It looks like you are using an ad blocker. That's okay. Who doesn't? But without advertising revenue, we can't keep making this site awesome. Click the link below for instructions on disabling adblock.
Amazing in the right conditions, but not great in much other than deep and steep pow. Very easy to control in tight trees and even moguls, and they will never hook or do anything you don't tell them to do, which is really nice in tricky steep and tight situations. When the snow is deep there is no better ski. Their softness and poppiness make them more fun than any other ski I've used, especially in steel trees.
Chop is manageable but don't expect to be raging over it, as they don't really carve at all. They work well enough on groomers to get to the lift but carving is very difficult even on perfect corduroy.
If you have a quiver and want a dedicated pow ski then this is a great choice, but it is not an all mountain ski by any means. If you learned to ski on moguls you will love them but my racer friends do not like them.
If you are considering buying some I would recommend a demo if you can, they are only for a specific style of skiing, but if you ski smoothly and like moguls, as opposed to skiing aggressively, you will probably love them.
Deffinatly not a one ski quiver but a pretty fun ski that is at home in light deep pow and great for jibbin.. RIP to the legend CRJ!
Performance
The CRJ is one of the lightest pow skis I've had. It was very playful and with the soft tip you could pop off anything and jib like crazy. it was most fun in deep snow that you could bounce from turn to turn in which was crazy fun. Spinning was also really easy on them and they werent too terrible to take through the park and spin off the jumps at the end of the day. I didnt really like the way they skied cause the turns were more of a "slarvy" style turn where it feels like you are initiating the turn with the back of the ski and sliding around instead of carving. Kinda hard to explain but you get the picture. I live in the NW so we have the heavy crud and busted up snow alot at the end of the day, and these really didnt perform well in that. they were just to soft to bust through the crud, but thats not exactly what there meant for anyway.
Fit
Im 5'8, 180 and I skied the 188s for about 2 weeks then traded them for a pair of 180s because they were felt a little too long. The 180 was the perfect size for me and was really responsize and light. The 188s were alright but the maneuverablity in the trees wasnt as good as i wanted, but the 180 was money.
Characteristics
The CRJ is a has pretty soft flex in the tip but rebounds fast making it very poppy and playful off of even the tiniest bumps and great for butters. The tail and underfoot are stiffer then the tip which makes it stomp meduim size drops pretty easily, but I'd still call it a medium flex.
Ever since my good friend CR Johnson left us way too soon I've been wanting a pair of these skis, both to honor his memory, and because I know that CR knew what was up when it came to ski design...and I wasn't wrong.
The 4FRNT CRJ is such a well rounded ski that it's hard to put into words. Thanks to its 115 waist, it's wide enough to float like an overweight Russian in the Black Sea in the pow, but still nimble enough to surprisingly rip the groomers like a Japanese bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka. It also boasts a perfectly tapered tip (with a healthy dose of rocker in both the tip and tail to boot!), which makes it feel a lot less sluggish than some of the other big daddy rockered skis out there.
Flex-wise, the stiffness under the foot instills some much needed confidence in my rickety knees in any and all conditions (even ice), and the softness in the tip and tail helps me swing it around the tight trees I love to ski with little to no effort.
Graphics-wise, I have to confess that I'm not much of a Rasta guy (what can I say...I'm a product of the 80's metal era), but I do dig lions, so I was more than stoked on the look of this ski the second I pulled it out of the box, particularly the see through portions of the top sheet which allow you to bear witness to the fine craftsmanship of the core.
Most of all though, every day I'm skiing on these makes me think of what an amazing skier, friend and human being CR was. So it's impossible to have a bad day on them :)
Comments