Grip walk and hire skis

We stayed in a hamlet at 2000m. Only two small ski shops to choose from. Booked and paid ski hire ahead and brought our own boots. This place flat refused to provide skis because our boots weren't Grip Walk. Pretty much railroaded my other half into buying new boots and me into using ill fitting hire boots. Is it true that using non Grip walk boots with Grip walk bindings is dangerous? Think we were taken for mugs, in hindsight.

jansh wrote:Is it true that using non Grip walk boots with Grip walk bindings is dangerous?

That's true, I believe, BUT... I would expect most ski hire shops to have skis with "multi-norm compatible" (MNC) bindings that should cater for both types of boot.

Google AI wrote:Yes, nearly all modern ski rental bindings are compatible with both GripWalk (ISO 23223) and non-GripWalk (standard alpine ISO 5355) boot soles. Modern rental fleets use "multi-norm" or adjustable bindings, allowing technicians to quickly adjust the toe height (AFD) to safely accommodate either rockered GripWalk soles or flat traditional soles.

How old are your boots? That may have some bearing on the shop's stance.

Also, is it possible the "small" shops simply had hired out all their compatible skis?

They said all of their skis were only for grip walk. Would have been useful to know this at the time of booking. Our boots are a few years old but in very good condition. A family at our hotel had hired skis at the other shop (Intersport) and their boots were way older than ours. Just not sure whether to invest in new boots now as our shop said all other hire shops would be the same as them in the next year or two. We may only ski a couple more weeks, it's getting so expensive and we are getting old!!

Think we were taken for mugs, in hindsight.

You were, if you scroll down to the bottom of the GripWalk website https://www.grip-walk.com/ you will see this table:



As you can see it clearly states that ski boots fitted with ISO 5355 "A" (adult) soles, commonly known as alpine soles are compatible with Gripwalk bindings.

Booked and paid ski hire ahead and brought our own boots.

In doing this you committed to taking whatever the rental shop offered, they effectively had you over a barrel. If you hadn't have paid in advance you could have gone to the other shop to see if the stories matched. Booking ski rental in advance mainly benefits the rental company and the affiliated shops.

Ski rental shops are staffed by seasonal labour that is increasingly difficult to find. Many of the people working in them have very little idea about what they are doing. Very few if any of them will have actually read any of the ISO standards that cover ski boots and bindings and probably won't have read the binding manufacturer's technical manuals.

Thanks for the info. The guy seemed super knowledgeable and even demonstrated how easy it was to knock my ski boot sideways off of the binding. They said they'd let us hire them only if we signed a disclaimer, which we weren't willing to do, obviously, in case of accident and need for insurance claim. Have booked ski hire ahead for thirty years and always got a good price by doing so, with no problems. Being halfway up a mountain without own transport limits options though! Was a great holiday other than that, and I loved the hire boots - provided for free - brand new Nordicas.