Clicker Users Check Your Boots

I`ve been riding K2 Clickers for the past 4 years, and I finally had my first problem with them this weekend. I was riding my Ginsu, as the conditions were what is referred to in the East as `packed powder` (i.e. hardpack mixed with bulletproof ice) and working on my carving when I felt a little give in my front binding on a hard toe-side carve. About 2 minutes later, my front foot popped out of the binding, which scared the shit out of me, though I was able to stop without a major wreck. I had a bunch of snow jammed in the boot, so I cleared it out, clicked back in, and everything felt stable. I went back up the lift, and about 3 turns into the run it popped out again. I figured it was the bindings on the Ginsu, as they`re 4 years old, so I grabbed my Zepplin (it was snowing finally, and I prefer the Zep with any fresh snow) and was fine for one run. I went back to the top of the mountain, was skating over to the run I wanted to take, when my foot popped out again. At this point I was pretty concerned, so I popped off my board, checked the bindings, took off my boot, checked it out, and the only thing I could see was that maybe the Clicker mounting on the bottom of the boots had slid a bit. I took it very slow and easy down to the bottom, and went to the repair shop to borrow a hex-wrench to see if I could adjust it. It took a couple minutes for the shop to find a hex-wrench, and by the time we found the right one, all the snow had melted off the bottom of the boot and the problem was obvious, the bottom plate of the boot had cracked and broken right in front of the rear Clicker attachment. (These were not K2 boots, these were another Clicker compatable boot, and I can`t remember the damn brand, I`d ridden them for 3 years, and have completely forgotten the manufacturer.) This allowed the attachment to ride up and over the rest of the plate, and for the boot to come out of the binding. I checked my rear boot, and was able to see a crack forming there also. I was pretty upset, as it was only 11am, and there was no way I was riding those boots anymore, but the guy at the repair shop recommended a shop about 1/2 mile away that had some Clicker gear. I drove to the shop, and found that they weren`t stocking any K2 gear, but they had a couple of last season`s boots in the back. The salesmen brought up a set of last year`s Eclipse HB boots which were a perfect fit, and sold them to me for $150, which wasn`t too bad for buying 100 yards from the mountain. The design of these boots looks much less likely to have the failure I had, and I suspect that I`m not the only person to run into that problem, so I would recommend that any Clicker riders check your boot baseplate before you go riding, especially if your gear is a couple seasons old.
I do have a question though, the guy at the shop said these would work fine with regular Clickers (I`ll be buying highback Clickers and a new board later in the season), and they certainly felt fine yesterday afternoon, but should I be using these with regular Clickers if they are designed for HB? I didn`t have a chance to really try hard carves out, as it dropped a couple inches of snow between breaking my boots and getting back on the mountain, but I am a little bit concerned that I`m going to find it hard to do hard heelside turns without a highback. These boots feel about as stiff as my previous boots, but I don`t want to find them broken in and floppy without a HB come January. If anyone is riding Eclipse HB with standard Clickers, please share your experiences.

only saw a couple of other folks ever riding them, but everyone I talked to loved them.

Just out of curiosity, how was there any difference in the interface with the binding? I thought that all Clickers had the same interface. Now to get my new boots broken in. Pray for more snow!

I suppose if your trying to carve icy hardpack but I see little use for forward lean in powder or soft snow.

actually be somewhat sloppy in your technique and get away with it. For firm hardpack (found commonly on the east coast) you might want the extra responsiveness that you get with a big amount of forward lean.
If you`re just taking it easy and stuff, and not concerned with highspeed, high-g heelsides, you don`t need to crank up the forward lean that much as the best settings for carving (on a soft boot setup) tend to be a little uncomfortable and perhaps unnecessary for weekend warriors.

can use boots designed for the flat clicker system with HB bindings, but not the other way around. The reason is that the HB boots are not as stiff as the flat clicker boots. The flat clicker boots essentially have the high back built into them and not on the binding, whereas with the HB boots, there is no high back built into the boot, it is on the binding.

it. They felt at least as stiff as my current boots in the shop, and fine in the limited riding I did. I think I`m going to keep riding with my current bindings unless I feel it getting sloppy, should only be one or two more trips.