SkiSickness

Things went bottomless here this week and new skis needed to be properly anointed. While others no doubt slayed sick lines on high faces draped in hero snow, we opted to indulge ourselves in pow gluttony on the mighty Kendall Massif. It was TAY-rific. Some west chute stuff Sunday, ~6000 cold dry vert in the lake basin Tues, and (idk, 5-6k? The Amarometer said 7k) skiing out all of the north-facing chutes Sat. Not necessarily huge numbers, but in cold deep hero pow, nothing could ever really be enough.

Thanks to Amar the tour guru for showing us well-honed approaches to all of these darn good pow runs that I always overlooked.

Following suit with current trends, I bought the cheapest retina-searing snowboard pants I could find to improve visuals


WA Blower. Kam is from Vermont, where stuff like this would be like the best conditions of the century(?). So he can't stop. I think he's at like six days in a row and at least 10 out of the last 20. He has the Sickness. Grad students.


Amar carries a lot of stuff; it doesn't seem to cramp his style.


Tony liked this line for the first of six Kendall Chutes that we skied. Tony dressed especially for this pic. Also appearing in this pic are my new Freerides, which were super happy to be there as well.


It was like that.


Kamtron trying out his new [used] Trab sticks and first Dynafits. Eighties skinny stylz engaged!


Thus I have opened for the main act: whomever skied sick stuff this weekend.

Snowcrummy Pass delivers! Looks like fun. Jealous of your new skis. I need another fatter pair to mount with some weight weenie bindings. As I get older and skinnier my skis get fatter; these days 100 mm seems awfully stingy.

I don't know (really, I don't) but 105-110mm feels like plenty of width at my size (175cm 70kg). It seems like a very stable width on that ski with a low-lift Dynafit binding. I figured more width could be a liability for me in non-nice conditions. Kam (and I'm sure many others) are ripping pow on 84mm backcountry sticks, albeit with certain sacrifices(?). If anything I feel like I should have just gone longer (i.e. 184cm if they had been in '13 stock), so I could drive harder into turns and have a bigger balance sweet spot fwd/back. Not that I feel like I've gotten anywhere close to overpowering or outskiing the ski yet. I haven't even skied lifts on them. Light and quick can be fun and I haven't had to do any real jump turning yet, which ought to be easier. I've also wondered a bit about how length/width/height ratios are affected when sizing up or down on width or length.

Tony's on some huge carbon megawatts. They apparently make pow feel like a groomer (wait, is that desirable?) but are way too fat for my ass; pretty sure I'd be shitshowing some icy expert gates on those. That's what snowboards are for anyway

This all sounds like great reasons to pre-order custom 2014's though eh

Nice pants! I just skied epic pow in WA so I have no reason to envy your pictures, but allas the snow looks awesome and makes me want it all.

That's good, because here in America, all the epic pow is Free.

It's mostly a matter of taste. I wouldn't say my fatter skis make deep snow feel like groomers. I'd say they make smaller quantities of new snow feel bottomless. My RXs are 116 mm at the waist and I can hold an edge on hardpack just fine. Do you want to optimize your skis for shitty conditions, or do you want to optimize your skis to make a larger set of ski conditions feel optimal? I'd very much like to have ten completely different setups and take whatever seems right for any given day. It's not really a poor man's sport, is it?

huevón wrote:I don't know (really, I don't) but 105-110mm feels like plenty of width at my size (175cm 70kg). It seems like a very stable width on that ski with a low-lift Dyanfit binding. I figured more width could be a liability for me in non-nice conditions. Kam (and I'm sure many others) are ripping pow on 84mm backcountry sticks, albeit with certain sacrifices(?). If anything I feel like I should have just gone longer (i.e. 184cm if they had been in '13 stock), so I could drive harder into turns and have a bigger balance sweet spot fwd/back. Not that I feel like I've gotten anywhere close to overpowering or outskiing the ski yet. I haven't even skied lifts on them. Light and quick can be fun and I haven't had to do any real jump turning yet, which ought to be easier. I've also wondered a bit about how length/width/height ratios are affected when sizing up or down on width or length.

Tony's on some huge carbon megawatts. They apparently make pow feel like a groomer (wait, is that desirable?) but are way too fat for my ass; pretty sure I'd be shitshowing some icy expert gates on those. That's what snowboards are for anyway

Thanks for the theoretics, that makes sense. I'm sure I've not skied as many skis in my life as any of you own at any given time. 10 skis * 6 conditions * 3+ replicates for significance testing, man we have a lot of skiing to do!
20% customer appreciation coupon is looking pretty nice right now.

Nice pics J! Glad to see you're enjoying your new boards.

I could probably count with a few fingers the number of days where i've felt I'd be better off with a different style of ski. But I skied fritchi's until 2010 so wtf do I know.

Thanks Ryan, I think you actually put me onto Praxis with your suggestions. A good ski is the one you're having fun on. Perhaps the biggest upshot to buying new stuff is the impetus to get out there and use it!
I still ski very happily my original Fritschi Diamirs. I guess it's my resort binding now, as of last month.