It's been quiet here, so maybe a story about when skiing isn't exactly totally pleasant ... but PMTS comes to the rescue?
Early NE conditions are unlike the west. Here, because the trails aren't debris-filled with the odd boulder or stump they tend to open with marginal snow depths ... say 8 or so inches. But that doesn't mean there aren't challenges like frequent water bars ... or for that matter open water. So it was the natural snow trails at Bretton Woods opened with (a) about 6 inches of settled snow, followed by (b) 8 or so fresh powder that was tracked by a motley group of boarders and skiers to create an irregular pattern but yet not fully cut up, followed by (c) 30 mph winds that pretty much packed that, followed by (d) another 4 or so and then (e) ski this during another storm with flat light, some wind, and fog.
Ah, New England.
First tried out the i.Speed SS, but that proved a bit too stiff (actually). Normally the stiffer ski would plow thru powder mounds, but these mounds were not giving in. So the crazy quilt was directing the skis all over the place. So ... I got out the Skis That Shall Not Be Named because they are not only wider, but somewhat softer and more compliant.
Typically I use a pretty straight forward tail-lifting phantom move to go through shallow crud, but that wasn't working very well as you went from wind-blown powder, to a water bar, to a slick spot, etc. What I found that did work was more or less a weighted release, followed by the tail-up phantom initiated right at neutral.
My theory is you have to have full weight on the snow to keep the ski going in the direction you want. The regular phantom of course transfers full weight, but during that time the unweighted ski and to a certain extent the old stance was now free to be beaten around by conditions. The weighted release kept total command of the ski on the snow and permitted transition to the new ski with little opportunity for misfortune.
The fact that this worked with relative ease further demonstrates the exhausting futility of the up-move system.
So we went from a high of zero on Friday, to 40-something on Sunday, back to a low of -8 today. Ah, New England!