Movement super turbo

Si tu lis l'anglais ou avec un bon traducteur
My 0,5 cents to the thread. I skied eight 2010-2011 skis on saturday, 3-4 runs on each ski. Some initial impressions:

Movement Super Turbo GTI

Earlier I have never been that impressed on Movement skis but now I have to admit that Movement had two of the most interesting models on the whole demo fleet. The first one being the Super Turbo GTI – at an impressive 202cm length.

Dimensions of 150-120-135mm (tip-middle-tail) and long tip rocker. It has no tail rocker though, giving the ski a more traditional feel when finishing the turns.

On the feet the first impression of the skis is “holy s**t these are big and heavy”. When you start to get speed these didn’t feel like total tanks though. There is just enough sidecut to even get decent turns on the groomers and the ski isn’t overly stiff. Tip rocker part is also so long that on the firmer stuff the ski feels more like a middle stiff 185cm traditional fat ski. The very tip of the skis flap a bit at speed but it doesn’t seem to has an effect on the performance at all.

Conclusion from the four test runs: manageable but quite boring on the low angle groomed stuff (can’t be surprising to anyone?). I also wouldn’t like to jump turn these beasts or try to flick them around on the tight trees – if you are going to buy these, you better know what to do with them. Big ski for big mountains and good skiers but not overly demanding. Seems like this category (charger, BIG mountain) of skis has “softened” a bit since the likes of Head Im 103s, first generation Big Daddies and Nordica FF 105s...I guess this compares quite alot to the Salomon Rocker?

Movement Fly Swatter 185cm

This is a freakish looking ski: short(ish), very fat and with abrupt rocker and deep sidecut. People carving these on the slopes looked like they have some kind of little “boats” on their feet. Fly Swatter is kind of exaggerated version of the Armada JJ. 150-125-145mm, 17 meter sidecut radius and very centered binding mounting point. It also has the similar “5-dimensional sidecut” profile than the JJ. Nice graphics too IMHO.

However, on the slopes this was a very positive surprise. Fun, poppy and lively, carves and surfs well, depending on what you like to do. Very playful, makes you want to try silly little jumps/180s everywhere.

Soft, forgiving round flex probably has some speed limit if you really like to charge. And the effective sidecut is quite short -I guess this ski need some amount of soft snow to come alive.

Positive impression probably come also from the conditions (deep slush, small hill) but as a huge fan of Armada JJ I think I could like this ski almost everywhere as long the conditions are on the soft side. I would be tempted to mount the binding just 1,5-2cm more back (from the recommended mark) but on the other hand due to lots of tail rocker this might not work at all?

Conclusion is that despite the awkward look, Movement Fly Swatter works very well. For the skiers that like soft, playful skis. Also, I bet good backcountry freestylers would make wonders with these planks. The surprise was also that everyone around seemed to like these (even guys that normally like more "charger" type stuff!)


K2 Hellbent 179cm

This was a small disappointment for me. The ski has the typical “K2 feel”, soft(ish) but stable and damp. The downside is that this feel offers not that much liveliness and “pop”.

The Hellbent carved ok and absorbed small ruts and bumps very well. But something lacked in
my opinion. Maybe the very wet snow had an effect – I felt that ski this wide began to “glue”/stick to the snow, making it even more out of its element (while 132mm waist ski can carve on the groomed, I guess no one could argue that this width is made for the prepared slopes?)

Some guys on the test tent praised how K2 Hellbent behaves on the real powder and I guess the story is totally different there. 132mm waist and “powder rocker” concept can’t be bad on real blowder days. Still, I am beginning to be in the school of thought that skis with waist widths bigger than say 125-130mm work better with “5-dimensional sidecut”/pointy tips.

K2 Obsethed 189cm

Again, Seth’s ski didn’t disappoint (I've been the fan since the green Pistols!).

For some reason, despite having the same K2 feel as the Hellbent, the whole concept worked much better to me. Maybe for me the longer but slightly narrower ski just felt better? (So take this with a grain of salt – hard to say anything between different lengths anyway, 179cm vs. 189cm).

Some have speculated that now the ObSethed have moved from “all-mountain” category to the pure powder ski status. However, I felt that this is “just a ski” (in a positive way). It felt that I could just click into the bindings and ski anything without thinking too much of it. For me this is always a good sign!

Armada ARG 185cm

This was the first time on real R/R for me. (Ok, ARG has minimal sidecut but I still count it to the R/R genre...)

Fun skis, just forget carving. (For late season fun the "split" effect was actually just "interesting" to try...)

Worked pretty well even on the slush. I won't write more here cause I guess everyone knows the benefits/nature of the R/R ski. Waiting to try these on real pow day...some day.


Armada JJ 185 cm (as telemark skis)

This was something I have waited for a long time. Being the huge fan of the concept I have been thinking that JJ must be a really fun freeheel ski too.

Well, telemark skiing is way more dependent on the bindings than alpine. So, I had some troubles with loose (too long) cables and just couldn’t get the “right” feel in the tele turn. General impression was that the “loose” feeling of the rocker ski is really fun also when dropping the knee but with JJs I also felt the tight sidecut become quite “hooky” on couple of occasions (might be my bad tele technique and/or the problem with the bindings).

I tried to jumps couple of times from the small kicker available – here I can understand why some people don’t like tail rocker on tele skis. I ended up very back seated after the launch from the lip.

Can’t say much based on this experience – fun skis as telemark too but one must have good technique and balance and I guess binding selection is pretty essential factor too.

Btw. Another interesting tele option was available too – Voile Drifter 182cm. The cables were just too long for my boots. People seemed to dig that ski quite a lot and it also seemed to work very well in slushy conditions. Too bad I couldn’t test them this time.

Armada ARV 185

The fatter skis worked better for the heavy slush conditions. Anyway, IMHO Armada ARV is a nice piste/park oriented all-mountain ski that still work (somehow) on the soft snow too. Neutral, not too stiff and predictable – good skis but don’t particularly impress on any special area.


Völkl Gotama 186cm

This was also one ski I have been eager to test for some time already.

The ski felt pretty same as my own 190cm 06/07 (white) Gotamas. When standing on the skis the rocker is so mellow that you don’t even notice it. The tips of the skis are very low, to the degree that you wonder how they work in the soft snow. (Other reports/reviews confirm that there shouldn’t be any problems though!)

The ski engages the turn (maybe) just a tad slower than the 06/07 and 08/09 models and the rocker gives maybe minimal amount less “pop” from turn to turn but after a few runs you shouldn’t notice the difference. Seems like Völkl didn’t want to change the winner concept too much, just changed it a bit more modern.

I guess the new Gotama offers all the same than the older one but adds a bit more flotation and “looseness” in the soft snow. If you dig Völkl skis/older Gotamas and look for a solid all-arounder, look no further. The 194cm version should be also good option for the bigger/stronger skiers.

Some more information and a few pictures here. Hope this helped some - this kind of tests are anyway always quite general / inaccurate...