Line Opus: A Review
I've read a whole bunch of non-specific hype about this ski and seen a few semi-useful videos, so I figured that being 6 days deep into my relationship with this ski I would share my thoughts for anyone else with the opus on their radar. I'm a big guy who's not always that into turning a lot, so this ski is a major departure for me.
Me: 6'2", 215. SLC via CO with plans to evacuate back to CO, at least one big trip a year (BC, heli, etc). half touring - half resort, prefer to walk around when I can.
Skis I've really Liked:
- 186 Line prophet 130 09-10 edition - My favorite resort pow ski. ever. Flex, sidecut, camber, everything = perfect. I paid extra to have these heli'd into the Selkirks with me last year so I could have them for pillows/mini-golf, fucking love them
- 190 DPS 120 hybrid - Backcountry pow ski. Any shape turn you want, any speed you want. huge tip rocker= resort suck for me. With a pair of Plum guides: ultra-touring slayage.
- 195 Line Mothership - Best iteration of the XXL etc "mach fucking chicken" type ski. be ready to hold on to something.
- Armada ANT - lots of camber, very stable, rips in anything less than 4-6 inches resort-new. Too stiff and too much camber for any more snow than that, where it became a tail-gun vs tip-diving death machine.
- 18? Head mad trix mojo, 2-snake topsheet edition: center mount, nimble, poppy, fun. be prepared to stuff your tips and go over the bars in deep snow
My Opuses: 185, Plum Guides, mounted on the line (which I believe is -2cm from true center).
Initial off-snow impressions: Factory line is very much a center mount, lots of tail, not much tip. Subtley complex shape, kind of hard to wrap your mind around the early taper in relation to the rocker. Medium tip rocker, modest tail rocker, modest cambre underfoot. Hand flex seems soft, but if you pay attention it's all in the very tip and tail. They're stiffer than you think underfoot if you just flex the middle. Graphic is dope.
Conditions ski'd: marginal (Ullr is passed out on a couch somewhere this year?). 6 total days, 3 in bounds and 3 out. Best = 6-8 fresh walking around. Worst: 0" and warm temps 8 days running.
On-Snow impressions: Versatile. Amazingly versatile. The first thing that really hit me is how balanced a stance the shape/mount favors. These things are made for a very neutral skiing position, and as such are very responsive when you pressure the tips or sit back on the tails. This balance combined with the soft flex in the tips transistioning to stiff underfoot makes for a pretty crazy blend of nimbleness and stability. When you ski forward and pressure the tips in soft snow, the flex in the tips initiates a very tight turn, and the ski comes around so fast that they're really nimble in tight places. At the same time, in more wide-open soft snow, a more neutral stance brings the stiffness underfoot to bear, and the soft flex up front keeps the tips planing while you rail faster longer turns. Even with such a short tip given the center-mount, they float at low speeds while also managing to be stable enough to let you push them at faster speeds. I've had any number of skis that are either soft and super-floaty at low speeds but get overwhelmed at high speeds or are stiff and clunky at low speeds but come alive at mid to high speeds. The Opus pretty much kills it from 0-60 in the deep and lets you ski it very nimbley up front or more wide open from the middle in a way that makes it a shit-ton of fun.
The same thing is pretty much true in bounds, where the funny shape comes into play. Even with the tip and tail rocker, they still have a pretty long effective edge, and since the rocker is fairly moderate, you don't have to lean them over at extreme angles to put all of that edge on the snow. The ski seems to gets stiff in the front pretty close to where the sidecut contact starts, so even at high speeds in chopped up chunder, the ski rails on edge. Also, since you're standing right in the middle of the sidecut with not-a-ton of tip, they're really quick edge to edge and easy to throw around.
py backcountry snow conditions this year have also been pretty intresting on this ski, which I specifically bought to fill the "more nimble and easier to ski on a marginal conditions touring day" spot in my quiver. Specifically, they're still fun in hard conditions (the 120 is decidedly not in my experience), and they don't hook up in crusty conditions. This last part is a big one for me, as a lot of the newer generation big-rocker, traditional sidecut skis kill me when they hook up all over the place on crust.
The same traits that make it so nimble do come with a speed limit though, and definitely require you to stay balanced enough that you may be punished for getting sloppy. I have a tendency to get lazy and straightliningly mach-schnell my way through the runout on chopped up resort days, and these are not as stoked about that type of behavior as something like the 130 is. If you were on little cloud on friday watching as I harrowingly watched my non-braked ski rocket down the hill after tomahawking x3, you know what i'm talking about. Still, I can set them on edge in a super-G type turn and they go back to railing at anything that's sub-warp speed. The same is true in deep snow, and I've also managed to stuff a tip being too far up front at mach speed after a long touring day when I was getting sloppy. Hard to fault the ski on that one.
Overall impressions: The Opus is an awesome ski, and is kind of making me feel guilty for owning many other pairs of skis. It's fun, playful, and will surprise you with it's stability. It favors a very balanced stance, and will reward you with a huge performance range if you can stay centered and drive it. It floats like a champ. If you want to straightline everything and sit in the back seat, it is not your ski. All in all, it would probably be the perfect one-ski-quiver for a western skier, and with the Plums, you could have a pretty dope do-everything in bounds and out setup. Score another point for Line and Eric Pollard, both of which are pretty much killing it right now.
Last edited by good4nothing; 12-25-2011 at 03:55 AM.
No, the real point is, I don't give a damn
- Carl
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