I'm 5'10, 140, skied the 179 mounted +2 from rec (-3 from centre), recreational background but I'm a strong skier, I prefer charging skis to play skis.
Take this all with a grain of salt, I only skied them for around an hour and this definitely isn't my type of ski. Despite this I felt I got a good sense of how they would perform in different conditions and I think a lot of you guys are looking at these for next year. I took them on two runs down West Bowl on Whistler, nice steep cornice, funnels into some trees, and then a cat track back; great mix of terrain. We've had a pretty meh winter for pow days, so conditions today were a few cm of new snow on wind and sun baked crust.
They are very rockered in the tip and tail, have a large dose of camber underfoot, and have a definite tapered shape. They Hand flex a lot softer than they ski, but not as smooth a flex as my bibby's, more like how a JJ or TST flex. My first impressions were how loose they skied, it took me a while to get them to set an edge on groomers, definitely suffered from hooking, deflection, and tip flap (detune would help with this). I thought they'd like getting air but coming from bibby's they really lacked pop and were weirdly unbalanced, very tip heavy, almost felt like I was going to land tip first in to the snow (obviously you could adjust for this, but this was a big surprise on my first few airs). They definitely preferred bouncing around in the trees (this was definitely the skis strong point) and handled moderately well on groomers once I was able to adjust.
Honestly, I really didn't like them, felt very dead and too loose, but I also much prefer a stiff 'carve' skis for crappy whistler conditions. I think that with a centre mount + detune, and these would be a great BC booter or 3d snow tree/play ski for some of you lighter guys who really like a loose ski, but want something a little more resort friendly than the pettitor. The only ski I can really compare these too (Bibby's are a totally different beast) are my friends '12 line sfb's, which I really enjoyed (granted they were also mounted centre); they had a much more consistent flex and definitely gripped better while still remaining just as playful in similar conditions.
Anyways, I hope that was helpful.
ZB
