Back in July I put up a wanted post looking for a fat (110-120mm) "playful charger" for Australian spring slush and soft crud busting. As can happen, life occurred and I never responded to the thread despite there being a few questions raised, so I thought I would put up a post here of lessons learned for posterity.
I picked up a pair of Faction Royale in 184cm from Facebook shortly after posting the thread. It's a 122mm Rocker-Flat-Rocker freeride twintip from 2011 with a big focus on soft snow and tricks. No metal in it, so it is a bit soft and the edges are blunter than a bowling ball as the french guy bought it from was heavily into park.
After two full days on them here are my thoughts on the playful charger concept, using the lessons I've learned from these skis:
Edit: TL;DR - A playful charger (to me) is a big, wide, stiff ski with camber underfoot (aka, a charger) with the length and stiffness balanced by tip and tail rocker to provide a bit more flexibility in it's use.
Those are my thoughts. Is anyone else looking/riding skis like this. Any recommendations in skis to get that fit the bill?
I picked up a pair of Faction Royale in 184cm from Facebook shortly after posting the thread. It's a 122mm Rocker-Flat-Rocker freeride twintip from 2011 with a big focus on soft snow and tricks. No metal in it, so it is a bit soft and the edges are blunter than a bowling ball as the french guy bought it from was heavily into park.
After two full days on them here are my thoughts on the playful charger concept, using the lessons I've learned from these skis:
Edit: TL;DR - A playful charger (to me) is a big, wide, stiff ski with camber underfoot (aka, a charger) with the length and stiffness balanced by tip and tail rocker to provide a bit more flexibility in it's use.
- Rocker. Tail rocker one of the key design features because it gives you the ability to release the edge when you're mid turn and slide the tails. Tip rocker is needed, but it doesn't seem to matter as long as it's there's enough to ride over lumps in the snow
- Camber profile. These were the flat skis I've owned, though I've demoed a bunch of full rocker and flat skis. Personally I'm not a massive fan of flat rocker - they feel dead to me. These skis with the very deep rocker lines make slarving essentially mandatory (on harder snow the effective edge is about 2 feet long). The flat underfoot feels like it compromises edge hold with no real benefit.
- Width. I'm starting to think width matters less and less once you have enough width to float the skis. These feel the same to lay on edge as my Wailer 112's did, despite the 10mm increase in width.
- Length/Shape/sidecut/taper. This seems to be a major differentiator between skis. I don't like tip taper - it's why I sold the Wailers. To me, it makes the ski feel shorter and the reduced sidecut radius makes it a hooky-er ride, while the extra length out front doesn't really do anything. Admittedly, I've never ridden a really big early taper ski (190cm+) so maybe that would change things.
- Flex. These are soft. It was always going to be the case, with their age and soft snow focus. It's not a major detriment - I want to ride over the lumps, not punch through them. With the tip rocker and the width it works, and it makes such a big ski easy and fun to handle.
- What makes a "playful charger"? To me, I want the following:
- Tip and tail rocker - as much as is needed to allow it to ride over lumps and release the tail at will. This give the ski it's playful side and balances the stiffness
- Camber underfoot - Australian conditions require hard snow performance and camber underfoot helps. It also gives the ski some "pop", helping the playful side
- A bit of stiffness - probably more than expected. I want the stiffness in the tips to let me punch through soft lumps if I'm driving the tips and I want stiffness in the tails and underfoot to spring out of turns and help hold me when landing airs. This is the chargey side and is balanced by the rocker profile
- Longer length, large sidecut radius and a "standard" tip shape. These are generally big skis, but the length is managed by the rocker profile reducing the effective edge length when laid over on harder snow. The longer ski also gives you more leverage to bend the ski so it can be managed.
- Width - Enough to float in most conditions - I thing mid to high teens (115-120mm) underfoot.
Those are my thoughts. Is anyone else looking/riding skis like this. Any recommendations in skis to get that fit the bill?
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