I have an update. I ended up ordering Evolv100 for my son around mid-December. Unfortunately, by the time when skis and bindings arrived, we did not have enough time to get bindings installed in time for our trip to Utah. In Utah, we had 5 to 6 powder days out of 8, he skied them on his old powder skis.
For reference, until now, he had two pairs of skis: Head i.SL and Head Ethan Too 93. The latter are junior skis, nominally rated as "park and pipe", but in reality they excel everywhere: They have short sidecut radius, hold quite well on icy slopes, work for jumps, work in powder. He grew through several sizes of those. But they do not come in adult sizes.
Regarding his skiing, he was taught by Diana (and a little bit by Harald) between the ages of approximately 8 and 11, and he only knows how to ski the way how they taught him. He also had a couple of 3-5 days sessions with Walter Edberg later on. He is now 15. I reassess his skiing, build him new footbeds, and plate his boots every time he moves to a new size. He skis in the Raptors.
Regarding myself, I started skiing late in my life, acquired too many bad habits, and not very athletic. I took probably in the ballpark of 15 HSS camps over the years, including alignment training, to get rid of bad habits. Despite all this, my son skis better and faster than I do. He never had the bad habits that I had.... And never was taught how to ski in wedge.... And I never allowed a PSIA instructor get anywhere close to him...
Our first opportunity to test
Evolv100 was this weekend on Mt. Bachelor. On the first day, it was cold and windy and icy. On the second day, it was sunny and it started softening a little bit. Both days, off-piste was not skiable (total ice). The Pacific Northwest got multiple feet of snow in a dump around New Year, then immediately after that multiple inches of warm rain, and then all of this froze and there was no snow, except maybe a few inches, through the whole month of January.
Granted, skis with the width of 100 are not designed for skiing icy groomed slopes. In the past, the ability just to get down a groomed run with some level of grace was an excellent mark for powder skis. In the recent years, however, plenty of skis with width of 90-95 were released as all-mountain skis. So, this test was not totally meaningless... sort of...
So, he skied them much of the day on Friday, and the last run of the day on a (a little softer from the sun) snow on Saturday. I rented him demo skis on Saturday, and since he is now in the same boot size as I am, got a chance to ski a little bit with the same skis. But only very little (since it was for him, not for me) and not all of them.
Friday,
Evolv100:
His impressions:
* very bad on ice, very hard to get grip
* very stable at speed
* the faster you go, the livelier they get
my impressions:
* they absolutely do not like twisting and even seem to resist twisting. This is a good sign.
* they require a lot of effort to turn at very slow speed (lift maneuvering).
* They are very PTMS - unforgiving. If one does everything as one should do - full weight transfer, all movements in place, they carve short turns and are responsive. A little sloppiness, kind of relaxed skiing without doing much of anything, and they make one think about skiing on 2x4's.
* Really difficult to ski on ice. Basically, impossible. Not with my skills.
Saturday, demo skis and
Evov100 at the end.
Head e-Titan Supershape (33-84-115, R=17.2). Nothing to "write home about". These are the only skis from the ones he demoed which I got to ski a full run. Our verdict was the same. A solid, well performing, but very boring ski. My old Movement Jam (with a similar geometry) is better. I waited much more from Head. [don't mixed them up with a narrow Supershapes discussed in several recent threads, this is a wider Titan]
Kaestle 96Ti (96 mm, R=18). My son said that these skis are
amazing, some of the best he ever skied. Better than his old skis. Hold well on ice, carve very well, not too stiff, not too soft, can do anything, even ice. He skied with the same angles as on his slaloms skis. He could not get enough of it and did not want to return them.
Solomon Stance 96 (96 mm, R=20). He said, they were not bad, but he was not too excited about them, either. Kind of neutral.
Evolv100 again, at the end of the day: He did one final run and said, they are not bad compared to others, but worse than
Kaestle 96 Ti, and poor performance on ice stands out. They are worse on ice than other skis he skied this weekend.
When I asked him about his ratings, he said:
First place, Kaestle 96Ti (and his Head i.SL). On days like this weekend, he still would ski his slalom skis.
Second place, shared between his old Head Ethan 93, Evolv100, and Solomon Stance 96.
Third place, Head e-Titan Supershape 84.
When I asked him, what should we do: use REI satisfaction policy, return Liberty Evolv100 and get you better skis, Kaestle 96Ti? He said, Kaestle cost twice as much, but they are not two times better, and Evolv100 are, ultimately, not bad skis, as long as there is no ice. We bought them as powder skis and should wait until we can test them in powder.
So, now we are waiting for powder. The forecast, however, shows a late spring weather for the next 10 days, sunny and up to 50 degrees on the mountain.
P.S. it is kind of funny and weird, but after I skied a couple of runs on Evolv100 with full effort (without effort it was more or less scraping snow on skis which refuse to ski), I definitely felt that I could ski better when I got back on slalom skis - they kind of forced me to do the right things