I’m thinking of wading into the shark-filled waters of ski purchasing, but before I get my feet wet, I’m doing what all the smart people do: ask advice of the SDMB. So here goes. Some basic facts:
I’m going to ski exclusively in the Northeast.
I’m an intermediate skier, by which I mean that I’m very inexperienced, but ski on the intermediate trails.
I’m looking for a ski in the 160 cm length range, with good turning ability. I’m not looking to ski off-piste, or do moguls, or compete for gold in the downhill.
I’m a cheap bastard.
So given that number 4 is uppermost at the moment, I’m looking to buy skis at a discount, and it’s here that the options overwhelm me. Looking on eBay, there are seemingly some good deals out there, but a lot of traps for the unwary. It looks like there are reputable sellers who will sell a pair of used Atomic skis with demo bindings for about $200, which is about my price range, though I could go somewhat higher.
Or I could get a pair of skis and bindings separately off Amazon for about the same. For example, I see a pair of Dynastar X 6 skis for a hundred bucks, and Look bindings for between $80 and $100. Can someone tell me how much it costs to have the bindings fitted? And are the Look bindings decent?
Or I could go to a clearance sale at a local ski shop and get a package with everything. I’m not sure when the best time to buy is – spring, summer, early fall? I by no means need to have the latest model.
More generally, I’d like to know:
Does brand matter? Or are all the big brands (Rossignol, Atomic, Salomon, etc.) more or less comparable?
Is ski-binding-boot compatibility a big issue? Or can I assume that in most cases, any combination of the three will work?
What’s the real story with bindings? Is the adjustable demo binding any worse than the custom-fitted one? How about integrated versus non-integrated? Does price matter hugely? How about lifter plates?
Are there any brands/models that I should specifically stay away from?
Too darn many questions, and undoubtedly some that I forgot. But beyond the questions, any general advice is welcome.
the SKI magazine website has a “ski finder” that could get you started.
Once I rented through a ski shop in Banff that would let you try as many different brands as you liked over your stay. That was really helpful when I was thinking of buying (I tried 4 different models over a 5 day stay).
Know what you like. I like a very flexible ski. I am light and don’t have tremendous leg strength. Most “intermediate” type skis are too stiff and skitter left/right under my foot. I bought a style that most skiers described as too soft/mushy. Mmmm… perfect. So, what’s right for you might not be right for everyone. Also, a few years back I read that in a blind test, most skiiers male & female preferred the “women’s” model over the “standard” of the same ski. I don’t know if it continues to be true.
Finally, an ebay tip: a few brands size their skis in other than 5cm intervals. Most people search eBay for even numbers: 155, 160, 165. The ski sized 163 will have fewer bidders.
-“high intermediate” skier (somtimes easy black diamond) but no moguls.
Consider a second hand Elan Speedwave Fusion 8 or 10 for intermediate level cruising runs where you can expect scraped snow sufaces. Elan’s speedwave/fusion/waveflex line is generaly quite good with hardpack and ice (soft flex but exceptional torsional rigidity, so little flopping about when on edge). The 8 series is a modest ski, and the 10 is modest but can hold a bit better when you pick up the speed. The higher the number the better the ability to handle speed, so if you intend to progress into the black diamond groomed runs, you should go for a 12 or 14).
Whatever you end up with, be sure to keep it tuned and waxed – this is hugely important.
Cheers,
Muffin
Past member, Team Canada, Telemark Division
All the majors put out similar products at similar prices for the intermediate on-piste skier. As noted above, Elan has some good stuff out at the moment for intermediate skiers, but note that the other majors will catch up shortly.
Any alpine boot will fit any alpine binding. Not all bindings will fit all skis.
Unless you are a ski god, a binding is a binding is a binding, so go for whatever is least expensive and no more than a couple of years old.
The important thing is to have the release tension properly set for your ability, so that you don’t get trapped in your bindings, and so that you don’t prematurely eject.
The only reason that integrated bindings exist is for ski manufacturers to capture your wallet when it comes to buying a binding. If a ski you like has an integrated binding, go with that binding. If it does not have an integrated binding, then any not-too-old binding will do – consider something like Marker.
Risers / lifter plates are not necessary for intermediate cruising. If you want to carve turns at high speed, a riser is very helpful, for it will permit greater angulation to assist you in getting up on edge, and greater leverage so that you can hammer through the turn until you see spots. The down side of risers (and bindings in general) is that they tend to impinge the flex of the ski, so when selecting a riser, try for one as short as possible.
No – provided that you select a model that is appropriate to intermediate cruising on hard-pack and scraped snow. No powder fats or downhill race skis for you, my friend.
It occured to me, if you purchase a twin tipped ski, then no matter what goofey thing happens to you while you are skiing, other skiers will think you were attempting a really cool trick, and that you must be a ski god.
Muffin, this is extremely helpful. And your credentials are impeccable!
I’m tempted by the Elan ski you mentioned, since I see you can buy a pair on eBay, new with bindings, for somewhat over $200. The model numbers are a little confusing, though. I see A02, A04 and A06, etc., going up in price and I suppose in quality. Is the Fusion 8 you mentioned equivalent to the A08, do you think?
The old A series is essentially the beginner line, although the A08 is suitable for intermediate cruising.
The old S series (not to be confused with the more recent Speed Wave skis) is suitable for intermediate cruising. The S08 would hold better on scraped hard pack and make tighter turns than the A08.
Neither the A nor the S lines are built using the new Speed Wave core, which is what makes Elan stand out at the moment. It is the Speed Wave models that will chatter less / hold better on the scraped hard pack that is common in central and eastern North America. The lower end non-speed wave models such as the A and S series are no better and no worse than other manufacturers’ similar models. (Interestingly enough, the top of the line slalom and GS race skis from Elan do no use speed wave cores – they just use a crap load of wood, titanium and goop to hold it all together – but they require an elephant traveling close to mach 1 to flex them.)
With respect to the A series you have come across, $200 for a brand new A08 including bindings is OK for basic retail, simply because it is hard to find anything new for under a couple of hundred bucks, but that being said, it is not a great deal. For an extra hundred, you could probably come home with something a lot better than that from a good swap or from EBay – such as a Speed Wave 8 in good condition.
For example, the skis that I personally prefer for fast ice runs – the Elan GSX (I’m one of those elephants) – are for sale on EBay for $300 in nearly new condition, and I have been purchasing them in both nearly new and in-the-wraper-new conditions for the last three years for between $200 and $300 a pop at my local ski swap. You might wish to hang tight for the mean time and keep your eyes open for a good deal in that price range that gets you onto a Speed Wave 8 (that normally retails for around $600 including bindings), rather than something that will not perform as well for you. Patience pays when it comes to searching out and obtaining good skis.
In addition to EBay, check out what your local race clubs do for ski swaps. Often clubs will hold swaps in the fall, so that parents can unload whatever is sitting in the basement, and free up some cash to put something shiny under the Christmas tree for their darling Jean Claudes. Ski shops often then tag along and unload unsold inventory from the previous season at these swaps, at absurdly low prices, prior to their bringing in new gear. That’s where you can swoop in and make a killing.
Whatever you do, don’t purchase skis sight unseen. Resorts often start selling off their rental fleets in April through May, so you might end up with something that is worn out. Insist on a photo that shows all of the ski bases clearly. Be sure that there is lots of edge left (sharpening wears it away), and that there are no gouges in the bases along side of the edges (patches tend to pop off there).
I don’t know if they have “ski swaps” out east like they do over here near Lake Tahoe, but those events are usually a great place to get awesome deals on new or used skis.
Whatever recommendations you get here, I’d highly recommend skiing on a variety of demo skis at whatever resort you like. Most of the resorts in Tahoe have a rental/demo program that allows you to try a variety of different skis without any more cost to you than renting a single pair continuously.
Northstar in Tahoe has also one-upped that by providing a rental hut at the bottom of the mountain that you can ski into and swap demo skis between runs, allowing you to try out like 6 pairs of skis over the course of a single day. If you can find any resort in your area that does that, I’d do that before making any decisions.
The demo programs usually have the latest models of any given brand, but you can usually find the same model of ski from the previous year when you’ve settled on one you like.
I used this method to buy my last pair of skis and have been very happy with them. There’s really no comparison to actually getting to use a pair of skis to determine whether they will work for your skill level and style.
Looking at the above posts, I tend to come off as an Elan booster. I’m not. I ski on quite a few different brands of skis – each wonderful in its own way. My present quiver of lift area skis includes Elan, Atomic, Salomon, and Rossignol, and these are by no means the only good skis out there.
It’s just that once in a while something comes along that is particularly good at its job: Nordheim’s sidecut skis and root-cable heel straps; Rudolph Lettner’s metal edges; Marius Eriksen’s (Stein’s dad) Kandahar bindings; Hjalmer “Hvoom with Hvam” Hvam’s release bindings; the splitkein lamination process; P-tex plastic bases; Howard Head’s metal skis; Marker’s step-in bindings; Fred Langendorf’s fiberglass skis (I used to ski on his Toni Sailer model!); composite wrapped cores in Dynamic’s VR-17 and Rossignol’s Strato; Elans’s shaped / parabolic / hourglass SCX.
When you move from whatever you are used to, to a ski that is advancing the industry, the feedback is immediate. You ski better! It feels wonderful! That’s the sort of response from intermediate skiers that is being triggered by Elan’s speed wave skis.
A good ski should not flex torsionally (from side to side – like wringing out a towel). If it does, then it will not hold its edge on scraped hardpack and ice. A good ski should flex longitudinally (up and down – like a guitar string being plucked) so that as you get up on edge, it will describe an arc which you follow through like a line runner as you turn (but of course it should not over-flex and bottom out). A longstanding problem has been that it is very difficult to build a ski that is torsionally stiff but longitudinally flexible.
With race skis, it is no big deal – just make the whole thing stiff and leave it to the flying elephant to force the longitudinal flex. With recreational skis, however, it is one heck of a problem, for intermediate skiers simply do not go fast enough to put enough force on the ski to make it flex longitudinally, unless the ski is so flexible overall that it also flexes torsionally – making it crap for holding an edge on hardpack, scraped surface, or ice.
What Elan has done with its speed wave skis, is made a significant advance in reducing torsional flex while preserving longitudinal flex in generally soft intermediate skis. That means that you will get the ice grabbing performance of a torsionally stiffer ski without your having to go fast to make it flex longitudinally. Elan has done this by playing with the composite that wraps the core, forming it into a corrugated shape, rather than a flat shape. The ridges of the corrugation can flex easily in one direction (longitudinally), but do not flex in the tangential direction (torsionally). You can try this with a sheet of paper. Fold it back and forth on itself, like a fan or an accordion, from top to bottom, so that it is corrugated. You can easily flex it when holding it from top to bottom, but you cannot flex it when holding it from side to side – that’s the primary benefit of this new design, and it will rock your world if you are an intermediate skier who likes to carve smooth turns on less than perfect snow. Another benefit of the corrugation is that when it is flexed longitudinally, the corrugations are forced closer together. Stuffing more stuff into the same area creates resistance, so as you turn more, and the ski flexes longitudinally more, it will stiffen up longitudinally, helping it keep a nice arc rather than bottoming out. Finally, at the end of your turn, there will be a lot of corrugations crying out “I’m squooshed (a technical term, don’t cha know)! Let me be free!” When you finish your turn all this energy will let loose and pop you up, helping you unweight and snap into the next turn. (Interestingly enough, this is how my telemark boots work – the uppers of the boot are corrugated, which lets me lift my heel without the boot twisting.)
All in all, this is a big step forward in ski technology. You won’t hear much about speed wave, for it is not something that will help the flying elephants much, but for intermediate cruisers, it will make skiing a lot more fun, particularly on the frozen crap that masquerades as snow in the east. Elan’s speed wave skis will help you carve turns on intermediate slopes, just when the going gets difficult.
Ditto on the demos. The more different skis you try, the better the odds that you will find something that works just right for you. Most ski shops have demo days, and most will either offer a variety of skis for rental, or will let you demo on non-demo days (e.g. free rentals) if you will eventually be purchasing from them.
Of course once you find that perfect ski (and you will), your spouse, kids and job will fade in the mist. Before you know it, you will be travelling about and either sleeping in your ski box or being taken in for the night by chalet owners with hot tubs. Skiing is such a tragic sport. Sniff.
Muffin, you’re a font of skiing knowledge! You make a really persuasive argument for the Speedwave skis. They’re a little more than I was prepared to pay (about $500 for the Speedwave 8 at this point), but this sounds like one of those times when it probably does pay to pay more. And I’d probably be well served by waiting to see if the price comes down over the summer, or if a used pair comes up on eBay. Skiing season is over for me this year anyway. By the way, if I buy a used pair with the bindings already mounted, remounting them means redrilling, and plugging the original holes, no?
And if you’ll allow me a bonus question, do you have recommendations on boots?
If the ski has an integrated binding, then odds are that it will be sold with the binding. The Elan Speed Wave skis all have integrated bindings (and I curse them for that). If the ski has an integrated binding track in it, but no binding, you would probably be best to pass on the ski unless you are certain you can get the rest of the integrated binding for that particular brand.
If the ski does not have an integrated binding, then the odds are that it will have an internationally standard positioned and sized set of mounting nuts in it, so that all you have to do is bolt in your new bindings into those holes (even the thread sizes are standardized now).
If, by odd chance, the nuts in the skis do not line up with the bolts from your bindings, then yes, plug the old holes with plastic bullets, drill new holes (put tape on the drill to alert you before you drill holes through the bases), and screw in helicoil screw inserts into which you then screw in the binding Snowboard & Ski Binding Tools | Tognar Ski Tools Drop in some wood glue before you screw anything into your ski. Note that the positioning of the boot is critical to the performance of the ski – usually the front part of the ball of your foot should be directly over the true chord centre (which is not half the length of the ski). Fortunately, most skis will have a line that you can match up with a mark that is on the midpoint of most boots, so you don’t have to figure out where the chord centre is and where the front of the ball of your foot is.
That’s not the sort of thing you want to get into unless you are very accurate and very patient – if you end up having to make this sort of installation, you’d be best off to take the skis and bindings to a ski shop that has a template that it can use to drill the holes. Best to just check to see that the skis and bindings can mate before you purchase them.
(By the way, custom mountings are the bane of my existence. I prefer to telemark ski, and I use full release bindings. The bindings don’t flex, but the skis flex, leaving me with the choice of breaking a lot of bindings due to metal fatigue, or losing the tremendously important flex characteristics of the ski. My solution was to build risers that run the length of the bindings and do not flex, but only come into contact with the ski for 3.5 inches. That gives me amazing angulation and leverage, tremendous flexing of the ski, but no more broken bindings! Yay! The only problem is that it takes me a couple of hours to carve the riser and properly mount the binding on it. Sometimes I feel like a gnome in Gepetto’s workshop. Preparing tax returns, tidying the house, and custom mounting bindings are three tasks that I would rather avoid.)
Nope. Just like hiking boots, find something that is very comfortable, fits snugly, and has no pressure points. If the boot has pressure points or is generally too tight, you will be in misery and be unable to ski after a short time. If the boot does not fit snugly, you will not have the fine control that is needed to communicate your intentions to the skis.
Every brand uses different lasts, so some brands will be a good fit while others will be horrid for one person, but the opposite for another person. Try on a lot of different boots before you make a purchase, and try to arrange for on-hill boot tests, just as you would for skis, for it is really difficult to know if a boot fits well unless you ski in it for a while.
For intermediate skiing, don’t get anything too stiff. Part of turning includes pressing the lower shin forward against the front of the boot, so just like your skis, you should not get something that will offer too much resistance relative to the moderate forces you will be using on intermediate runs (and when you move on up to the blacks, get stiffer skis and stiffer boots). Expect the foam liners to flatten down over time, so start with something snug but not tight while you are wearing thin socks, and then after a few months, expect to have to wear thicker socks or a second pair of socks. Custom liners (heat formed around your foot) are nice but not necessary for intermediate cruising. For second hand boots, be certain that the corners and bases at the toe and heel are not overly worn, for that will affect the ability of the boot to stay in the binding, and to release properly. When it comes to second hand liners, Sink the Stink will be your new best friend http://www.sinkthestink.com/ If, despite your best efforts, you end up with a pressure point, you can carve away the foam, put pads on yourself around the pressure point, or use a heat gun to deform the boot shell, but hopefully you won’t have to go there if you spend enough time trying different boots before you purchase.
If you get cold feet (some folks do, some folks don’t), battery operated foot warmers (they do not come with the boots) are a godsend – well worth the price given that they help you stay on the slopes rather than wasting your lift ticket money sitting inside warming those sickly white nubbins that used to be your toes.
To help keep warm feet, don’t do up your boots tightly (particularly the top buckle and strap at the cuff) until you have skied for at least half an hour, and even then loosen them before going up the lift, change your socks regularly throughout the day, and thoroughly dry your liners each night (blowing air into them with a fan overnight does a good job).
If you are female (sorry, I don’t know – I’m male, btw), purchase a women’s boot. Women’s calves tend to drop down a bit lower then men’s, so the shape of the cuff and the liner in a women’s boot leaves a bit of extra room for the bottom of the calf. An otherwise properly fitting men’s boot would put a pressure point on the base of a woman’s calf.
