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Best skis for Ice, Icy Conditions and Very hard packed snow

Doug Briggs

"Douche Bag Local"
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Pick up some short, 110-125cm carving skis. Especially on the 110’s, if you’re back you’ll fall backwards. Cures it fairly quickly. Those skis are fun too.
I use Rossi Cut 130 cm skis with never-evers when I show them how to ski. Direct to parallel.
 

James

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Dec 2, 2015
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I use Rossi Cut 130 cm skis with never-evers when I show them how to ski. Direct to parallel.
Neat.
He needs shorter though to cure back seat. Think being aft on rollerblades. I did one of those half pipe sections for bikes, boards, blades once on rollerblades. First time right on my butt because you don’t get square to the blades when you drop in, but are aft. So the blades shoot out and leave you behind.
 

Rudi Riet

AKA songfta AKA randomduck - a USSS coach, as well
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Just a quick note on the speed stuff: please don't take anything a phone-based tracker gives for speed as canon. These devices are really good at finding locations but they don't have nearly the fine tuning or accuracy of a purpose-built GPS tracking device. This inaccuracy is compounded by where most people store their phones: in a pants pocket or jacket pocket where satellites have a more difficult time triangulating location.

Phone apps are great at figuring out average speeds, for sure, but top speed is much more of an educated guess for these devices. The chances of getting a more accurate number are higher with a proper activity watch (e.g. Garmin, Suunto, Polar) that has the benefit of being better situated to satellites under normal use as well as the fact that it is designed to track activities at speed. The better units even make the proper correction for heading down a slope.

And neither will be as accurate as radar or lidar guns in the end.

Don't get me wrong: I love Ski Tracks and similar apps for showing me where I've skied on a given day. But when I compared the accuracy of Ski Tracks on my phone to the same day recorded on my Garmin fēnix 5 it was night-and-day in terms of accuracy of tracking (and thus more useful for tracking actual speed, if not completely accurate).

Back to the actual topic at hand: the OP would likely be well served by a pair of full race construction "adult combi" skis. An example of this would be the Atomic Redster X9 (not the WB but the original with the 67mm waist). At a 181cm length it has a 16.2m turn radius but the "mullet" sidecut (SL in the front, GS in the back) allows for versatility in turn shapes. That said, it's not the most tolerant ski of sloppy, backseat technique, so...

The Head Supershape series is another good option for the OP, as they can hold well on boilerplate if given the 0.5/3 recommended edge tune.
 

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