Trekkers

I've been doing a lot of research lately and I see a lot of completely negative reviews saying how they can ruin your day and how you should just put money into the bindings. On the contrary I have seen reviews saying that if you properly tighten them into your bindings you will be fine and they won't break. I think that if you only do ten trips a year you should be fine getting them, but I'm not willing to pay $180 to find out if they are sturdy or not.

your other option is snowshoes...

snow shoes kind of defeat the purpose though.

I read those same reviews and it also seems like just as much of a day ruiner to have the all plasitc touring bindings break as well. then im left with a complete new binding purchase. I just dont see how trekkers can be that bad when you only use them to go up.

I used my trekkers for about 75% of my shorter tours last season, and they got the job done. The only major problem I experienced with my trekkers was the, trekker becoming smaller in very cold weather. This of course required immediate attention on the skin track. The problem was easily solved however with a screw driver and some lock-tite later that evening back at home. I'm going to be honest the uphill is a bit like being on stilts compared to other AT set ups, but the reality is, if you're looking at trekkers I doubt you'll be doing long tours on them anyhow, in which case they'll be fine and you will have earn't your downhill that bit more. Trekker don't interface to well with Pivot Series bindings, as they don't engage the brake. Although I've heard of people winding duct tape round the column above the brake to combat this. The high heel piece may be an issue also, as I found the heel piece on the Axial2 series bindings got in the way of the trekker movement, in which case your heel will not return the trekker base, this isn't to be of too much concern as it's just about bearable. (OP nb. I say may be an issue as I'm not sure if the heel piece on the the p18 is high enough or not, from memory the heel piece height isn't an issue)

i personally like em. never had any problems.

I've already got skins and snowshoes would suuuck

This is pretty bang on. I used trekkers for short tours/sidecountry stuff for a number of years with my Rossi FKS 14s. As mentioned above, the trekkers don't engage the brakes on this type of binding, so I just wound a bunch of duct tape around the shaft of the trekker until it was big enough to push the brake up when clicked into the binding. And, as also stated above, since the fks type heel piece is so high, the heel of the trekker actually hits/rubs it instead of sitting flush with the base of the trekker. It's not an ideal set-up by any means, but if you're really determined to have the feel of an alpine binding on the way down, it gets the job done.

If you can afford a dedicated touring set-up, I had a chance to try the Salomon Guardian binding last year for a week of touring and they were by far the best "hybrid" touring/alpine bindings I've ever used. They were stiff, relatively lightweight, and there's way less stack height than something like a duke. They actually felt very similar to a regular STH 16 binding.

This is true, OP I would rather use Trekkers than snowshoes