Often, when I’m on my Head Rev 85’s, I’ve got about the skinniest skis in the lift lines at Stevens. We get a lot of snow, and while it’s not always fresh untracked, there’s a lot of chop and crud. So those days I take out my Rev 105’s.
I’ve also got a Stockli 65mm wide carver, but honesty haven’t skied them in a couple of years. There’s just no need, haven’t have hardpack/ice conditions where it hasn’t snowed for a month, in several years.
While my Rev’s are, what, 5 years old now, they’ll at least make it through this season. My plan is to replace them both with a Renoun Z90. I was initially thinking of replacing the Rev 105 with a similar size ski, maybe a Kore 105, or a Ranger 108 or Volkl 100Eight, but I’m thinking now what I really want/need is an ON3P Billygoat, for what I want a ski to do that I do not currently have. My reasoning is that I want a ski that can both be a powder ski, and a good crud and chop ski, with the conditions I see in the PNW. Once I reached this conclusion, then I second-guessed myself based on comments from people here and elsewhere that I don’t need a ski that wide. Then I return to what I felt when I demoed a bunch of different skis, in the conditions I would use a new pair for, and come back to my original conclusion. It’s not easy to find a ski that’s both nimble and easy to turn, as well as stable and crud-busting. Actually I would call it crud-finessing. That fact that the Billygoat is as wide as it is (116) is incidental.
Also, if I have a 90 and a 116, it just makes it really easy to decided which ski to use on a given day. Honestly, I don’t know how people with an extensive multi-ski quiver people figure out what to ski.