I have the Hawx XTD 130 with Mimic liner, shift bindings, Blizzard Zero G 108 skis. Love the setup. It works for me for a NE touring setup and soft snow inbounds set up. The Zero G is a light weight Cochise ski. For you, and thinking use in Japan, I agree go wider on the ski, 118 max though. Keep the weight down, 1850 grams max. You don't want to haul a lot of weight up hill. If you go with pin tech bindings, instead of shifts, then you can add some weight to the ski. but with XTD's and shifts, your already in the "heavy" category or touring gear. There are a number of skis in the 1600-1900 gram range that should work well for what you want. Blister tests a lot of wider touring skis, I would search their site. Even a Atomic ski like the Bent Chetler at 120 mm would be good.
Don't listen to the flak about the shift. You do need to learn how to adjust the AFD height and the forward pressure, but once you do its fine. Its not the most heavy duty binding, or the most intuitive, but its light for what it is so you give up something, and you don't have to take anything off the ski to use it. (like a Duke PT). I spend enough time fiddling with the skins, and clothes, I don't need removeable bindings too. If you wanted to save weight, you could go to pin bindings. AKA's are good, a lot of good choices. Since you are skiing in soft snow, pin's would ski pretty well. This whole category of gear comes down to you save weight by giving up "ride or suspension" and performance on hard snow. You are also limited on how heavy a ski, mostly in swing weight, that you can maintain good control over. My Zero G's are a really good performing touring ski on the down hill. But when I skied them at high speed through some frozen moguls, I almost crashed due to the ski flexing out of control. If you limit your setup to powder, you won't have any of these issues and can go lighter. To me, a ski over 1900 grams is just not worth it for dragging it up hill.
blisterreview.com
wndr-alpine.com
www.powder7.com
By a lot. But I don’t know.
