Marker bindings don’t have the best reputation among freeriders and powderhounds around the world. Especially their so called biometric toe design has had a bad habit of pre-releasing in the wrong situations. My own experince from the current Markers are OK, especially because I’ve only used them on basic carving. Anyhow, I do a bit of jumping here and there and the reputation has kept me away from the brand for a while.

As a junior I skied moguls with Markers for some years and even then I had to crank the DIN way up for my very skinny ass… Also, back in 1999~2000 when I turned back to skiing from snowboarding pretty exclusively for a few years, I mounted a pair of K2 Xplorers with old Marker M40 race bindings (because I was a dirt bag student/ski bum and didn’t have too much budget on new gear). That only ended up in disaster: the whole toe piece blew off from a slightly back seated landing off a pretty basic 20 feet cliff.

So, with that background I was first quite sceptic about the new Marker Duke binding. However, I never was such a die-hard Marker hater than e.g. some of the guys hanging in the TGR forum. I also needed a solid one-ski-one-binding quiver for trips; with the ski days available at the current life situation, there was no single reason to drag multiple pairs of skis along. Still, a possibility to make shortish tours has always been very tempting to me. My principle has always been that if there is no new snow around, to find some you are better to be willing to sweat some…

Enter Marker Duke: a 6-16 DIN, heavy-duty freeride binding that has a touring mode, and which is designed to take the abuse of the modern wide skis and the skiing they allow, including also some air time.

Marker Duke binding in review

So, as I mentioned earlier TGR forum guys have always had very strong opinions against Marker, but when comments like this started to drop from the hard-core, 100 days a year skiing rippers, I really got interested to this binding. If a guy weighting 215 lbs. and cranking his DIN to 14~15(!) could ski this binding hard, my nowadays pretty conservative style would do well on this… that was the thought when buying my Marker Duke bindings.

Short review could go: this is a very solid ski binding.

I used to have a second “tourind/rando” pair for trips, 04/05 k2 Seth Pistols 189c mounted with Fritschi Diamir Freerides. Skiing with that set-up was always OK but I still felt like something was missing. For me skiing is all about the feeling anyway. I don’t care if I’m not the fastest or don’t do all the lates tricks but I’d chase that perfect powder slash or that most slow, lazy, effortless feeling 360 one could ever do… and while being ok randonnee/touring bindings, the freerides lacked some of the final skiing “touch”.

I’m pretty sure I could everything with the Diamir FR, the binding probably wouldn’t have breaked on my skiing at any situation. Even though skiing the Duke was just so much better. More rigidity, maybe because of the more solid build but probably also from the larger footprint of the binding. The binding needs at least 76mm waist ski to be mounted with (IMHO this idea should be considered to all freeride bindings). I had a very similar feeling than when using trusty old Salomon 914′s.

Also, the stack height is lower than on most current touring bindings (Dynafit excluded),still a bit higher than on alpine bindings without lifters. But this didn’t bother me at all actually. One could even argue that a slight lift helps edging on hard pack with skis like Gotama.

The binding’s contact area is shorter than on a Diamir or Naxo binding too, allowing for more free ski flex.

Some people have criticized a few details on Dukes:

Ok, you get the point: I’m pretty happy with the product and if it will last a few seasons, this one’s a winner for sure. Mount a Duke with some ~100mm middle allmountain freeride skis and, in my opinion, you have a perfect one-ski-one binding set-up for the Alps (and similar Mountain ranges).

The picture, especially moving picture, speaks more than thousand words. I don’t go as huge as younger but on this run I felt pretty good on the Dukes, you be the judge: