Author Topic: DPS achilles heel  (Read 855 times)

jbotti

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Re: DPS achilles heel
« on: January 21, 2012, 10:30:57 am »
I often here people use the word versatile when it comes to skis that are rockered tip and tail (talking more of the banana design). I think Gary is showing us just how very unversatile these skis are and of course all rockered tip and tail skis are not made the same. The essential design feature of a ski with lots of tip and tail rocker is to make powder 3D skiing easier and "more fun". Therein lies the problem and the lack of versatility and a lot has to do with the short running length. As well they don't carve well on hard snow (and yes I have heard about how you can "carve" them in that you can get them oin edge and ride it and I have down this myself and some banana skis). But more importantly they don't ski chop and crud well, and this is by design again alot to do wth running length and stiffness

My point for the past several years is that I don't need help skiing powder which is easier to ski than crud and chop. I want a ski that will ski the crud and chop well and still do OK in powder. That is a trad cambered ski with no tail rocker with a longer running length and reasonably stiff.

I ski with several guys at my home mountain that ski on bananas. In the pow they move pretty quick but once they hit chop they have to dial down the speed massively. I go easily twice as fast at they do and on a pow day that means I am getting in almost twice as many runs. Where they seem to slow down the most is on groomed snow where there is fresh pow on top and it gets cut up. They slow to a crawl in this as the skis don't have the running length (key part of the equation) or the stiffness to rip through this.

I still have trouble understanding the logic of skiing a ski that is designed mainly for pow and very soft conditions when at most resorts those condistions last only about an hour or so and the rest of the day requires a ski with different characteristics.