About me: 19 years old, on skis as soon as I could walk. 5'7", 160lbs. skied 100+ days a year for the past 5 years, this year was 126 days, 85 of which were consecutive. And about 100 of those days were on these Caylors.
I like to ski fast, through tight trees, on steep shit, billy goating in the most sketchy places I can get into, in the air as much as possible, finding trannys, bonking trees, dropping cliffs, doing spinny flippy jibby stuff whenever I can - check out my videos to get an idea.
I have experience on skis such as - 179 K2 Hellbent, 190 Moment Ruby, 179 K2 Fujative, 186 Dynastar Big Trouble, 186 Moment Donner Party, 185 Elan pieces of shit, 186 OG Raceroom Legend Pro, 184 Salomon Rocker 2 protos (softer than production), 194 Surface New Life, 191 Surface Live Life, 194 Fatty Puss Dsender.
First Glance: graphics are pretty weird. not ugly or anything, mouths and eyes always looking at me just creep me out a bit. edges are huge, bigger than any other skis I've compared them to. Sick base structure. Rocker profile and shape look sick, both skis are the same. Overall first impression - bomber looks.
On snow:
Pow - amazing! as expected, they rip pow and chopped pow super fast. Rocker makes them very maneuverable, nimble, and easy to ski in tight trees while the stiffish flex keeps them stable enough to stomp airs and haul ass. They like to be in the air, and have a phenomenal POP. Awesome ski for ripping around and popping off everything finding trannys. I skied a couple runs switch in some deep pow, and they killed it. Not as pivoty in the trees as the Donner Partys or Rocker 2s, but it's not enough to slow me down. Very confidence inspiring when hauling ass in the soft stuff.
Groomed - Pretty good actually, it took me a couple days to get used to them on groomers coming from the stiffer and fully cambered Ruby, but soon enough I got em rolling. They carve trenches as long as it isn't straight up ice. The tips do flap a bit at speed but it's not a big deal, nowhere near as bad as the Hellbent or Rocker 2. I did the good old fashioned test of straight lining all the steep groomers at Red, and felt totally confident on them (obviously I'd rather be on a cambered ski for this).
Used up pow / variable snow - they do it really well, I have no problems hauling ass and popping around, but I think a bit of taper or maybe a shark nose style tip like the new Wrens along with a mellower tip curve (like the 2011/2012 ON3Ps) would make them a bit better at slicing through funky crusts and weird snow rather than getting deflected which happens on occasion. I'm sure the new rocker profiles on the 2011/2012 skis with help a lot with this.
Completely skied out off piste - not that sick. i can ski them just fine on skied out runs, but I'd definitely rather be on something with less rocker. they do a great job for how much rocker they have though, they hold an edge well, but get deflected quite a bit on bumpy, hard off piste shit.
Air - this is a big ski, but being mounted close to center they have a stable swing weight, I whipped around a few 7's with no problem and back flipped like there's no tomorrow. Being wide, with a medium/stiff flex and ample rocker, they STOMP forwards and backwards in all sorts of conditions. better than any other ski I've been on but comparable to the 194 New Life. once again VERY confidence inspiring.
Durability - BOMBER. I did manage to break the tip on one ski in a very odd incident that involved the tip of that ski absorbing most of the energy from me dropping 10ish feet to a dead stop on a side hill. never the less, I emailed Scott to find out the best way to fix them and now he is hooking me up with a replacement pair. He's the man! Despite that one small hiccup, this skis have held up better than any other ski I've put this much time on and put to work this hard. I spent about 100 days on the Caylors this winter pushing them super hard everyday, and the bases have a couple small scratches - nothing close to a core shot. The edges have no cracks after stomping on rocks from pretty high up. the top sheets have very minimal chipping, and they'd be full of life if I didn't make dumb spur of the moment decisions and break the tip.
Sparknotes: This is my favourite ski I've ever been on. Once I got these I stopped riding my other skis. Huge thanks to Scott, Rowen, and Kip for putting together some amazing skis!
Check out their website too see their next year's line of skis and preorder them from $100-$150 off regular price! http://on3pskis.com
Here's some POV of the Caylors in their element.
Thanks for the review, brother!
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