UKC

Last week, I was in Austria, enjoying the most snow I've ever seen and the best skiing I have ever experienced. In addition to completing my winter-driving education, I also had my first experience on touring skis.

I was playing on some carbon fibre jobs by Dynafit, 90mm in the waist. They weighed basically nothing and went up hills easily. They were exactly equal in length to my height and that made kick-turns rather simple but what absolutely staggered me was their performance on soft "Tiefschnee" (deep snow) -- and we got to ski a lot of that, indeed.

In the soft stuff, they just sort of bounced from one turn to the next with no effort at all. You just had to get your shoulders right, bend your knees and let them do all the work.

I've skied a lot of soft snow between (and near) pistes, before, but always on heavy downhill skis on which I always felt like I had to be careful not to dig the tips in or on which I had to throw my hips to force a turn. On the light ones, I felt like I could lean forward without worry and turn on their edges just like one does on a fresh piste.

I tried them on some hard, icy pistes in the sun, too, and that was a much less satisfactory experience. They were manageable but they felt twitchy -- like they turned way too easily and I had to be very careful to keep my movements extremely smooth and subtle or they'd just flip about. Skiing lumpy, chopped up stuff was also pretty hard on the toes -- I felt like I had to consciously stomp my toes down on the outside ski to keep it from turning too far into the turn every time it encountered a bump.

Is that normal or is my technique just plain wrong? I thought it could be because they weighed so little. Or because they're just a different shape compared to the downhill skis I am usually riding.

Its the lightness that causes touring skis to chatter on ice and get deflected in lumps, much less of the 'skis doing the skiing' feeling you get from downhill skis. If you were skiing well offpiste then there can be little wrong with your technique.

The twitching is usually due to the ski's construction. They need to be built with an element that dampens the different forces the skis faces on the piste or in variable snow.

I really like the Blizzard Bonfide's as an all-rounder, and the link to the review below tells you a little bit about how that works..

https://www.skiessentials.com/2018-ski-test?skis=blizzard-bonafide

John C

Don't think I'd want to tour much on them though!

The ski chattering thing, so that is yo do with a bit of "advanced" technique in the sense that a lot of people are not aware of if. The chattering is caused by the ski twisting and releasing due to the edge biting into the snow. What's happening is as you reach the apex of your turn the pressure builds up until your light ski can't take the force anymore and releases. So you need to learn to absorb the pressure through your downhill leg. You do this by amplifying your movements through the turn, you need to settle down more on the outter leg, squeezing down and really crunching until you reach the apex and you begon to initiate the next turn. Imagine you are squeezing a ball. You should feel the extra force in your leg build up and release. Simply you just need to learn to ski light skis... and that's not hard it's more an adjustment...

I was actually looking at Blizzard skis, originally (The "Rustler 10"s, when I was doing my research at the beginning of 2018, although I see that there's a new 90mm one called the "Rustler 9" that might make more sense for me, now.) but, after careful consideration, I decided that I didn't actually want a "one ski quiver" because nothing sucks like lift queues.

I might wish I was always in the back country, well away from crowds, lifts and après-ski (the latter also known as "hell", to me) but I'll still probably end up in-bounds for at least two weeks every season simply because that's where our friends, family and enemies mostly are. There's no way I'd want to have fragile, light-weight touring kit on the ground in a popular venue in the week of the Dutch holidays, for example (nobody ever learns to check the European holiday calendars before booking, do they?) -- even if the skis survived without a scratch, I'd certainly worry about them constantly.

I decided to buy some new-ish rental skis for in-bounds skiing after my last week of that -- a pair of HEAD V-Shape V6's is what ended up dripping snow all over my car -- and went looking for dedicated touring kit exclusively for use on tour, apart from a bit of a test run and DAV courses that sometimes use lifts.

I'm perfectly happy with these Dynafit not-a-clue-what-model-they-are 90mm jobs. I can ride them on a piste even if they're twitchy and I didn't buy them for pistes, anyway.

I tried an ascent next to a piste with them and it was a mind-blowing experience. I had never gone "up" on skis, before, and was a bit worried that it looked like a proper pain in the arse. After giving it a go, I can honestly say that it didn't feel any more difficult than walking up a zig-zag path in the summer. (Of course, coming from Cape Town, I am well adapted to steep, mountain "stairways" and generally prefer that sort of thing to slow, rolling hills or moderate climbs. This fact may or may not be relevant.)

The most difficulty I experienced was caused by the fact that I had the wrong baskets on my poles and couldn't use them for lateral stability because the snow I was testing in was so soft -- I felt like I was about to perform a slow topple to the side at any moment.

There are loads of possible "quiver of one" touring set-ups that would perform decently on the up but also allow for great downhill performance in soft snow and the ability to handle faster carving on the piste and harder snow (with some care). I have a pair of Black Crows Orb Freebirds (91 underfoot) with Tecton bindings for example - enough substance to hold an edge and ski well inbounds when needed, enough width to float effortlessly in powder and light enough to day tour and even do some light ski mountaineering. The key, in my opinion, is the new category of hybrid pin/alpine bindings emerging, which are light enough to tour and take touring boots, but have enough substance to offer decent power transmission and some durability. In other words, they are great for people who want one ski to split time between inbounds and touring. I also have a dedicated lightweight ski mountaineering set-up and obviously there are some compromises with the "quiver of one" - they are not the most durable if ragged around the resort constantly - but with a bit of care it works great. Happy skiing.