Ski Review: 2018-2019 Åsnes Gamme 54 BC

[Petetheswede]

Thanks for the input fisheater. Lots to think about. We'll see where I end up. This trip I'm using 195cm Ingstads vs 200cm Gammes which means i have to work hard to keep up but the extra floatation is nice and noticeable. I might just end up with 205cm Combat NATO as the true compromise.

[Jholmb]

Hi guys and gals!

Thank you for your grate community here, it has been interesting and sometimes funny to read your philosophical (with lots of knowledge behind) thoughts of different skis and their performance. While reading this forum my decision about the ski I want have changed multiple times, from Nansen to Ingstad and now Gamme. I have a 185cm Annum with light AT binding that has served me as multipurpose ski from touring to kite ski'ing. I have also made multi day ski treks with them. They have been okay and get me where I was going. I have limited experience for camper skis and technic to ski them.

Now I live in a nice place with rolling terrain, riverbeds and big lake. We have here kind of continental weather and winds that form snow cover. In forests snow is usually soft and on open spaces its usually compacted. I want a ski that performs well in those open spaces and I can go the distance.

So Im going to get the Gamme, my height is 178cm/5'8 and weight 74kg/163 lbs. For me buying online is now only option. I have possibility to get both 190cm or 200cm Gamme. I think it is going to be one of those. Boot is going to be Alfa Skarvet or Guardian. Binding nnn/bc manual.

So what I'm asking for you is, if you could give me some tips how to check that the length of the ski is right. I have watched some videos from youtube and read some your compression tests, but didn’t find dedicated page for determine the ski length. Im afraid that there is too much camper and kicking come impossible and all the childhood memories from the xc tracks come back to haunt me. But what I have read here is that this ski is quite soft campered and you have more ‘room’ choosing the right ski.

Thank you very much of this interesting forum and all the knowledge and details you put here.

[Woodserson]

So Im going to get the Gamme, my height is 178cm/5'8 and weight 74kg/163 lbs. For me buying online is now only option. I have possibility to get both 190cm or 200cm Gamme. I think it is going to be one of those. Boot is going to be Alfa Skarvet or Guardian. Binding nnn/bc manual.

So what I'm asking for you is, if you could give me some tips how to check that the length of the ski is right. I have watched some videos from youtube and read some your compression tests, but didn’t find dedicated page for determine the ski length. Im afraid that there is too much camper and kicking come impossible and all the childhood memories from the xc tracks come back to haunt me. But what I have read here is that this ski is quite soft campered and you have more ‘room’ choosing the right ski.

I am 188cm/6'2" and 71kg/157lbs and for some wild reason I have both the 200cm and 210cm version of this ski.

The 200cm was almost perfect, but I found it (or so I thought) a little slow on the flats, I missed that long-ski-glide, but it was really nice in the hills for climbing and a bit easier to turn on the way down because of the shorter length. Then a 210cm pair came up for sale and I purchased those, and they are nice and fast on the flats, and I was pleased, but I would slip on the hills and I needed to lengthen my wax pocket considerably. So then I thought, why don't I just use the 200cm, but then I think... man, these are a little short.

I need a 205cm.

How all this pertains to you: The Gamme is one of the greatest skis in this particular class. It's a little heavier, with a manageable camber, but not a camber that is as high as something like a new E99 but it gets stiff at the end of the flex. So you have to think... are you going to be in hilly terrain with lots of climbing and downs or be primarily on the flats.

When I hear "lakes," "rivers," and "continental snow" with "soft snow" in the woods and compacted elsewhere, I think 200cm is probably the way to go here. It sounds like you'll be spending more time on these terrains rather than the hilly sections. The longer length will float better and glide better for your weight and the fact that you will probably be carrying a backpack, right?

Also, these skis "turn" but won't turn as easy as your Annums. If turning is what you need to do, and a lot of it, this is not the ski for it for someone with "limited experience." The only reason to go 190 in your scenario would be for the slightly better turning abilities of a shorter ski during the rolling terrain, but this ski doesn't turn as well as an Ingstad anyway, so if you're going to put down the miles and want to the go the distance and not sink through the snow, I'd go with the 200cm and screw (as in forget about) the turning. (you CAN turn them, it will just take time to learn).

[Woodserson]

The above post assumes no XSkins, waxing only.

[fisheater]

Jholmb,
Since you were kind enough to use English measurement for us American readers, I will be a bit lazy and offer only English measurement. I am 5’ 9”, about 190 lbs, I poured concrete for about 20 years.
I ski the green Gamme at 210 cm, in my rolling terrain. I live in an area of glacially deposited sand and gravel hills. There are a lot of short and steep uphills and downhills. However, there are flat areas as well. I really like how fast I can go on the Gamme. I never skied an Annum, but I have an S-112 which is similar. The S-112 turns easily and simply. The Gamme requires more step turning, maybe a hop turn. I am not taking the Gamme on a steep wooded hillside though. However I do have a lot of fun with the Gamme on local twisty, steep, trails.
At my weight, I do not consider the camber of the Gamme. I am not a trained XC skier, however I have never had the wonderful kick and glide efficiency until I started skiing the Gamme.
Don’t throw away that Annum! There hopefully will be many days it will be great fun making turns down those hills on the Annum!

[Musk Ox]

Gamme users, I know this is a "How long is a piece of string?" question, but what are the 'limits' of a pair of these? Terrain-wise.

To clarify, I know that Gammes are mile-crunching skis with enough sidecut and squish to be non-scary on descents. Not the skis you'd pick if you were specifically looking for turns on the way down, but everyone agrees they're a lot of fun and graceful edging is not out of the question. (Albeit in my case we'll have to drop the 'graceful', but whatevs.)

I just saw Pål-Trygve Gamme on Fjellforum (less famous but totally identical brother) specifically saying he found them every bit as turnable as Nansens. Well he would say that, his name is literally on them, but I'm still struggling to see how that can actually be possible.

If you're not taking the topptur routes down, Nansens and Ingstads are weapons of choice up here for tours to the 'easy' summits I can see from my window, less than 800m/ 2600 ft high, and I really want to do this this season. I still can't quite get my head around the practicability of doing this on such skinny skis as the Gamme, even though the consensus is that they'll see you OK in terrain that the Nansen/ E109/ Ingstad has covered.

It's just I know that the Gammes will be so, so perfect for the plateaux and valleys I'm already looking at in my Winter Tours in Troms and Finnmark books.

I'm well aware the real answer to my question is actually 'buy more skis'.

[lilcliffy]

@Musk Ox

I do definitely think there are limits to what one can do with a ski such as the Gamme 54 pointed downhill- at least for mere mortals like me.

I am also uncompromising when it comes to certain things and one of them is a frackin short dedicated XC ski.
I could certainly ski some tight linked turns with the Gamme 54, but they would need to be a lot shorter than 210cm- and unless they were pointed down a steep hill I would HATE a short Gamme 54.

Have you watched that video of Pål-Trygve Gamme doing tight jump telemark turns with the Gamme 54 BC?
First of all he is clearly not a meagre ski mortal-
I also wonder what length that set of Gammes is...

Without even seeing an Amundsen (Crister et al- please forgive and correct me if I am terribly wrong here)- I have this feeling that the camber and flex of the Gamme 54 has more in common with the Amundsen than the Nansen or Ingstad.

Amundsen:
- 57mm underfoot
- sidecut: xx-10mm+5mm
- full-length camber
- stiff from shovel to tail
- stiff tip
- no tip rocker

Gamme 54:
- 54mm underfoot
- sidecut xx-14*mm+7mm
(*with the bit of tip rocker I bet the effective sidecut of the Amundsen/Gamme 54 is pretty damn close...)
- full-length camber
(I don't know if the camber on the Amundsen is higher than the Gamme 54- but the Gamme does not have the camber underfoot of a Classic track ski- it is MUCH longer- clearly designed to both release wax/skin when XC skiing as well as evenly distribute a heavy load (just like the Amundsen))
- stiff from shovel to tail
- stiff tip
- slight low-profile tip rocker

The Gamme 54 is a stiff, cambered, rock-solid BC-XC ski. IMHO the Gamme 54 does not have the geometry and flex of a ski intended to make smooth turns.

The tip rocker on the Gamme 54 does shorten its effective edge and improve turn initiation- but not enough to turn it into a downhill-oriented ski. Where I notice the tip rocker the most is at downhill speeds the tip rocker on the Gamme does encourage the ski to plane in soft snow. The tip rocker also makes it a bit easier to glide up and over hard frozen crud that won't "break".

Personally, I turn the Gamme 54 primarily through step, striding, and jump turns. I find my 210cm Gamme so stiff that it is even difficult to force into a comfortable snowplow turn.

By comparison- I can easily make fully-weighted stem christie turns with my 210cm E-99 (which is more cambered and just as stiff underfoot as the Gamme 54)- its tip-shovel is very soft and the tail is more flexible than the Gamme 54.

I too cannot see how the Gamme 54 is as easy to turn as the Nansen (not that I have any experience with the Nansen).

In my limited experience, the Ingstad BC and its predecessor the Combat Nato are MUCH easier to turn than the Gamme 54.

All of that being said the flex of the updated Gamme 54 does feel more responsive to me than the first-gen model- the geometry and camber-rocker profile is identical though and it remains much stiffer over its length than the E-99.

[Musk Ox]

SNIP

As always, thanks so much Cliffy for taking the time. That's all extremely useful. A lot of the Norwegian sales blurbs and some comments/ little reviews have kind of explicitly played up to its trad telemark turnability, so I'm really interested to see what you say about the stiffness, and that really makes sense.

Have you watched that video of Pål-Trygve Gamme doing tight jump telemark turns with the Gamme 54 BC?
First of all he is clearly not a meagre ski mortal-
I also wonder what length that set of Gammes is...

I've seen a video of Pål-Trygve jumping into some really tight linked telemark turns on a pair of Nansens, but not on Gamme 54s. This video https://www.utemagasinet.no/fjellski/fj ... -paa-1-2-3? If so, they cheat a bit! Kinda. The video opens with Gamme striding up a hill on a pair of his brother's skis, but if you look carefully they cunningly change when it's time to come down again: he's actually doing all his turns on a pair of black Nansens!

EDIT: Just checked... originally thought it was Alexsander but actually it was his brother, I'm wrong, so I have edited accordingly! Mea culpa

[Woodserson]

Agree with everything LC just stated.

Get a Nansen or Ingstad. They are more stable laterally too, than the Gamme, in squirrely terrain. It's interesting how just a few mm's underfoot makes a big difference in rolling an ankle or not. And maintaining stability is also a use of energy.

Would you take a slightly slower ski and be more stable, or take a faster ski that is less stable? At the end of the day energy usage probably about the same for an amateur skier.

I LOVE my Gamme for go-fast firmer snow conditions.
But I LOVE my other skis for different applications too that involve softer snow and descents.

[Musk Ox]

Agree with everything LC just stated.

Get a Nansen or Ingstad. They are more stable laterally too, than the Gamme, in squirrely terrain. It's interesting how just a few mm's underfoot makes a big difference in rolling an ankle or not. And maintaining stability is also a use of energy.

Would you take a slightly slower ski and be more stable, or take a faster ski that is less stable? At the end of the day energy usage probably about the same for an amateur skier.

I LOVE my Gamme for go-fast firmer snow conditions.
But I LOVE my other skis for different applications too that involve softer snow and descents.

Ah, shite... I so, so want those Gammes for the long day hikes/ overnights on the plateaux. I'm going to need to buy two pairs of skis, I hate my stupid bank-account emptying hobby.