According to this site, they’re all the same thing. Basically, just really short (maybe a little wider than normal) skis. I’ve been tempted to give them a try but I’d like to hear some reviews from real people instead of from retailers reviews. As for me, I’m a once every few years kind of skier.
If you’ve tried them, please tell me what your experience was.
I tried a previous iteration in the early 2000’s when I took a winter off to be a lifty.
They are novel and amusing but only work on well groomed hard snow, they are a sometime food and if you only get to the mountain every few years the chance that you will be on the hill when conditions are right for them will be greatly decreased.
I should note that as I learned to ski as a small child, within an hour of 12 ski resorts I am not the type of skier who enjoys groomers, so do take that into account when weighting my account.
Warning, If you try to use them in soft conditions or spring conditions and poke post holes everywhere your popularity will decrease rapidly too.
If you like skiing or riding in a park, they are a fun twist on that. If you like cruising on groomed slopes they can be moderately interesting but IMO a poor substitute for a pair of skis or a board. If you like moguls, trees, ungroomed, etc, don’t bother.
I have only skied on the lower east coast, from North Carolina to West VA, where the conditions are pretty much pure ice most of the time. In those conditions I found snow blades to be much easier to control than traditional skis. They are easier to get on and off, easier to turn and stop, easier to get up when you fall and have a lower top speed. Another “feature” is that you don’t need ski poles because blades are pretty easy to get around with on flat or uphill areas. No poles means two less things to lug around (or tramp back uphill and pick up when you fall) and makes it a bit easier to get on and off the lift (and safer - I can’t tell you the number of times a newbie stuck a pole between my skis when exiting the lift). It’s also a bit less likely with shorter blades to torque a knee when you do wipe out.
OTOH, on the rare occasion that there was powder on top of the ice it could be difficult to carry speed through extended flat areas and more than once I ended up walking/skating a bit to the next downhill section.
The other thing about blades is that they are incredibly unstable at speed. If you are at all forward or back you end up on your face or your ass. This effect can be seen on shorter slalom skis but it’s exaggerated for blades.
BTW, in nearly 50 years of skiing I’ve never had a newbie stick their poles between my legs when getting on or off a lift. The only time it’s ever happened to me it was decidedly on purpose. :eek:
I tried those way back when they were a new fad on the slopes. They were marketed (for lack of a better term) as ‘ski-dancing’ skis. Since I had some intermediate skills and had discovered a penchant for skiing forward, backward, and in loops on the intermediate slopes, I decided to try them out while my new girlfriend (at the time) took beginner lessons.
I guess I should have paid attention to the warnings that they’re slower than regular skis. I guess they’re slower because the shortness doesn’t help you float on the surface of the snow as well as longer skis do. Of course, the shortness also doesn’t grab and hold snow that’s far away when you screw up, either, so you’re less likely to break your ankle when something makes you go down.
I found the experience fun and enjoyed the weird looks from other skiers as I spiralled and danced my way down the slopes, but I also felt like I missed the speed that regular downhill skis gave me. So after my girfriend’s beginnger lesson, I switched out my ‘shorty skis’ for regular skis and did the ski-dancing behind her on the beginner slopes. And even on the beginner slopes I got more satisfying speed out of the experience.
–G!
There used to be a product called Scorpians. Very short, slightly wider skis. They really weren’t much fun. Their distinguishing feature was the binding was mounted rearward, so you had almost nothing behind your heel.
Here is a video of a “Chinese downhill” using Scorpians.
These were an early attempt at what are today referred to as skiboards.