What's Your DIN Setting? 4,525 Skiers Weigh In on a Classic Gear Debate

It’s Sunday, and you know what that means—we’re back with the results of another POWDER Weekly Poll, thanks to the Department of Polls and Skier Opinion.

The subject of this week’s debate was ski boots. This time, we wanted to know what DIN you all were rocking.

Keep reading to see what more than 4,000 skiers had to say when asked: What’s your DIN?

*POWDER recommends consulting with a ski shop professional on DIN settings.*

POWDER Weekly Poll Results

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Poll Highlights

• Total Votes: 4,525
• Most Popular Choice: Slightly above recommended (3,266 votes, 72% of voters)
• Least Popular Choice: IDK. The shop sets my DIN (172 votes, 4% of voters)

Poll Observations

• *POWDER recommends consulting with a ski shop professional on DIN settings.*
• Well, well, well. We think it’s fair to say at this point that these polls tend to attract expert or avid skiers mostly. Hence, almost everyone answered “slightly above recommended.” It recalls our boot poll, where a majority of people answered that they were using 130 flex boots, one of the stiffest options on the market. For us, that’s good to know, and could guide the kinds of questions we ask going forward.
• People go pretty hog wild with their DIN settings, which we already knew. One commenter wondered where the “way above recommended” option was. Another said their DIN was set “for compound femur fracture.” Those are your decisions, not ours.
• To the people wondering what all this high DIN business is about, here’s an explanation, which we aren’t condoning, by the way: the thinking goes that if you’re skiing at a high level, a binding pre-releasing in a bad spot is more dangerous than your skis staying on during a crash. On that subject, if you’ve found this poll and aren’t really sure what DIN means, you should absolutely defer to the ski shop.
• The author of this article, who has, at times, also had questionably high DIN settings, also suspects that good old-fashioned machismo plays a role in what skiers do with their bindings. You could say the same about stiff boots and long skis.

What We Could’ve Done Better 

• Binding settings are a complicated subject. Some change their settings based on the snow and the kind of skiing they’re doing. Height, weight, and skier skill add more wrinkles. In short, it’s hard to get super concrete insights from this poll, and we would like, as some commenters alluded, to know how many people are really cranking their DIN. Again, though, the four-option limit on Instagram prevented us from doing that.

About the POWDER Weekly Poll 

We launch our weekly polls at 3 p.m. Eastern Time every Monday. They remain open until 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time the following Friday, with the results dropping on Sunday at 9 a.m. Eastern Time. You can participate and see the results right here on our website or by visiting our Instagram page.

While you’re at it, drop us a line or leave an Instagram comment if there’s a poll you’d like to see next. Skiers have plenty of opinions and preferences, and we want to know which ones might land on top of the heap.