Alright well I promised a review of my new Karma compared to my Atomic GS:11's and the Salomon Foils that I demoed.
It hasn't snowed here in two weeks. There's barely a 24 inch base at Schweitzer. There were rocks, stumps, saplings, and sundry other crap all over slopes. I'm not taking my Karmas out again until it snows more that's for sure.
I had my choice of extremely icy moguls, icy groomers with a thin layer of shavings for some pad, and the terrain park. I managed to do one extremely short section of snowcone style powder behind some trees.
As a result this review isn't going to be as in-depth because the snow conditions were utter SHIT!
Despite all that I can say a few things about the Karmas... first THEY ARE NO BEGINNER SKI. Don't buy these if you're not a very experienced skier.
They're VERY lively, but you have to ski them hard to get the life out of em. Having come off the day with the Foils I started out being lazy in my turns and wondering why they weren't responding. Next run down I really started to push into the skis and carve, which is bonus #1 about these things. They can carve... and do it extremely well.
They're also extremely fast skis with incredible high speed stability. I was able to go MUCH faster on the Karmas and maintain a sense of control and poise that just wasn't available on the Foils, but was reminiscent of my GS:11's.
I'm not giving up on the Karmas for moguls yet, but I can say that on the steeps with lots of mogul fields with nothing but ice in front of you they're just too fat and too stiff to be of any use, but then few skis these days would handle those conditions well. I mean hell you need at least a little snow to ditch speed and compress against.
The very short stint I had them in the quasi-powder they floated extremely well, and more than anything else I'm looking forward to actually getting them into some powder.
Despite the fact that they are mounted at recommended, which is reasonably far back on the ski, they were pretty easy to maneuver riding switch. I'm still getting my bearings going fakie, but they were easier to keep under control than the Salomons. I attribute this to the Volkl being more of a point and shoot ski.
Until I get them up on a decent day where I can try more variation of terrain I can't say much other than... they're definitely more of a handful than the Foils. You really have to ski them. They're so fast and stable that I absolutely in no way missed my Atomic racing skis for charging or carving.
I'll definitely write up something more complete when I've had a chance to ride the skis more completely.
As always feel free to ask questions.
-Nathan
P.S. for point of reference here's the previous Foil review:
https://www.newschoolers.com/ns3/web/forums/readthread.php?thread_id=178137& 