realskiers

The Watea 78 is not nearly the ski that the IM 78 is. I own these in the 177 size and mine are tuned well and they just rock. This ski will do it all, from tight carved turns to wider GS turns, to skiing bumps and even up to 18 inches of fresh powder. The beauty is the combination of real power and performance (huge rebund and pop when skied properly) and ease of use. I can also tell you that the tails release nicely and quickly on mine so your issue was the tune.

On tunes, I am among many that resists getting base grinds. I have had too many that come back wrong or problematic. Almost always when I get a bad basegrind, the skis want to rail. It's really painful and it takes all the fun out of skiing. I have been lucky enough to get to know Willi Wiltz who prepped skis for Tommy Moe and Darren Rahlves during their WC days. I just had Willi put base grinds on 4 sets of skis that weren't right. He is also coming out to Monatan to teach the guys in the shop at my home mountain how to put on a quality basegrind. He also took two pairs of skis that had extensive side edge damage (to the point that I thought they were only rock skis) and they came back looking like new!! High quality ski techs are hard to find. If you ski in Tahoe, Willi had a shop this past season at Sugar Bowl. Next seaosn he will be at Squaw. I know a lot of guys that send their skis away to have them base ground to the Race Place up in Oregon. I totally understand and I will be sending mine to Willi at Squaw if we can't get the techs in Montana up to speed.

I am pretty pumped about my newly ground skis. They look awesome and I am sure they will ski great.

Unfortunately most tunes and grinds on demo skis were put on by a guy who knows little and cares even less. Too bad because it often prevents people from liking  and not buying what is a very good ski.