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The cold world of skimo & alpine climbing

The cold world of skimo & alpine climbing

Sunday, January 15, 2012

DPS Spoon?

I am a big fan of the carbon DPS 138. 

http://dpsskis.com/ski/lotus138



But the "Spoon" is another step on the wild side.  With OR coming next week it is fun to look back at what was shown last year and still isn't available yet.  I got on the list anyway.





http://www.powdermag.com/stories/first-look-dps-skis-new-spoon-in-action/





"this design has been in the works for a year and a half, and its really cool to see a skiable example of it. stoked to test it in the next bit, once the tradeshow circuit slows down.


the ski is designed to really promote super high edge angle powder skiing with out seeing drag and reduced speeds from snow contact on your leg from loosing the plane. when a flat-base ski gets higher and higher edge angle , the amouint of float gets lower and lower. this spoon shape starts to engage at the point that a normal flat ski starts to dive. and then keeps going... so like really from dragging your hip in pow super powerful GS type deal.

aside from that, the goal was to open up a totally news style of drifting into and railing/carving super cleanly out of turns and terrain features.

the cleats were added to enabe the ski to be somewhat controlable on runouts. it is pretty different from magnetraction where you are trying to gain edge grip by undulating in and out. the cleats go down to add a small level of stability and edge so a fully convex base will change direction and slow down etc on 2dimensional snow. as it is now, you will not be carving turns. if there were no cleats, the ski would be in essance a death trap. ~20deg base effective bevel otherwise.

this ski shape is based around a lotus 138 + 12mm. full rocker (reverse camber). 192cm. his particular ski was built in eden utah in the engineers garage. it is not ready for retail production, but the tech will see trickle down in the future, is the goal. once the amount of base convexity and positioning and amount of cleats and height of cleats etc is finalized.

base prep out of the mold is a pain, but once that is done, tuning is straight forward actually. far easier to wax etc than i thought they might be. hand prep the base. really no biggie. flat enough to mount bindings without issue upderfoot.

stephan sees this as being the future of powder skiing, based on his testing of it the past 2 days, and well... going by how it looks in my hand, i am inclined to agree... but i have not skied them yet. these skis literally came out of the mold 4-5 days ago."

Last edited by marshalolson; 01-27-2011 at 08:51 PM.

http://dpsskis.com/blogs/2011/january/dps-spoon-150-patent-pending-dps-cleat-technology

www.dpsskis.com

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