Alright, so I now have 55k' of earned turns on my Wootests, and here's my review. TL;DR outstanding quiver ski, not a quiver-of-one.
They are 179cm, 3 flex, UL/carbon, maple veneer and weigh about 1650g/ski. Mounted on the line with ATK Trofeo (BD Helio 145) with 10 RV, skiing with the o.g. yellow Fischer Carbon Travers boots. I've only taken them touring, obviously no resort use for this setup. Terrain skied goes from meadow skipping to glades to couloirs up to 40º+, conditions go from truly bottomless 3' pow to regular Wasatch blower to settled pow to mank to breakable crust to firm, most of the gamut except no heavy wet slop yet. I have also detuned the FUCK out of the entire skis, they're nearly dull enough to be a kid's toy.
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In 3d snow these kill it. It doesn't take much for them to float up, 2-3" is enough, and it's trivial to make big fast sweeping turns or small powder-farmer style turns. Dumping speed is no problem, and despite hand flexing pretty stiff by my standards, they aren't too much in tight places like narrow hiking trail exits, trees or chutes. Given the extra 1lb/ski over my regular powder touring skis I expected to use these sparingly, but these have really taken over, and 12 of the last 16 days I've picked them out. In suuuuuuper deep snow, as in 3' of unsettled blower, unsurprisingly it's still not enough ski (what would be?) but in all ordinary powder circumstances they're excellent and confidence-inspiring. In tracked out soft stuff they're also great, you can kinda just throw the ski into the mush and trust it not to deflect. The shape is really nice there. Basically, in the conditions that you would choose a ski like this, they are pretty close to a 10/10 in my book. I rapidly found myself skiing them more and more.
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BUT then I found the downside...
In 2d snow, they are real bad. In fact I hate them in 2d snow. I know it's not a 2d snow ski, so I can't really dock them any points for this, but they are very weird and NOT confidence inspiring. They're very easy to turn, so making jump-turn style turns in steep terrain is no problem, but it takes more work to get them on edge than I'd like and they wash out very easily, I think due to the relative similarity in tip/waist/tail widths? Maybe all the tail rocker? (this is the only ski I have with any appreciable tail rocker, I almost always go flat tail or "stealth rocker" or whatnot) Either way... I don't mind skiing them out packed out hiking trails / roads when those are the exits, but in real skiing terrain (chutes etc) with firm conditions these are NOT fun. Which kinda sucks, because if there's a crust I am not sure will be breakable or not, I am inclined not to take these because skiing 40º+ on firm chalk in a narrow rock-lined chute (that I expected to be softer) with them really sucked this morning. A descent that would not have raised my heart rate at all with my 1250g couloir skis required much more concentration and much less smiling than I am used to. These won't see a day of corn either... it's way too easy to catch the inside edge of your back ski. They're shaped such that in mellower 2d terrain the skis want to just run flat, and this is one of the weak points. I kinda think, maybe if I sharpened the edges I'd like them better in firm, but then this would likely also exacerbate the catchiness on flatter stuff as well so... I dunno. I can ski these harder and faster in chopped up powder than on a packed down road (that serves as an exit to my favorite zone and which I have skied literally hundreds of times and normally haul ass down), which feels weird.
So anyway, I figured I'd ski these maybe 15 or 20 of ~125 days a year in the bc on one-and-done dawn patrols or super duper deep days only, and I am pleasantly surprised because it seems like these will see virtually every sub-10k' powder day henceforth, and maybe even a few 10k' powder days. I can ski them really hard/fast compared to even my inbounds skis, and they're really a lot of fun, especially in fresh powder (duh). They're also WAY more forgiving, due to both the shape and the mass, than my lighter skis in chopped up / weird 3d snow. But they're definitely not a one-ski touring quiver. If 2d is on the menu, I'm reaching for something else.
