand
http://www.ets.palau.fr/
For more on AT ski gear, gear reviews and opinions, this is the US destination on the internet:
http://www.wildsnow.com/
Palau liners in my Primes.
I have been riding fixed gear bicycles for about a year and a half now, and enjoy it so much that it is hard to talk about without getting embarrassed. Here in the Boston area, fixed gear is associated with a distinct cultural attitude and fashion sense, and I do not fit the mold. Seeing me on a bicycle with a fixed drivetrain often seems to surprise people, and I've been told on more than one occasion that I "don't seem like the type." While I suspect this is mostly used as a conversation starter by men, it still succeeds in making me self-conscious. What is it about fixed gear that I like so much and why do I "need" this type of bicycle?
I first tried a fixed gear bike in June . I was staying in Vienna and pining over the nearby velodrome's summer closure, and a friend offered to teach me to ride a track bike so that I could ride around the velodrome building (this seemed very funny at the time - around the velodrome, get it?). I was afraid to try it at first, but as soon as I got on the bike I didn't want to get off it. It felt so natural and intuitive. My friend ended up leaving the bicycle with me for the duration of my stay in Vienna and I rode it in the park after work every chance I got. Cycling slowly due to the lack of brakes, I must have looked like an idiot, but didn't care. I discovered that on fixed gear, my bicycle handling skills somehow improved. I could make tighter turns, cycle through narrow spaces, control my speed better, and just be more in control. It felt as if I suddenly gained a better understanding of how a bicycle worked. The custom Italian track bike made for a now-retired racer felt unexpectedly comfortable, save for the curvature of the handlebars. I could ride this thing for hours with a silly smile on my face. It became clear during those rides that I needed a fixed gear bike of my own once I returned to the US. A friend of a friend sold me a good road frame for fixed gear conversion, and I mailed it to myself in Boston before leaving Vienna.
Waiting for the road frame to arrive (it took over 3 weeks!) I couldn't stop talking about my experience with fixed gear, and just for the heck of it one weekend the Co-Habitant and I converted the Motobecane mixte I then owned to a single speed with a fixed/free flip-flop hub. Doing this was easy and inexpensive. We picked up a budget wheelset, modified the existing crankset, shortened the chain and that was pretty much that. I rode this bicycle around the city and out to the countryside, and it was great fun. But I mostly thought of it as a novelty. On an upright bike, I preferred a freewheel. This bicycle was a great hit around the neighbourhood though, especially when I fitted it with some colourful dressguards. The woman who later bought it planned to use it as a freewheel single speed, but liked the idea of having the fixed option by flipping the wheel.
Finally the vintage road frame I'd bought in Vienna arrived in the mail, and we quickly put it together. You might recognise this as the previous incarnation of theMoser I now ride as a geared roadbike. The tires here look huge, but they are 28mm Panaracer Paselas - the frame had just enough clearance for them if I did not use a rear brake. I rode this bike a lot, and particularly enjoyed it once it began to get cold. There was something about cold and dreary days on a fixed gear that was just magic.But while I loved riding the Moser, it became apparent over time that the frame was not really suitable for fixed gear conversion due to its very low bottom bracket. As my speed on the bike increased I started to get pedal strike when cornering on bumpy or uneven roads, and did not feel that this was safe. Last winter I began to look for another frame, which did not prove to be very easy given my criteria (lugged steel, horizontal dropouts, high bottom bracket, small size,and no toe overlap). I considered getting a frame from Royal H., but could not afford it. I considered the new SimpleOne from Rivendell, but learned that they would not be making one in my size. And that is how I came to be in possession of a Mercian.
By the time I ordered this bicycle from Mercian, I had a good idea of what I wanted in a fixed gear. I did not want a track bike, but a comfortable and somewhat relaxed roadbike that just happened to have afixed gear drivetrain. I wanted to fit it with 28mm-32mm tires for road and occasional trails. I wanted it to have tame handling without feeling sluggish. All of this was done. When I began to ride this bicycle after we put it together, it was just the feeling I wanted. It is comfortable, intuitive, has no toe overlap or pedal strike, and I can ride it for quite a long time without getting tired.
Second, I feel that riding a fixed gear roadbike helps me with technique. My movements feel more elegant and precise, and I can sense that I am developing a more intuitive sense of balance. I play games where I try to keep the bike going at all costs - slowing down to a crawl before a traffic light rather than stop as I wait for it to turn green. I also like to see how fast I can accelerate under different circumstances, and play "sprinting" games until I get out of breath. This is much more interesting to do on a fixed gear than on a freewheel bike, because once you get the drivetrain going it feels as if it "helps" you. All this may sound silly, but somehow I feel that things like this really help. Fixed gear bikes feel playful and very safe, which encourages me to try all this stuff that I would not normally try. Slowly but surely, I can tell that it improves my geared roadcycling skills - including the somewhat "duh" realisation that if I continuously pedal and feather the brakes instead of coasting, then I will feel more in control of my geared roadbike as well.
I hope the peach orchards of the Hill Country made it through the night, too – although we’d hate to lose our tomatoes, we aren’t depending on them as a crop – and we are not expecting crowds of people driving to our house to buy our produce. Fredericksburg’s peaches are not only a crop, but a reason for people to visit Central Texas, enjoying restaurants, shops, Wildseed Farms, an herb farm and the Nimitz museum of the War in the Pacific, a thought-provoking place which juxtaposes weapons of world war two with a Japanese Garden of Peace. 
Here are Ellen’s iris once again, still blooming and with more buds in reserve. Ellen handed me the sack of iris divisions in mid-March .., when this iris bed was still in the planning stages. The Divas had already planted the three spiraea, but I was still clearing and digging the ground around them. The iris corms sat in a paper bag on the garage floor for weeks, then took off once their roots hit the soil. I was amazed that these iris bloomed so well just one year after transplanting, and even more amazed at the high bud count of this passalong iris. 
The iris are planted in the side garden, fairly close to the sidewalk, in a sort of Bat-shaped bed, honoring Austin’s famous free-tail Bat colony. The three shrubs of spiraea are just finishing their bloom cycle. Until this spring, there has been little in our front yard to slow down anyone who is passing by on foot or bicycle, but this display of purple makes the moms and kids stop.
They instinctively lean in to see if the iris smell good, and this variety does have a light, but very pleasant fragrance. 
A few weeks ago Austex called to say the stump-grinder was fixed, and I watched this powerful tool in action, cutting through the enormous footprint left by the tree, churning the bits of wood together with the surrounding black clay. Since I really wanted the chips and dirt, I asked the workmen to leave the debris… they were kind enough to shovel some into sacks so I could use it for another project, leaving most of the wood/soil mixture mounded in place. For now, we’re just letting it settle and start to decompose.
The “Happy 101” award is making the rounds in geneablogger land and I'm happy to say that it has been given to me three times! I've received it from Carol at Reflections from the Fence, Harriet at Genealogy Fun, and Bill at West in New England.
An early René Herse mixte with twin lateral stays, (c) 1947. To me, it brings to mind a woman in a shimmering evening gown with perfect posture, holding a glass of champagne in a slender hand as she looks out into the sea. Am I anthropomorphising? Well, maybe just a little.
Beautiful lugs and fork crown.
Lugged connection points where the lateral stays meet the seatpost. (This is so much nicer than the welded plate behind the seatpost on my Motobecane mixte.)
How amazing to see a 1940s derailleur. Notice the unusual derailleur hanger design off of the chainstay.
Original 
I am curious about the handlebars. They seem to be Northroads, but weren't these bicycles fitted with the Champs-Élysées
Here is a later model of a René Herse mixte - a touring bike (c) 1964. It is incredibly well preserved and part of a gorgeous touring pair. I know that some people do not like mixtes with drop bars, but I am not one of them. The beauty of the mixte is that it is versatile, and I think that the drop bars on the above photo look as natural and elegant as porteur bars. The frame design now features a single top tube branching off into twin stays at the seatpost. Personally I prefer the earlier design, with continuous lateral stays, but still this bicycle is gorgeous.
A close-up of the stays attachment point. I am not certain when the switchover from the continuous twin lateral stays design took place, but possibly in the late 1950s - early 1960s.
And this is one of the later original René Herse mixte designs, again with single top tube branching off into twin stays at the seatpost, (c)1972s.
Stay attachment looks a bit different from the '60s model, in that the stays lie close to the main tube. Because Herse made bespoke bicycles, I am not certain whether this reflects a change in design, or a customer's request.
These wrap-around seat tube lugs are not typical for a mixte. See here for more photos of this bicycle from different angles and in high resolution.