Because of the shape of the sole. Some bindings, the AFD does not match up with the smooth part of the sole and hits the rubber/grippy part of the sole. Last years Attack was that way. If you look at most GW compatible AFD's they are tilted.
No, the new Look AF toe has a solid AFD that is GW compatible.
Boots with Gripwalk can be canted but the will need to have the alpine sole on the boot to be routed to make sure that the height is correct, then the GW sole can be reinstalled. IMHO, there will be a boot fitter or two that will miss this and will rout a boot with the wrong soles installed once...once.
Phil, my Nordica GPX has a Gripwalk sole that can be canted by adding canting shims under the GW sole. Is that common to all of the GW boots? I think that's what you are implying.
Of course, once the boot has the shims installed, you have to level the lugs on the toe and heel to fit the standard binding height, and that's where the router comes in.
The nice thing about this is that it eliminates the need to plane the sole of the boot to cant it.
Oh, and the boot is much easier to walk in. It also appears that the toe and heel wear much less than they did when they were the old plastic. And I presume that when they are sufficiently worn, I can simply replace the GW sole with a new one (at least Nordica has replacement "solekit" parts that are specific to the boot line).
Are my presumptions correct?
Mike
