Advice on skis wanted.

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In article ,
Chocolate Moose wrote:
I'm pretty much an expert alpine skier and am putting together my first
AT setup. I've only been backcountry skiing once a long time ago and seem
to remember that weight was my biggest problem.

Anyway, I bought a pair of Scarpa Lasers so that part's done.

Now I'm looking at skis and I don't want to sink a lot of money into
something I may not use a lot. (I have a good resort setup.) Shopping
around, I've found the following "deals" and want to know what folks here
think of these choices:

K2 Ascent 8611 (2003) - $199 -- Can't find much about these

Atomic Tour Guide Superlight (2003) - $169

_ Both of these are reasonable skis, a bit on the light side
though, but that may be just fine if you don't want to
"huck". They will get thrown around in heavy crud, but
are good spring corn skis. The Ascent gets better reviews
as a turner.



Atomic Tour Carv Alpin (2002) - $119 -- leaning toward these because of
weight & $$

_ You should check out the reviews on all 3 of theses skis
at Couloir magazine[1]. These skis sacrifice quite a bit of
performance to be light. Depending on exactly what you
want to do these might be appropriate, and at that price
you don't really loose out much if you decide they aren't right.
That's only 3 days rental...

_ However, light skis are always a sacrifice in performance, but
generally I find that the ablity to climb quicker and faster
(ie. still have some gas in the legs to use on the ski down )
compensates for this. The one caveat to this is that there is no
substitute for width underfoot in difficult conditions. If you're
going to ski in a lot of windblown crud and crust, I'd look for
something at least 75mm underfoot. You can always save weight by
getting the skis shorter. Get your BC skis at least 10 cm shorter
than what you use at the resort, you'll be even happier if you
can talk yourself into getting 15 or 20cm shorter skis.


Fisher Big Stix 69 (2003) - $199 -- Can't find much about these


- - HEAVY, these are pretty nice standard alpine skis. They ski
pretty well although I like the Big Stix 75 better, but they
are heavy. If you want to go with a standard alpine ski you
can find lighter ones than these.


I'm planning (right now at least) to use these with Dynafit bindings.


_ A pretty good choice. You should check out Lou Dawson's web
site, lot's of good info about AT gear and Dynafit bindings
in particular

http://www.wildsnow.com/

_ We could probably give you better advice if you tell us
where you ski and what kind of skiing you want to do.

_ Booker C.Bense


[1]- http://www.couloirmag.com/gear/revie...skis_nov01.asp


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