SnowSlider - Blogging From the mountains by ise

100% translates to 30km of piste and 7 lifts, in reality there’s only 4 lifts of interest. The main access funicular, a couple of t-bars and the top téléphérique. The top téléphérique is a bit prone to wind which is why I’d checked as it accesses the best run in the station, a longish black which is pretty much unprepared all the way and is really more of an itinerary. It was skiing well today, some big bumps at the exit of the lift to warm up the first run stiff muscles, into a steep bump field then dropping steeply through some more huge bumps.

Last time I was at Moléson I was skiing on someone elses skis, a pair of Stormriders from Stöckli and today I had some skis from Castella-Sports SA of Bulle. The skis were some Lacroix freestyle skis called, if I have it right, iLand, stupidly I didn’t take too much attention or a photograph and these are next years models so there’s nothing whatsoever on the internet about them.

Anyway, they’re a wood core twin tip and they’re very stiff for a freestyle ski, in fact they don’t feel like a freestyle ski to me at all. This is the first Lacroix ski I’ve ever skied and I liked them very much. They were able to slice through the heavy snow with easy and had a great edge hold onto the harder pack, obviously they have a fairly large turn radius, by feel I’d say 20m or so, but it’s easy to initiate turning and the response is positive even at speed. In fact, at speed they’re quite impressive, as a stiff ski they don’t start flapping around even cutting through chopped up and heavy wet snow.