XCD skis on hardpack at the resort
Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2025 12:55 pm
Met up with my ski buddy at Kirkwood, near South Lake Tahoe yesterday, for a grand experiment: could we slash and dash the groomers with XCD skis and soft boots?
Long story short: hell yes we could!
Conditions weren't any thing special. We had a huge storm last friday but the powder from that is mostly gone. It was a warm day (definitely above 40F) which softened things up nicely. The groomers on this day could be described as "soft boiler plate". Near the end of the day when the temps went down 5 degrees or so, the variable bits that exposed more ice made the skiing harder, but we still managed.
My setup: Fischer S-Bound 112, NNN-BC bindings, Fischer BCX-GT boots.
His setup: Asnes Falketind (I want those), NNN-BC bindings, Fischer BCX-tour boots.
We started with a couple laps on the bunny hill which were no problem. He is much better at t-turns than me but we were both dropping the knee gracefully enough. I also mixed in some p-turns but didn't feel I had the momentum to really make them fun. I practiced hockey stops and was quite surprised at the edge-hold on the S-Bounds-- they grab as well as any alpine ski I've used. At one point I made the idiotic mistake of going from a hockey stop into a backwards glide (something I do often on alpine gear) and ate shit as the fish scales dug in. Ha-ha.
We then moved on to a longer lift that served easy blue runs. Now the real fun started. My friend was landing incredible t-turns, I was carving up a storm. I started to really trust the edge hold on my S-bounds and cranking up the speed and aggressiveness of the turns. I had to pay very close attention to my edge transfer, it seems easy to grab the wrong edge by mistake if I in any way started relaxing like I would at the end of a run on alpine gear. But each run I gained more and more confidence. I convinced my friend to check out Solitude and The Reut, longer lift lines that serve the steepest blues at K-dubz.
Here we did some lines much steeper than any thing we would try in the back country. He was still landing incredible t-turns but starting to mix in some skidded p-turns on the steeper bits. I could only land the t-turns on the lower angle sections, and at slower speeds. But I had no problem at all pole planting little jump turns in a parallel style. I managed to hit 30+ MPH and was surprised by the complete lack of chatter in the S-bounds. Near the top of Reut there were some soft snowy patches on top of the hard pack, which the 112's sliced through effortlessly. The Falks seemed to have a little more trouble with those variable bits. I would love to hear from someone who has used the Falks for downhill in some kind of snowy/powdery conditions-- I don't mean waist deep but rather more average conditions like ankle deep or dust on crust. How did they perform?
Near the end of the day the temps dropped a few degrees and skiing became exponentially harder. More icey hard packed bits managed to make my S-bounds chatter during grindy skidded turns, but I was super careful and survived. Throughout the 2-3 hours we were skiing we got some priceless complements from liftees and other skiers who noticed what we were doing. The whole experience was incredibly liberating, tooling around the resort with such light gear, and being able to get down almost as fast as on my regular plastic alpine stuff. Getting off the lift was occasionally difficult, I might have even fallen once embarrassingly, but oh well, all in the game.
I thought we would trade skis at some point but we were both having so much fun on our respective setups that there was never a desire for this. Still I'm quite curious to try it all with the Falks, which are much softer and have no fish scales, both qualities that seem desirable for this use-case. I will be doing this a lot lot more, and I'm interested to see just how much I can bite off-- could I do a black run? Off-piste? Maybe a bump or 2?? I don't want to snap the skis in half, lol. And this was all with an NNN-BC binding and a boot with not much stiffness at all. So there is further curiosity about 75 with a cable, or Xplore with my Alfa Frees. I have Traverse 78's with Xplore, but they are 186 cm and the side cut is not progressive at all-- I wonder if they will perform as well.
All-in-all one of my favorite ski days of the season thus far. I might even go the Heavenly today and try some more.
Long story short: hell yes we could!
Conditions weren't any thing special. We had a huge storm last friday but the powder from that is mostly gone. It was a warm day (definitely above 40F) which softened things up nicely. The groomers on this day could be described as "soft boiler plate". Near the end of the day when the temps went down 5 degrees or so, the variable bits that exposed more ice made the skiing harder, but we still managed.
My setup: Fischer S-Bound 112, NNN-BC bindings, Fischer BCX-GT boots.
His setup: Asnes Falketind (I want those), NNN-BC bindings, Fischer BCX-tour boots.
We started with a couple laps on the bunny hill which were no problem. He is much better at t-turns than me but we were both dropping the knee gracefully enough. I also mixed in some p-turns but didn't feel I had the momentum to really make them fun. I practiced hockey stops and was quite surprised at the edge-hold on the S-Bounds-- they grab as well as any alpine ski I've used. At one point I made the idiotic mistake of going from a hockey stop into a backwards glide (something I do often on alpine gear) and ate shit as the fish scales dug in. Ha-ha.
We then moved on to a longer lift that served easy blue runs. Now the real fun started. My friend was landing incredible t-turns, I was carving up a storm. I started to really trust the edge hold on my S-bounds and cranking up the speed and aggressiveness of the turns. I had to pay very close attention to my edge transfer, it seems easy to grab the wrong edge by mistake if I in any way started relaxing like I would at the end of a run on alpine gear. But each run I gained more and more confidence. I convinced my friend to check out Solitude and The Reut, longer lift lines that serve the steepest blues at K-dubz.
Here we did some lines much steeper than any thing we would try in the back country. He was still landing incredible t-turns but starting to mix in some skidded p-turns on the steeper bits. I could only land the t-turns on the lower angle sections, and at slower speeds. But I had no problem at all pole planting little jump turns in a parallel style. I managed to hit 30+ MPH and was surprised by the complete lack of chatter in the S-bounds. Near the top of Reut there were some soft snowy patches on top of the hard pack, which the 112's sliced through effortlessly. The Falks seemed to have a little more trouble with those variable bits. I would love to hear from someone who has used the Falks for downhill in some kind of snowy/powdery conditions-- I don't mean waist deep but rather more average conditions like ankle deep or dust on crust. How did they perform?
Near the end of the day the temps dropped a few degrees and skiing became exponentially harder. More icey hard packed bits managed to make my S-bounds chatter during grindy skidded turns, but I was super careful and survived. Throughout the 2-3 hours we were skiing we got some priceless complements from liftees and other skiers who noticed what we were doing. The whole experience was incredibly liberating, tooling around the resort with such light gear, and being able to get down almost as fast as on my regular plastic alpine stuff. Getting off the lift was occasionally difficult, I might have even fallen once embarrassingly, but oh well, all in the game.
I thought we would trade skis at some point but we were both having so much fun on our respective setups that there was never a desire for this. Still I'm quite curious to try it all with the Falks, which are much softer and have no fish scales, both qualities that seem desirable for this use-case. I will be doing this a lot lot more, and I'm interested to see just how much I can bite off-- could I do a black run? Off-piste? Maybe a bump or 2?? I don't want to snap the skis in half, lol. And this was all with an NNN-BC binding and a boot with not much stiffness at all. So there is further curiosity about 75 with a cable, or Xplore with my Alfa Frees. I have Traverse 78's with Xplore, but they are 186 cm and the side cut is not progressive at all-- I wonder if they will perform as well.
All-in-all one of my favorite ski days of the season thus far. I might even go the Heavenly today and try some more.