Ski Review: 2016 Scott Black Majic, 184cm

[charles martel]

I recently purchased some Scott Black Majic skis, 184cm, from Ski Essentials through Ebay. $224. I am 5'10", 192 lbs.

Because of elder care issues, I am pretty much stuck in the Finger Lakes region these days and have to ski at Bristol Mountain. The past couple of years I was able to get a non-holiday pass to Whiteface Mountain in Lake Placid. A fun place.

If I had my choice, and I still had these my older skis, I would probably be using Dynastar Legend Pros or the older, silver-colored, Stockli Stormrider DPs. But, imagining that I could find them again, I sold them.

Anyway, I took a friend's advice and got a skinny a waisted ski. I realized that I'm pretty familiar with that, since I go out quite a bit on long GS boards. GSs boards are also pretty versatile. They're not good for deep powder or zipper line moguls, but you can make them do in a pinch for everything, and on ice, and even skied up crud at the end of the day, they work really well. Maybe not quite as well as the Stormriders or the Legend Pros for those crud conditions, but pretty good, nonetheless.

So, I got the Black Majic in 184 cm, with an 80 mm waist, and a pretty short turning radius. The company says that they have an adjustable, or I should say, adaptable side cut, so that if you don't tip them too much, they have a longer turning radius and if you tip them a lot they go into a shorter turn radius. Actually I thought that was some marketing bullshit, but it's actually true.

I also got this skinnier waisted ski with a shorter turning radius because I found that big bomber skis didn't do really well in what is happening more and more in this part of the country with the ski conditions. We get a lot of thaw and then freeze, even over a few days, which gives us a really uneven icy surface. This seems to be a weekly cycle now. It's pretty hard to bomb the hill with really large sweeping GS turns or just long banana turns to the bottom on that kind of ice. I decided that I wanted to ski that would do longer turns, as well as shorter swing turns for those crappy conditions or on the weekends when the hill is crowded.

Now, I skied my Back Majic three times so far. The first time it was in the mid-twenties, the next two times it was in single digits. Conditions were actually pretty good. The first time I took them out, everything was groomed really well. The next two times, not so much. The frozen single-digit conditions we're slightly bouncy, but actually a lot of fun and the Black Majic did short and long turns with ease and stability.

According to other reviews, the Black Majic is supposed to have a high-end speed limit, so it's not really like a big GS ski, and it's not really quite quick edge-to-edge, because it has two layers of metal. But I found was that ski is really versatile. The first thing I did with it was take it out into a really short swing turns, feet close together, from top to bottom. It was really easy to do that. And I really was happy, because this is the kind of skiing usually have to do around here on the weekends.

A couple of reviewers said the ski didn't really do really well when you let it out and went flat out. I didn't find that to be the case, as long as you engaged to the ski at the top of the turn. If you're just bombing down the hill and throw the ski sideways, they're going to slide like shit all over the fucking place. But, if you link your turns and make sure to engage the ski at the top, I found I could go really really fast on these skis without any sliding at all.

I also found, for example on the slope called Meteor, I could link fast GS turns down to the mid station area, where they were still blowing a lot of snow, so it was slow down and go through soft uneven snow and even soft bumps with the ski's early rise tip via two-footed turns. This was both essy and, actually, a lot of fun.

In short, this is a very versatile ski that can really do a lot. It can do really fast GS turns on ice, or even bumpy ice, if you remember to engage the ski at the top of the turn. It also does really short swing turns and you can get you through moderate, softer bumps, with a two-footed technique.

It's a keeper, for sure.

Sent from my moto e5 plus using Tapatalk

[charles martel]

Took these out again for some aggressive top to bottom skiing at Bristol Mountain. Really pushed these hard through GS turns all the way down about a dozen runs through groomed, ice and windswept ungroomed with rough frozen underneath. Twp layers of titanal made a difference. The 184 Black Majics with their early rise were in their element the entire time at some serious speed and high edge angles.

I'm glad I got these.

[SB-SV-JH]

Nice! Up until late January and February happened in Utah, I was skiing a lot more this year on skinnier skis. A couple of years ago I vowed to never ski on anything narrower than an 88mm. Well, I got a great deal on a new Volkl RTM 84 last February and then doubled down with a slightly used Blossom White Out (77mm) at the end of last season at a price I couldn't refuse. Both skis work really well on trail and off trail in up to a few inches of loose snow (particularly when you are touching the base for most of the turn), require less effort, and frankly are just more enjoyable in the right context to tip and rip. I probably wouldn't care a lot about the effort issue if I weren't in my mid-50s. Anyway, glad your enjoying them and thanks for the write up.