Loon Demo day - 12/15/18

[speden]

Did the demo day at Loon today. Pretty good deal for $10. I tried about ten different skis. They had Elan, Volkl, Head, K2, and Rossi there for the main brands, and then a few less well known brands like Amalgam and Meier. They were supposed to have Atomic and Blizzard too, but they weren't there for some reason.



It was pretty comfortable temps today, somewhere in the mid to upper 30's I guess. Usually crowds at Loon on a Saturday would be big, but today it was only moderately busy. Lots of guys showed up for demo day though, so sometimes it was hard to get the exact size ski I wanted to try, since most of them were checked out.

I'm looking for a fairly wide ski I can take out west, but that's also useful on powder days in the northeast. Two skis I really liked were the Elan Ripstick 106 and the Head Core 99. I guess those are both freeride skis, and they felt very light and flickable, and while clearly not carving skis, they were comfortable on the groomed trails. The Ripstick was particularly good at dealing with crud and was good at skidded turns. Probably freeride skis are more at home in powder, but there was none of that to be found today. I was really surprised I liked the Ripstick; it didn't feel that wide at all. By contrast I tried the Rossi Soul 7 HD's at 106 width, and they felt like giant boards strapped to my feet. Looks like the Head Core also comes in a 105 width, but I didn't get to try that today. I should probably try to demo that somewhere before I pull the trigger on the Elan's since I might like it better.

The snow held up pretty well during the day, and the sun showed up in the afternoon.



The demo's wrapped up at 2pm just as the snow was starting to get really scraped off. I still felt like more skiing, so I popped on my regular Atomic all mountain skis and they felt terrible. If I had been demoing them I would have turned them back in after one run in disgust! It seems I've outgrown them and the length is too short for me now. I didn't realize how bad they were until I could see the difference back to back with other skis. Looks like it's time for an upgrade.

 

[SkiingInABlueDream]

Unless your Atomics are like 15 yrs old they could be fine just in need a of good tune. And by good tune I mean not the typical ski shop tune where they run your skis through the machine like a teenager assembling burgers at McDonald's.

 

[speden]

Unless your Atomics are like 15 yrs old they could be fine just in need a of good tune. And by good tune I mean not the typical ski shop tune where they run your skis through the machine like a teenager assembling burgers at McDonald's.

Might be worth a try. Know any places to get a good tune?

 

[deadheadskier]

I have a some good tune work done by Sport Thoma in Bartlett. I believe they have a shop in Lincoln.

Sent from my XT1635-01 using AlpineZone mobile app

 

[puckoach]

I have a some good tune work done by Sport Thoma in Bartlett. I believe they have a shop in Lincoln.

Sent from my XT1635-01 using AlpineZone mobile app

Just went by it today. Just off 93, exit 33 I believe. Just north of Exit 32 for Loon.

I have never visited the store.

 

[JDMRoma]

Just went by it today. Just off 93, exit 33 I believe. Just north of Exit 32 for Loon.

I have never visited the store.

Ive been using them for a while, great service and decent tune ups ! You are correct, just off of 93 @exit 33. Great shop to deal with !

 

[speden]

Thanks for the tip DHS. I might head up that way on Wednesday. I rented some demo skis from the Sport Thoma in Lincoln once and it seemed like a pretty good operation.

After sleeping on it for a couple of days, I think I'm going to pull the trigger on the Ripsticks. They were fun and would fill the powder gap in my quiver quite nicely. Hate to pay early season prices, but life is short. Looks like there's an Elan dealer in Lincoln called "Rodgers Ski and Sport". Anyone have a good/bad experience with them?

Not sure what binding to get with the skis. The ones I demoed had Tyrolia Attack 13 demo bindings, and those were good. I kind of like the adjustability of demo bindings to move my foot forward or back a notch, but they do add some weight and a little height which is the downside.

 

[Jully]

Never dealt with Rodgers personally, but have a friend who loves them. Prices aren't horrible from what he tells me too.

 

[speden]

To wrap up my demo day story, I headed back up to Lincoln today to see if I could demo the Head Core 105, but they didn't have that model at Rodgers. So I went ahead and bought the Elan Ripstick 106. Once they'd mounted the bindings I took the new skis over to Loon to test them out. I wasn't sure if the ones I had demoed were super tuned or something to make the skis seem better than they are stock, but luckily the ones I bought had the same nice feel as the demo ones.

Loon today had so-so conditions, with a frozen granular surface, and they'd flattened a lot of whales so there were small ice chunks on a lot of the trails from that. The Ripsticks were good on the hard surface. Easy to control and confidence inspiring. For comparison I had brought along my ice skis, which are Head i.Rally's (only 77 wide underfoot). The i.Rally's are much heavier than the Ripsticks and they like to carve into firm snow while the Ripsticks are more like a well controlled slide. I felt more connected to the hard surface on the i.Rally's if I wanted to go fast, while the Ripsticks felt looser and more playful. Both skis were fun so the choice would kind of depend on what I was in the mood for.

After lunch I headed up to Bretton Woods to see if they had softer snow. Man did they ever. They must have gotten snow last night since there were deep powder stashes all over the place. Nice light dry stuff. Okay now I really got to test out the Ripsticks. It ended up being sort of an epiphany for me. The Ripsticks were amazing in the powder compared to my old Atomics. Everything was so much easier and I could just plow into whatever deep snow I could find and they just worked; so easy and fun to control and stay balanced. A few times I thought I was going to eat it, but I just eased up on the skis and they bailed me out everytime. No idea why I never tried a wide, lightweight freeride ski before, but it was an eye opener. I was having a blast and was bummed when the lifts stopped spinning at 3:30. The more I used the skis, the better they seemed to get. I can't wait to take these puppies out west.

So far I'd give the ski five stars. It loves powder and crud and really rips on groomed packed powder, and still manages to be fun on harder frozen granular stuff too.

Still surprised there was so much unused powder in the afternoon. Bretton had left quite a few trails ungroomed, and some of them were a powder paradise. The Rosebrook lift is broken at the moment, so they were spinning the Fabyan's lift instead, and that had tons of powder under it. Then there was huge section of almost untouched powder on Bretton's Wood all along one side before the Nastar entrance. Granny's Grit and Aggassiz were also ungroomed bliss. I love it when Bretton posts signs at the top of some trails saying "Ungroomed, thin cover", which means "This trail is closed to everyone except those with wide Ripsticks."

Here are a few pics:







Here's the new location of the top of Fabyan's. They had to move it lower to make room for the new gondola up top. As far as the gondola goes, I think they have packed it in for the winter since I didn't see any progress on the install since I was last there.