a great question, as it provides insight as to the posters on the board we all know by name , but not necessarily personally. and becasue i am in the market for new sticks ( see this sad story below )
i've worked 4 pairs for the last 2 years.. but read on before anyone thinks i'm loaded...
most of november and some of december i am on a pair of volant womens sl skis with salomon s912ti bindings,,, i would guess the skis were about 8 years old when i bought em brand new at building 19 2 years ago fo $19.95...i think they are about 175 cm and are as straight as an arrow... i like em early for a few reasons... 1) they cost 19.95
and as a result, i don't have a heart attack when raking them over early season ice chips and rocks... 2) they force me to make the turns right out of the gate so i immediately know if i am faking the turns by being back and relying on the sidecut... no love in these skis that's for sure... they are flexible enough to bump in but have some snap to recover on the backside.. i have had em for 2 years and frankly, am surprise i have not bent them with the metal and all ... they are super quick edge to edge... i think they are about 60cm under foot... negative?... i don't think i could hang with river and some of the speedsters at cannon , that's for sure
my main ski is/was a fischer lunar 181, 2 years old w/ had a modified twin tip... these had tyrolia td8's on em...it was until this past summer in whistler where i bent them... they are bent so badly that i have written them off as firewood... on day 8 of camp this past summer, ryan johnson ( retired canadian ski team member looked down at them and said, " dude, how the hell are you turning those things " !!!!! :roll: ) they were a great ski cause after about 6 weeks on the volants, the lunars and their 90-63-84 sidecut felt like carving skis.. good snap and good torsionally so they good open up a little and run and not feel out of control...thinking about buying them again
once spring hits, i've been pulling out a pair of k2 mambas, 175... i found this bad boy at the ocean state job lot about 5 years ago.. it was a japanese made ski that somehow made it over here... glen plake filled me in on this when i had him sign it at the boston ski show 5 years ago...a pure spring corn bash masher... super thin like the volant but not as steady if you run it.... it's getting pretty beat up and might be on it's last legs... has a salomon s912ti on it
i also have a salomon 1080 twin tip ski.. it's going on 4 years old now.. it think it was the 2nd year model of 1080....i use this as my powder ski and when i got it, i think it was considered a fat ski... which i find funny because today it is probably considered about average.
( what my 3 other skis would be considered today i can't even fathom :roll: ) i think it's about 107 in the shovel, which to me looks monstrous... i love it in powder cause it , relatively, has little side cut to it and gives me plenty of float.... it may be 4 years old but it probably only has about 30 days on it, the reasons of which are obvious to those of us on the right coast... this has a pair of 2 year old salomon s914 ti on it.
amusing anecdote- last may, on what the g man and i thought was going to be our last trip to the mighty K in early early may :evil: , i had a suspicion that my lunars were about to poop the bed, as they say... i had pretty much been hitting them for 2 years hard on rock solid bumps with my less than solid rock solid bump technique
. we knew K was about to poop the bed the week before so we figured we would hit freds freeride onthe access road and see what fast freddie was trying to clear out for mogul skis, like he does every year... well, as i posted last may, that last trip turned out to be an early funeral with no skiable line at the supastar... and unfortunately, no fast freddie in town.. fred had shuttered the windows and headed out south to north carolina in search of large waves...so it was a double whammy...and for me it really bites because 99% of stores do not carry / stock bump skis.. fred is one of the only one that does...they will all get em for you, but they special order them... and there is no haggleing, u can be sure of that, on price
....i find it extremely painful to pay 400 or 500 bucks for bumps skis that i know i'm gonna beat the crap out of in 2 years :shock: ... but oh well, what can you do... and for anyone who was wondering, yes there were some bump skis available out in whistler but there were no discounts!!!!! and because i am cheap, i figured i would roll the dice and see if freddie has anything sitting in the basement in a few weeks, from last year!!!!
we can all say now that NEXT MONTH you can get turns
!!!!!!
