Matt Duffy
New member
<I>(Note from the Administrator: This report was originally posted on 12/3/99. Due to our move to new servers, the date and time attributed to this post is incorrect.)</I> <BR> <BR>The sun was glowing through moderate cloud cover, giving the canopy a nice orange hue. The temp was just about freezing at the bottom and, what's that I hear? Silence! No blaring snow guns! Just uncut corduroy and no noise pollution. Still the same way down- it's got a few good pitches around corners with mini runouts in between. Black Snake has huge whales all over and a real good base, I suspect they'll groom it tonight and open it tomrrow. The snow on Rumrunner-Cross Over-Treasure-Exhibition was freshly groomed and F A S T. I fired off 6 rounds of Lift Rides and Ski Runs; left with Smoking Guns. This is IN OH TEE (NOT!) hype-y ranting of a kid with new toys. Those new skis are amazing. They make what used to bore me silly into purely fun exhilaration. A single groomed run, 6 times in a row? They ran at top end speed, completley out from under my center of balance. Two or three feet out even. With the right leg almost at full extension, and the left knee buried in my right armpit, I often reached down and touched the snow with _both_ hands... at top speed! What impressed me even more was their ability to very smoothly switch edges and enable me to mirror the previous stance, over and over again. I felt like I was really pulling some G's and get this: It wasn't until the first time I touched the snow with my hands that I realized what I was skiing on. It was not forgiving at all! I was surprised at the pain it caused just to touch it with skis out from under me. It was a thin layer of fine chopped up granular mixed with chalk on top and bottomlessly crusty & firm underneath. A fall on that would sureley leave bruises. And I thought I was carving in packed powder! It was really easy to spot my tracks from the lift and with each run, I let the skis drift further from my center of balance until I found there was seemingly a limitless amount of trust that I could put in those edges. The last coupla runouts at the very bottom, I > straightlined > for speed and ended with the most powerful, lay-down carves I could muster and they didn't even slip. Each time, I skied down to the tracks I just made and prodded them <> ...the trenches were almost as deep as my baskets and were pretty freekin wide. These skis are the real deal. Excuse me now while I genuflect and bow before them in worhsip...