Well these two subjects are oddly connected, but here goes! Review is at the end.
So a few months ago I decided to plan a trip around some of the areas of Colorado that I don't get to hit up very often, and my girlfriend and I narrowed it down to spending a couple days at Wolf Creek, Crested Butte, and then head back to our home mountain of Breckenridge. We only put about 600 miles on the car, and all of them were worth it. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to propose to my girlfriend Caitlin, and to put it bluntly it just went awesome from start to finish! I also got my 186 Billy Goats in the mail the day before we headed out, so I ran to my tech and he was happy to mount them up that night. I put some FKS 155s mounted at the recommended -7, and I tried them out on just about everything you can think of from cliffs to half pipe (sorry Scott, I had to take them on a pipe run :).
So a few months ago I decided to plan a trip around some of the areas of Colorado that I don't get to hit up very often, and my girlfriend and I narrowed it down to spending a couple days at Wolf Creek, Crested Butte, and then head back to our home mountain of Breckenridge. We only put about 600 miles on the car, and all of them were worth it. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to propose to my girlfriend Caitlin, and to put it bluntly it just went awesome from start to finish! I also got my 186 Billy Goats in the mail the day before we headed out, so I ran to my tech and he was happy to mount them up that night. I put some FKS 155s mounted at the recommended -7, and I tried them out on just about everything you can think of from cliffs to half pipe (sorry Scott, I had to take them on a pipe run :).
Our first few days were at Wolf Creek about 3 days after nature dropped 2 feet of fresh on the place. It was tracked out pretty well in most places, but we are always happy to hike for fresh or dive into the trees...so a few sick runs were had. Nothing is better than a girl who loves to ski as much as you do!
Hike done, time to drop in!
And of course some shots of the sticks, I wish I had more action photos but unfortunately I was skiing at the time! And sorry, we aren't exactly photographers. Yes I am wearing a Jiberish hoody on a freezing pow/hiking day because I was a genius and left my jacket at the cabin. It did the job well.
Dropping some cliffs
After skiing we headed back to our sweet little cabin (which was super cheap by the way!) in Pagosa Springs. The hot springs in Pagosa are a must see, especially to relax some sore muscles after skiing. Sooooo nice to drop into a 108 degree pool and warm up. Cait and her dog are pretty much surgically attached, so Lilly joined us on the trip as well. Good thing she likes snow too!
Lilly gets some face shots:
Our next destination was Crested Butte to stay with our friend Chris, who also happens to work at Colorado Freeskier, so I had the pleasure of meeting Gabe and trying out some different skis from their demo fleet. Unfortunately, I don't have the pictures of those days since they are on Cait's camera. CB had some sweet terrain, just not all the best snow to try it all. We had a hell of a time though, and I put my skis through as much as I could bring myself to do. Does anyone else feel like that mountain looks like Mt. Crumpit from "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"....?
And finally, we headed back to what I think of as home, Breckenridge. Luckily, the lift lines weren't too shabby this week, so I warmed up on the BG's in the morning before putting on the Pipecleaners for the rest of the day in the park. Summit County is still lacking the snow we need for any good extreme terrain, so this was a good time to see what the BG could do on hardpack, switch, jumps, pipe, etc. Not what it was meant for, but what the hell, why not give it a try right? We got in the day after Dew Tour to avoid that crowd and so that I could actually ski Freeway instead of watch others do so. The pipe and jumps in Freeway are just as awesome as always, and even with it snowing and cold we had a pair of awesome days just enjoying the park scene after a week of big mountain skiing.
And of course, the big moment. Last night I finally asked Caitlin to marry me by the river and the Christmas tree on Main Street in Breck. She was really surprised, and it went just as I had hoped. One day I hope we have little Smail's shredding right behind us.
Sorry for the phone pic...
So now we are back home on the front range ready to relax for a few days with the families. A great trip with a new wife-to-be in the end is about all I can ask for!
186 ON3P Billy Goat Review
Mounted at -7 with FKS 155s. I am 6', 185 lbs.
Initial Impressions and Durability
So nice. The craftsmanship is fantastic, much much nicer in person than on internet photos. Lightweight for this size of ski. The graphics are impressive (and I must have had 15 excited people ask me what these were). They are much more stiff than I thought, which was a huge relief since I was worried that they wouldn't be beefy enough for my taste. As for durability, I gave it my best effort to send these skis to hell and back. The topsheets don't chip much at all, they just seem to fray a tiny bit. This is nice since you can just pluck off a couple hairs and have your skis looking like new afterwards. I didn't annihilate any rocks dead on, but the glancing blows I did have did nothing more than put some hairline scratches in the bases. Very happy so far with how they are holding up after 7 days.
Pow
They excel here, as they should with the kind of rocker and dimensions they have. They like to turn and slash, so in gladed pow they were nothing short of amazing. Much, much more stable than the Armada JJ or the Rossignol S7 in my opinion, so charging the deep stuff went fairly well too. The Wrenegade seems like a better choice if you are looking for an AK charging ski, but the BG holds its own better than most pow skis out there in this category. A fantastic pow ski in all facets.
Cliffs/Drops
Surprisingly stable. Correction, extremely stable. Felt like a pair of the old Armada ANTs. The biggest cliff I dropped was about 20 feet, and even landing on my tails the first time was no problem. I was impressed in this category, as I was worried about them washing out on backseat landings. Not an issue at all, they were sweet and dropping cliffs on these was just about the most fun I had all week. After the first try I just kept going back to the top for more.
Chopped Pow/Crud
The BG did well here, but I really like to haul ass in stuff like this so at very high speeds I initially felt sketchy. They never gave out or bucked me though, so I began to relax later in the week. I don't know how to explain it, it doesn't look like the kind of ski that is going to rip through crud but it performs very well. It likes to turn, so that could be one reason why I felt nervous flying through bumps and crap on them. I was more than satisfied taking them through this stuff, but there are better skis out there for this.
Hardpack
What? No tip flap? No crazy out of control edge to edge sliding down the mountain? Holds an edge well on groomers, about as well as the Armada JJ, or at least pretty close to that. The stiff flex makes up for the shorter effective edge while carving, and the 186 felt plenty long enough while laying down turns. They ride switch just fine as well, I bet they could even land switch but that could get hairy. I took it down the last half of Spruce today at almost full speed looking backwards and I was pretty confident in how they felt switch. You can feel the difference from a nice park ski (and the JJ probably wins by a hair in this category), but they can do it if you want to give it a go! Bravo, I don't expect much on groomers from my pow skis, but this is always a nice surprise.
Park and Pipe :)
I really just couldn't help myself, so today I sent the BG's over jumps from 10 feet to about 50 feet, as well as a pair of runs through the pipe. I even did a few mute 3's and the mandatory backflip that every ski needs to do. Very light for a pow ski, so the swing weight wasn't that bad even at -7. The landings were very stable, which I expected after my experience with them on cliffs. Pipe even felt fairly normal due to the short effective edge. This isn't a park ski though, so don't be that guy and waste their efforts in Park Lane. I didn't hit rails because I like to keep sharp edges on my non-park skis, and let's face it - any skis is good on rails if it doesn't explode.
Final Say
An awesome ski all around. I was worried about my choice this summer, but I have been very satisfied with their performance so far. Very high speeds (over 40 mph) still can feel a little sketchy, but as said before, I haven't ever lost control or had trouble laying down the carves I want to. I am beginning to trust them and not worry so much about the shorter effective edge. They are THE best tree ski I have ever been on, they simply turn over like crazy when you want them to. They kind of bounce from turn to turn, and you can put together some really nice lines through the trees without much effort. If you need to slash them sideways to scrub speed, they do so easily (my old 188 JJ's did not do that well, so tight trees were scary!) This is an extremely well put together ski and the perfect tool for anyone looking for a versatile and playful pow or tree machine. This would be an amazing touring ski, so anyone thinking about slapping some Dukes or something on these, go for it.
Well that was a lot, but these reviews from other people always helped me to pick out what I wanted. Thanks to all of those slaving over these skis right now, and thanks to all of those who put up such great reviews on the ON3P lineup.
