Quote:
Originally Posted by freeweed
165s? Short?? Wow. I'm your height and I've been skiing on 145 parabolics lately (ski shops usually suggest a 155). The control you have on modern parabolics (as someone else pointed out) is insane, and wearing a slightly shorter ski - pure heaven.
I avoided skiing for many years due to my memories of how terrible I was on the old style of alpine ski. After someone first stapped a pair of parabolics on me, it feels like I've been doing this since I was 5!
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My skis are the old-fashioned
straight kind. I've been so used to my skis because as I said, they've been rather stable at higher speeds, and I hear most straight skis this short aren't nearly as forgiving for someone my height. Not to mention that I also have very strong thigh and calf muscles. I learned to ski pretty quickly despite having not really learned to do so until I was around 20. By the way, I'm able to take on most black diamond runs, and even some double black diamond ones.
I don't doubt the ease of using parabolic skis at all, and I did once rent a pair a few years ago. They were okay. They took a little getting used to for me, but pretty shitty skiiing conditions at Marmot at the time didn't help me at all. So, in the end, I felt that I wasn't any better in them compared to my straight skis, and so I was turned off at the thought of getting a new pair of parabolics.
Now that I think about it, I'm quite sure I would've become a lot better used to parabolic skis and even become a convert, if I'd been able to rent them longer (I only had them for half a day and it was the day of my ski trip), and if there'd been more snow and less rock and ice.
In fact, they're very likely to be the kind of skis I'll get, probably within a couple of years or so. After all, my present skis obviously aren't going to last forever!