Aight! Got another AM sneak attack in on the DP 120 Lotus 190cm Flex 2.
Gawd is this a bad bad pair of boards! Shithot fun. I don't have a lot to add, but here's a couple thoughts...
This past weekend I was at the Str8line camp at Snowbird and Alta. The first two days were spent on hardpack and windbuff, getting my technique thrashed and then rebuilt properly. Sunday and Monday the payoff came, and a nice wet storm came in and laid down around a foot of thick, creamy pow. I spent all four days on the one pair of skis I brought - 190cm Gotamas.
Today, I hit the tail end of the same storm here in CO, at Breckenridge. 6 inches of fluffy new snow overnight, and despite the fact that I intended to bring out the DP 120s only for the big days, I figured it wouldn't hurt to push them around again in variable snow.
First run, boots unbuckled, top to bottom on the super smooth Peak 8 groomer which had been covered by the new snow. OoooooOOooh! Sublime. The float on these babies is awesome! But were they really significantly better than the Goats would have felt in the same? Honestly? Hard to say. They were certainly as FUN, and maybe a little more surfy feeling. So, it was on to more interesting terrain.
Up the T-bar to Horseshoe Bowl. Light SW winds loaded parts of the bowl nicely, and after getting off the top, I tucked back in to the left under the ridgeline to grab the good stuff. Focusing on all the teachings of the past weekend, I pushed my hands forward into an aggressive body position, widened my stance slightly, and dropped into the soft bumps at the top. Bump, bump, bump, rail, rail, smear, carve, and I'm down to the shoulder above the gut of the bowl.
Affirmation #1: In any kind of moderately soft snow surface, the Lotus 120s are just as easy to ski and make quick turns and short radius cuts as the boards in the 100mm underfoot range. The super light swing weight, high torsional stiffness underfoot, and progressive tip flex allow this huge ski to manage variable terrain very well for the girth.
Now I'm standing on the low shoulder, with 500 vertical of reasonably pitched pow below me. It's far from bottomless - when I drop in, I do scrape - but these float me more than a smaller ski would. When I do hit bottom, the mild sidecut, torsional stiffness, and pintailed and half-twinned tail shape allow me to release the turns easily without getting thrown off by the transition from pow to hardpack and back.
Affirmation #2: I don't think that the 120s handled the pow on crust any better than the Goats, but they certainly didn't handle it any worse, and when I DIDN'T hit bottom, there's no question the ride was softer.
Four turns down the barely noticeable sub-ridge running down into the bowl, and I spot a launching pad another 100 feet ahead. The little 5-10 foot rock that everyone hits in the middle of the bowl has a perfectly packed take off, and only one set of tracks. So much for warm up runs. I slash another couple turns, then hit the throttle. Fuck it, let's take this with some speed! Final turn, line it up, hands forward, let the boards run. I come FLYING off the little hit, far faster than I'm usually prone to taking even small airs (I'm kind of a pussy about hucking sometimes), sail through the air, and rocket out the bottom of the bowl. I barely notice the landing.
