I love my rock skis
Can it be that my favorite pair of skis are the dumpiest looking of the
dozen pairs in the house? Let me count the ways. I didn't pay anything for them. They're really my friend's skis. She probably didn't pay for them either, they were her little sister's. Her sister may or may not have paid for them either, they might have been from her high school. I can ski on the trails with occasional rocks and dirt without worry. No babying these things. Today, I bashed around in the trees today after my dog, skiing over roots and stuff, skied over a little island and didn't worry when I jumped off a steep untracked section with who-knows-what underneath back onto the lake. Then skied on multi-use trail with rocks and dirt dug back up by the groomer because the snow is still thin. They are really lame looking. White Skilom by Madshus skating skis with duct tape labels on the tips. Sandbagging potential. They have actual ski tips and are only 160 cm long. This makes them great for narrow trails (snowmachine trails, skijor trails, unused sled dog trails, etc.). The tips ride over snow berms on the sides of the trails and you don't get tripped up. That's a nice plus over my old rock skis (193 cm Atomic Arc Skates that finally broke last spring after a lot of abuse in the backcountry crust skiing and the like). Why don't skis have tips anymore? They are actually fast. I scraped them with a metal scraper last spring and structured them with a file card (idea from Zach Caldwell's website, article on hand structuring). The first time I tried them out, they were so slick I could barely stand up in them. The file card structure feels slicker than the factory grind on my RS:11 or RCS. The Z40 grind on my new (used ) pair of Madshus is nice, but those skis are a bit long for me. Despite the short length, the flex isn't horrible. My long Arc Skates were softer and bottomed out under the foot in hard conditions making them unstable. These are stable enough on hardpack. I just might wax them up and compare them to my race skis next skate race. I scraped the summer wax off them a month ago and haven't waxed them since. They are still fast. I bought some used skis last month with immaculate bases and already put a few light scratches in them. Nothing serious, but I should have stuck with these with the thin snow conditions. |
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