Who has the oldest skis still in use.

Binned the old ones :shock:

Old skis are far better!

Two years ago, in my late forties, I bought a pair of 15-year old Elan 'Procarve' skis plus boots in an Oxfam (thrift) shop, I think they charged me about 30 pounds for the kit. Learned to ski, after a fashion.

Last week, starting my third winter skiing, I had the skis serviced and acquired some new Salomon (downhill/touring) boots.

The skis are 180cm, narrow, and rather hard, so although they feel quite stable, they slide sideways if I try to go down a steep icy slope too slowly. But I took them to a long (and wide but slightly icy) red run at Kuhtai this week, and after an initial loss of confidence, got down several times reasonably quickly and well-controlled, and had a lot of fun.

So what is wrong? Not that I am qualified to judge. But these skis let me know very quickly when I am off balance (tail of the mountain ski digs in), and are tricky to keep parallel.

That is what is so good about them. Whereas modern, more manageaable, skis (according to TV discussions in Austria) may be one of the reasons why so many people now are skiing at speeds beyond their abilities, and causing far more accidents than in the past (only this week a Russian visitor skidded off a blue slope into a tree and was killed).

If it is true that I have been forced to learn gradually, and increase speed more gradually, but possibly better, and with less risk to others, than would be the case on modern skis, then old skis can only be a good thing??? I think I should have started on softer skis, but otherwise I am very happy with them. Far better than the cheap modern skis offered me by the rental copnany in Sierra Nevada, Spain. Old-style skis should be compulsory for beginners... :lol:

Innsbrucker, whilst I applaud your persistence with learning on old skis, it might be a problem if you want something better, as you will need to adapt to the new shape of ski.
Anyway, if we are talking skinny skis, yours are a bit on the short side, I just chucked mine away 3 weeks ago. They were 190's, and I'm 164cm :D

I'm not sure I've seen any Salomon touring boots yet. Which model did you go for?

Boots are Salomon Verse 7.0. The shop had none on display, but when I aksed for combi touring boots he pulled them out of the back and did a special price on the grounds they were 'last year's.' He explained that pure touring boots have 'give' at the ankle both forwards and backwards, but combi boots, with the switch in tourhing position, have give only backwards.

I can always change technique, I suppose. Probably should be able to ski with variety of technique. But I have not tried. At present loads of practice seems to be the key to getting closer to where the locals are, i.e. making it second nature to be very comfortable on skis and knowing what to do and how to stay safe, regardless of the equipment or conditions.

The idea that modern skis encourage people to overestimate their ability, and ski too fast, if it is true, is a serious issue.

Note that BASI now demand that some free skiing is carried out on straightish skis.

Took 3 pairs of skis up to Braemar, one of which were Aluglas, mmm 1972. In the event, the snow was too good to waste.

People have always over-estimated their ski ability; whether on long, straight skis or on modern, shaped carvers!

Innsbrucker wrote:Boots are Salomon Verse 7.0. The shop had none on display, but when I aksed for combi touring boots he pulled them out of the back and did a special price on the grounds they were 'last year's.' He explained that pure touring boots have 'give' at the ankle both forwards and backwards, but combi boots, with the switch in tourhing position, have give only backwards.

Touring boots have a bit more going on than that, vibram soles, crampon compatible amongst other things. Probably the biggest difference is the sole though, your boots will have a DIN ISO sole compatible with all DIN alpine bindings, a touring boot has a rockered sole and won't work properly in a DIN binding, the rocker prevents contact with the AFD so the release doesn't work. Hybrid bindings like Fritschi let you adjust the AFD enough to take either an alpine sole or a touring one.

A boot like the Salomon Verse 7.0 is pretty soft and would drop in a fritschi binding without problem, matched with the right ski it would be fairly reasonable to tour with compared to a ultra stiff race boot for example. In fact, IIRC, quite a well known back country skier from the US, Andrew Maclean, uses something similar but hacked around in some way I don't recall.

Hybrid touring and downhill boots do exist, like the Garmont Endorphin for example, they achieve this by having an interchangeable sole you can pop on and off. It's the other end of the spectrum typically though in that they're pretty much all very stiff. How that works depends on the skier and the skis, I use three sorts of Garmont boots, one pretty stiff and the other two pretty soft with three pairs of Black Diamond skis, two stiff and one soft, all different bindings but as much as I can switch boot and ski around you can feel huger differences in different combinations.

Salomon and others had a few softer or laced boots like that, and the flex is probably very comparable with the older touring boots, but they struggled to sell many I believe. Odd really, as it's not a bad idea.

Thanks for explanation, it is useful.

I picked combi boots because gf has Salomon combi boots (Ellipse 10.0, not laced, unlike mine which have both lacing and latches) with bindings with heel release (Titanal 3), and is very happy with them, says they work fine for general purpose skiing and one-day touring.

Also she said there is not a lot of point in me getting expensive race boots without being far more advanced than I am, and that they might even be a problem and require a change in technique because every tiny movement would feed through to the skis.