Tyler and I got out last Saturday to test our improved ride mode interface and our first article bindings.  For this trip we zipped down to Mt. Rainier and hiked up to a little below Camp Muir.  On the ride mode interface we modified the toe attachment portion to be a single bent sheet metal part instead of a sheet metal part and a CNCd aluminum part.  This change makes set-up easier and it shaves .25 lbs out of the system.  All of our engineering calculations showed the part was stronger than the old set up, but we needed to get out on snow to verify.  The snow wasn’t great, I’d call it “sun bucketed” instead of “sun cupped” because the pits were two to three feet wide and about one foot deep.  At least we had snow to test on, sliding in August is always fun.  It turns out that our calculations were correct, the bindings felt even more tightly attached to the board!