short review: 4frnt renegade, EHP, CR; Black crows corvus and ord. BD megawatt

[verbier61]

demo days in verbier, I finally could find a spot out of so many family committments to try some sticks. I've also met Hicks, which was very nice. As you know, he rips.

Day: Sunshine in verb, but no new snow. So the test was on groomed, crust, tracked, ice.... all the bad conditions you can imagine in an overabused resort.

me: 180x82; old lazy fart. I like DPS 105, 112 and 138; rossi S7, S3 and old squads (strange but true); birdos; K2 baker-derived and hardside; dynafit 7summits. I generally do not like most of dynastars, BDs, scotts, armadas, park skis with too much tails.

boots: Scarpa maestrale. They serve my foot very well, walk like a dream, and for the way I ski drive well also tough skis. What else can one ask for? Ah, when on NTN I use TX pro or comp.

I was able to ski about 30 min with each stick. Enough for a first impression, not enough for definitive conclusions.

4frnt EHP (guess 186 or so): first runs of the day. I would have personally drill them 2 cm back, but overall the feeling was really ok. Stable, fast, forgiving, fun, no speed limit, not hooky, tips were not flappin.... I thought "it will be hard to demo something better today.." I was wrong.

4frnt renegade (186?): stellar. Just imagine a ski as stable and trustable at speed as old squads, but much more easy to turn.. At variance with squads, they never sink, and are very fast switching edge to edge. No speed limit, of course. The old driver was the only limit of this ski.

4frnt CR (188): As for the EHP, I would have drilled them 2 cm back, but again the feeling was ok. Lot of fun, very fast in following your thoughts, easy and predictable, no problem at speed but a speed limit can be reached, and tips dance on hard and groomed. Ski short, and are fast on edge to edge.

BD megawatt (188?): like a volvo car, they are lazy but can offer a smooth ride if you like it. They feel heavy, and are not fast on switching edge to edge. I've found a speed limit, and the tips dance soon.

Black crows corvus (186?): heavy and old in concept, with a lot of camber. They're very stable, but no fun, and ask for a lot of control and attention from the driver. I'm no more interested in skis like them... if not maybe in a day with blue ice everywhere...

Black crows orb (168): I've tried these in this short size because of positive reports when used as AT/steep tools. They're a midget version of the corvus: lot of positive camber, muscle attitude, stable but demanding... again, they could be an interesting option if ice the the menu of the day, but they're not light enough for intensive AT and imvho sorta mono-dimensional...

[teosickrider]

The Renegades and EHPs seem interesting. Too bad it's really hard to find and test them in central Switzerland/Italy. Whose test was it Francesco?

[verbier61]

www.ultimatetesttour.com

[Long duc dong]

Nice reviews. I was curious to see the opinion on the BD. I always thought it looked like a nice option if I want a bigger ski than my 186 EHP's.

[verbier61]

imvho megawatts are too lazy to act as a bigger version of the ehp....

[ulty_guy]

Just to chime in as an update to this original Corvus review (this is for the newer iteration which is a bit wider and has a rockered shovel). Yosemite shop in Zermatt is doing a free ski test (outside the normal one) in Zermatt just outside Trockener Steg. The guys there are super nice and understanding, I brought one back w/ a decent scratch on the base (nothing a bit of ptex couldn't sort but not tiny) and they were totally cool about it.

Ski: Black Crows Corvus 183
Me: 5'10" 165 lbs
Conditions: left overs; some pow, plenty of light windcrust

I had been eyeing these up as there are still some deals on last year's model floating about. I had been skiing my own Rossi Experience 98's in a 180 most of the day and got to do a nice long run on these. Overall I have to say that I like them quite a bit with the caveat that I tend to like 'traditional' skis with a bit of rocker thrown in. They tend to lean to a larger, slightly lazy, radius turn if left to their own devices. This isn't a bad thing because it means they can cruise along in chop without getting their feathers ruffled. In light pow they were fun and easy to make short or long tuns as you like. In windcrust they were predicatble (a nice trait in those conditions) and weren't too hooky. On the little amount of piste I tried the edge grip seemed ok but they were slow edge-edge.

All in all, I have to say that they weren't the most energetic things ever, they were kinda like lithium, in a good way.