Mad River Glen 4/8/2008

[riverc0il]

Originally Posted by polski

Haven't done Liftline either. Now that I'm getting more comfortable in glades, hucking cliffs is my Final Frontier ...

Yea, mon. You don't even have to "huck" per se, but taking a stylized drop off the rocks on a steep trail with bumps and trees is the culmination of most important technical aspects of skiing. Terrain incorporation, love it.

Originally Posted by polski

Meanwhile, as I read up on the Pro Riders I see bumps are not considered one of their strengths, although for me the improvement over my own skis still was dramatic. I've also been eyeing the Dynastar Mythic Rider and think these probably would be a slightly better match for the kind of skiing I do. I'll try to demo the Mythic Riders next time I'm up; curious if anyone else has skied the Mythic and the Pro and can say anything about how they compare.

Yea, I was scratching my head when you thought the Pro Riders were a ripping ski for a spring bump day. Mythic Rider would certainly be a better choice but for east coast tree and bump skiing, I still find the Legend 8000 hard to beat when conditions are less than powdery (or powdery but not deep). I have not been on the Pro, just not the type of ski I would find useful.

[polski]

Originally Posted by riverc0il

Yea, I was scratching my head when you thought the Pro Riders were a ripping ski for a spring bump day. Mythic Rider would certainly be a better choice but for east coast tree and bump skiing, I still find the Legend 8000 hard to beat when conditions are less than powdery (or powdery but not deep). I have not been on the Pro, just not the type of ski I would find useful.

The rental shop @ MRG had sold the Mythic Rider demos they had so this was pretty much what I was left with. If I can get up there again this spring I'll demo Mythic Riders from a shop in town that I know has them. Let there be no mistake, I am not a ripping bump skier at this point though I do enjoy trying ... and while the Pro may not have been the ideal choice for the day, they still were a tremendous improvement over my own pair for the conditions..

[polski]

p.s.

Originally Posted by riverc0il

Yea, mon. You don't even have to "huck" per se, but taking a stylized drop off the rocks on a steep trail with bumps and trees is the culmination of most important technical aspects of skiing. Terrain incorporation, love it.

Generally speaking, I've got a LOT of work to do to get to "stylized" in tough terrain. I do feel increasingly comfortable with my crude survival skills though ... like in the glades to skier's right of Cat Bowl, where I will admit I had to sideslip through a couple particularly tight/steep spots (and it was clear I wasn't the first to do so).

Love the challenge, and at the end of the day being able to say I've done something I'd never done before -- or that something I have done before, this time I did appreciably better (in this case, Upper/Lower Glades and Lynx). It helps to have supremely forgivable spring conditions, of course.

[polski]

p.p.s. That shot awf has chosen as his avatar (see the 4/5 MRG TR) reminds me that by far I crashed more, and in sometimes fairly spectacular fashion, on Tuesday than any other day out (I'm in the high teens) this year. To my way of thinking, that actually meant I must've been doing something right ... this was easily my most challenging ski day all season.