Regional On-Snow Demo

Today was our regional on-snow demo. It’s an excellent chance to go from model to model to see how comparable models perform versus each other.

I spent the night at a hotel in Red Wing MN. Waking up to a -5 with a feels like of -23, I didn’t have the highest expectations for the day. My heated socks from Boot Doc and Helly Hansen merino base layers were extremely appreciated.

It was typical Midwestern conditions, hard snow and overcast light. I decided to start out with lower 90 mm underfoot skis since those are the most requested models recently. There is really no substitute for a narrow wasted ski when you ride in the Midwest, but people seem to gravitate to wider skis for the added flotation if they were to encounter fresh snow. I was pleasantly surprised how well most of them handled the harder snow with the ability to get the skis to turn quickly despite their wider profiles.

As the day went on, the sun decided to come out and the snow softened even with the colder temperatures. I started to ride the wider skis. I usually don’t recommend owning a ski wider than 95mm underfoot if you mostly ski in the Midwest or stay on groomed runs when you ski in the mountains, but many people only ride at Bohemia and/or in the Rockies. I’d consider myself a pretty darn good skier and actually was surprised to find 2 skis that I couldn’t even give a fair opinion of because they were too much ski for the terrain (Salomon Stance 102 and Rossignol Sender Ti)

All in all, it was a great day and I’m excited for quite a few new models that will be hitting our showroom floor for winter 20/21.