Foiled Again... (foil demo review)

Alright well some of you are going to be disappointed because I'm not reviewing the K2 Public Enemy.

Long story short, the shop that promised me the K2's totally dropped the ball (which is about the 10th time they've screwed me over) so I had to go to the shop I bought my Karmas from, and all they had to demo in a twin was the Salomon Foil in a 174.

I don't recall which Marker demo bindings were on these things, but let me say I'm glad I opted for Rossi/Look bindings on my Karmas. The Marker setup pre-released constantly. I had to crank down tension to 10 just to keep em on my feet.

So without any alternative that's what I took up to the mountain for the day.

I went to 49 degrees North up near Chewelah, WA. It hasn't snowed up here in over a week. The conditions were packed powder, crud (crust over soft), groomed, and a fair bit of ice toward the end of the day.

On the hard pack the skis performed fine. Pretty easy to get over on edge and over to the other quickly. Not as effortless as on my 64mm waist GS skis, but they were definitely easier to pull a series of quick short turns on.

In the moguls the soft flex and light weight of the ski made them pretty easy to pop around, but at the same time the fact that they're mounted so far forward put a lot of tail behind me, and that was annoyingly difficult to try and compensate for when something on the trail would pull me out of rhythm, as the tails tended to drag when pulling the skis back underneath me.

These skis require a lot of work to keep stable on ice. There's not enough tip in front to allow you to really charge into a turn and push the edge in, which is also too soft to be able to grip and pull you through the turn. You end up having to keep your weight much more centered, which at least for me makes me feel much less controlled on ice.

I managed to track down a run that had been closed due to poor coverage (LOTS of sapling tops strewn about) and made for the closest thing I was going to find to backcountry that day. The Foils actually floated pretty well in the powder, even considering how far forward the bindings were mounted. I didn't have to lean that much to keep them up, though take this with a grain of salt as previously on my GS skis I had to lean back very hard and keep up mach speed to surf on top. I'll have a better point of reference once I give my Karmas a shot in the same conditions. The long tail length again made them a bit annoying to maneuver when I had to make adjustments for the terrain.

Two things these skis don't do well are carve and maintain stability at speed. The foils definitely skid through turns most of the time, and tend to ditch a lot of speed in the process. While it's pretty easy to get the Foils up to speed they're also incredibly difficult to keep stable at high speed without keeping them on edge, which was made worse by the fact that at speed it's hard to keep the edges from breaking free from the snow. The tips chatter, they get squirrely laterally, and required the kind of attention that I normally associate with riding a snowboard off edge on the flats.

Two things they do very well is return energy to the skier and ditch speed. The Foils are lively. You can pop in and out of turns letting the ski do a lot of the work for you. Just let your hips pounce side to side with the reflex of the ski and you can have a lot of fun looking like an old throw-back ski pro from the 80's :) While it was frustrating to get the Foils to carve I'll admit that on some level I actually appreciated this as compared to my GS skis where I just pick up speed as I carve the Foils were more fun to just screw around on maintaining a feeling of control because I knew I'd be able to bring my speed down at a moments notice. I found myself going through trees, or dropping down steeper mogul runs because I knew I didn't need a long run-out to stop, and could actually vary my speed easier to avoid getting fresh with some tree bark.

I ventured into the terrain park just to have a go at it. I spent more time eating shit than I did noticing any finer points of how the skis performed so I'll spare the details. It was my first time in a park on skis (always on a board before) and despite the fact that my body is telling me today to never ever do that again I may try it out from time to time. Though in terms of freestyle my focus is going to be air rather than rails so lots of park time isn't likely.

I learned two very important things from the experience. Unless you're going to be doing a lot of park riding I suggest mounting your bindings further back. You'll just have a lot more fun and feel less held back by minor annoyance when you're out on the rest of the mountain. Second is that I need to loan my GS:11's to those folks who've ridden the Foils and concluded that they can carve... I think it's just a point of reference thing. ;)

If you want a lively ski that's easy to get around on, and will handle most of the terrain on the mountain at an average or slightly above average level then I don't think you could go wrong with the Foils. They're fun skis. Just don't get them if you intend to go charging down the mountain without health insurance. If you're planning of pulling them through the crud and getting them on some moguls you definitely need to mount the bindings back from center.

I hope that was somewhat helpful for any of you folks out there. If you have any questions or want me to expand on anything don't hesitate to ask.

Once I get my Karmas mounted up and taken out this week I'll be able to compare a bit and provide some more perspective.

Thanks!
-Nathan