Skis with 5 dimensions

The Lhasa is a sweet ski, but the one thing that sold me on the S7 was the turning radius:

Lhasa 186 - 34m
S7 188 - 17.5m

The Lhasa defintely doesn't feel like it has a huge turn radius. Notas turny as my bakers but not a huge diference as the numbers on paper suggest. Nothing against he s7 it's an awesome ski just worth demoing both to really get a feel for the Lhasa. It's an odd ski on the fact it doesn't really bhave and ski
the way it should on paper.

It all comes down to whether you are planning to tour with them.
The S7 is simply the most versatile powder ski  I have ever used and I love them so much that I don't want to ride anything else BUT when mounted with dukes they are heavy suckers and really only OK for short side country skinning.( PNWBrit hiked 4000ft for 3 days on S7's and Dukes when we were heli-touring.. so it can be done but boy, is it tiring)

In a attempt to try and capture that surfy S7 feeling with better touring weight, I bought a pair of Voile Drifters ( 125mm waist, and only $625). They are extremely light  ( and I mounted dynafiddlies on them)and have a stiff tail and in soft snow, ski ( surf a better word) like the S7's. They however do not have the versatility of the S7's as on hardpack they are very, very squirrely.I toured with them yesterday in the Crystal BC and for a soft snow touring rig the Drifters are really impressive and turn easily. They do OK on soft groomers as well.

The Lhasa's are much lighter and of course there's the whole carbon fibre ski quiver made by DPS that combine incredible light weight with performance but at a price... $1200. The new Wailer 112 RP that will be releasing for the 10/11 season is basically a carbon fiber S7 and I'm going to get a pair even if I have to sell other skis to get them.

The s7 with Dukes is a heavy set up indeed!  I have Dunaduke plates on my S7's allowing the ability to switch between my Baron and Dynafit bindings.  In addition I also bought a pair of the the new BD ascension split skins and those things are so much lighter that the traditional ascensions.   All-in-all it's a fairly light setup.

I do agree with Velillen about demoing if possible.  ON3P will let you test skis from their factory and the Billy Goat was a close second in my quest.  I demoes the S7 at Mt Hood Meadow's on Hood last year and they had a wide assortment of fat skis to try out.

Happy hunting!

he 112RP's look great thats for sure! DPS makes some great skis and id love to get some wailer 105's. But the 112p seems pretty dang close to the lhasa in terms of dimensions and weight. be interesting to demo a pair and see how well the SS technology (think thats what they called it) works and how they ski compared to the S7 and lhasa (and JJ....) If its just a lighter S7 then gotta juggle weight vs 400 bucks.

Wish i hadnt have missed the DPS demo day, would have loved to tried them.

And offer still stand for testing out lhasa's. I dont think pm gear has nay demo pairs in WA so if someone wanted to test em out and has a ~325 BSL or less your more than welcome to try my pair. They are on dynadukes so could use either duke or vertical ST's!

Need to try that dynaduke plate set up...I've got a friend who has them mounted on some DPS 120's. Sounds perfect.