The key feature of touring bindings is free-heel action, which allows your heel to lift up, designed for traversing or ascending the hill. Touring bindings are usually drill mounted (with limited or no toe or heel adjustment to set your forward pressure without using specialist equipment). This guide will predominanly focus on this most common type of binding, a rail mounted traditional piste binding.

Rail mounted bindings (AKA track mounted bindings) offer a larger range of easy-to-move forward pressure adjustment as they have adjustable toe and heel pieces, with rental or demo bindings offering the biggest range of adjustment.

Drill mounted bindings only have an adjustable heel piece, and so they only offer a small amount of forward pressure adjustment, and must be re-mounted using specialist drilling equipment to fit different boot sizes.

Traditional piste bindings are easy to adjust by hand on-the-move, as they predominantly have levers and common screws.

You’ll find these types of bindings on most off-the-shelf alpine skis. Traditional piste bindings are usually drill mounted (as shown here, without an adjustable toe piece to set your forward pressure), or rail mounted (with an adjustable toe and heel piece to set your forward pressure) to your skis.

Atomic Neox 310 Binding Adjustment