Tag Archives: Worth Skis

Cold Smoke

The Jay Cloud was in full effect and we hit the road good and early for first chair on Saturday morning. We scored first tracks on deliverance and found face-shots aplenty throughout the rest of the day. With a few inches of refresher, Sunday was in nearly as good condition as Saturday with well over a foot of fresh over the entire weekend following roughly four feet during the previous week. For day two we hit Big Jay, then made a slightly ill informed attempt at Gilpin, across the street from The Dip. The results…well see for yourself!

Photo Credit: Rob Fox

Gear List (click links for more product info):

Worth Skis: For the Consummate New England Skier

This past weekend, Rob, Ziehl and I made our way back up north on our perpetual quest for soft turns and steep lines. Our first stop was Smuggs which might have been decent were it not for the bullet proof crust that had been whipped up by the wind and mixed precip… After throwing in the towel at the resort, sidecountry, and backcountry, we refueled and set our sights on Jay in hopes that it’s higher latitudes and prevailing weather patterns would… well, prevail. We rolled in around 10 AM, mustered as much enthusiasm as we could, geared up and hit the Bonaventure Quad. From the lift we got a good look at the scratchy conditions: exposed water bars, rocks, dirt… As we got up the mountain things got better – there was certainly plenty of decent skiing to be done at higher elevations but all of it would be firm: a good day for all-mountain skis.

As luck would have it, Rob had recently scored a pair of pre-production, locally engineered, boutique, dare-I-say-quiver-of-one all-mountain sticks: the Daily Bread by Worth Skis. If you live in New England and can only afford one pair of skis, this is probably the one to get. It features a modern geometry, with just enough early rise to keep your tips above the surface in variable conditions, just enough width to float in light pow, and a full sandwich construction and 21m radius so that you can rip GS turns all the way back to the lift. Oh, it’s light enough to tour on, too. Keep your eyes peeled for the full line of these New England specialists to go into full production some time in the upcoming years.

Check out Rob doing some beta-testing (you gotta zoom these in – click to enlarge):

Check out those angles…

Rob lays ’em over like a new pair of race stock GS 12s…

Gear List (click links for more info):

Making the best of the weather

If you live in a place with perpetually very hard snow you should think about moving to a nicer climate, but not to Utah, please.” -Bruce Tremper, in Staying Alive

In spite of the rain in NE this past week, Rob, Sweeney and I were determined to find some decent skiing. We were at Smuggs on Saturday, where it was definitely a day to focus on the touring rather than the skiing. We bootpacked a mile or so in the area, where the rain crust made any potential runs look a little sketchy. I tested the diagonal carry of my REI Double Diamond pack, which I found works well for getting the skis on the pack quickly, but for excursions of any length I much prefer the A-frame carry. The diagonal straps allow the skis to hang a little too far off behind the pack.

In the afternoon we went on a brief skin, mostly to stretch our legs. It turns out having skins correctly cut for your skis makes a huge difference.

Sweeney ahead on the skin track

We passed a few deer and rabbit tracks on the ascent through some calm low angle woods. There wasn’t much snow so skiing down our skin track was pretty interesting.

We crossed lots of animal prints

Sunday, we decided to try Jay Peak, since Mt. Washington was reporting up to 80 mph winds. We skied the tracked trees all day and had a blast. Rob was on his new pair of Worth Daily Breads, which he let me try last weekend at Wildcat. Worth Skis is an up and coming ski manufacturer that designed a line of East Coast specific backcountry skis. I took Rob’s pair for a spin on some groomers where it gripped like a dream in variable snow. I felt comfortable making GS speed turns, and really enjoyed the rebound they delivered. I could swing around the 185s in the bumps as well. Rob got the stiffer version with the Power Core which I found was maybe a little too much ski for me when making tighter turns, but I bet I’d like the softer version.

Update: Brian put up a brief TR with photos of Rob laying it over on his Worth Skis.

Right now, I’ve got my nose buried in Avy safety books. Let’s hope the next few weeks hold some big storms for us.