K2 Sahale Review

I'm gonna consolidate a bunch of posts into one review here

Picked these up off of SAC during the fall. Decided to go really short as this would be a quiver ski and I wanted to save weight for spring tours/ski mountaineering. So far this year I've wound up mostly using them for teaching the mini-animal how to ski and I'd been impressed with them thus far. Even though I'd been on greens, I'd been able to run them through sideslips, kickturns, and lots of different radius turns(they also make great pie turns )

In order to really get full confidence in them I needed to get off of the greens and into some steeper and faster terrain before giving them a seal of approval. Last night I finally got to test them on inbounds hardpack and they performed.

I'd been really worried about the length but after one run my fears were put to rest. Conditions were a light dusting of natural + manmade on top of a firm hard base that was scraped off in spots.

At speed what little chatter I observed in the tips was not noticeable underfoot. With regards to a speed limit, you might say it has one, but thats only because they won't straightline, as long as you're locked into a turn, feel free to push them as fast as you would like. Given the fact that my BC skiing speeds are far less then what I was skiing last night, I'm fairly confident in saying that on a firm surface, I will not find that this ski has a speed limit.

Edgehold was superior, not once did I think that the ski was going to wash out of a high speed arc, which is confidence inspiring for me as a big guy on such a short ski. The tail is very supportive during the turn, but allows for a huge variety of turn shapes from small hop turns to big swooping arcs. Also a plus was the fact that the ski was neither overpowering or overpowered by my boots.

Not that the TLT 700 is a ton of boot, but with an added WC booster strap, wedges underfoot, and a rear spoiler, its definitely closer to something like a Megaride/Struktura/Denali then a Laser/Matrix/F1 class of boot that I think the ski was intended to be skied with.

I've taken them uphill once, and most of that was with them on my pack, so I don't have much to comment there, but as would be expected, they're light, and skinning flats with them was a joy.

Update #1
I threw the headlamp on and took them for a couple of runs in my Backyard glade I created over the summer

Conditions in my backyard were 5-6" of unconsolidated over a 3" base with a little crust on top

Again I was pleasantly surprised, my rig for this kind of low angle bushwhacking has been a 180 Alpina Cross terrain, and normally its tough to get enough speed to get it to maneuver. The stiff tip and larger sidecut on the X-terrain lead to making a ton of jerky, uncoordinated turns from the backseat as I try to avoid crashing into trees or thickets. The Sahale was an entirely different experience, the tails sunk, the tips floated and I was able to make smooth turns as long as I could keep the speed up. I found putting skins on to be a pain since I was used to the waxless pattern on the cross terrain, but it is what it is. Skinning back up the hill was painless due to the light weight, and ski thicketeering was much simpler on a 160 then a 180 since there was a lot less ski to get caught in the underbrush.


Update #2
Finally got them out in some real world BC conditions

I decided to make a quick lap during the rainstorm we had out here today

Conditions were fairly compacted wet snow, but ranged from very firm to complete slush 2 feet away.

This was exactly what I was looking for to test just how well the Sahale actually skis when you throw tough conditions at it.

As expected on the uphill portion they were ridiculously fast on anything flat or firm, and held an angle while climbing just as well as my fatter boards. They were however somewhat bothersome while trying to break trail or move across more unconsolidated snow. The lack of length and width really made it somewhat challenging, I found myself being sucked down in wet patches my longer, wider skis would have slid over with no problems.

Once again I was pretty surprised at how they handled on the way down. Granted I couldn't ski the same way as if I had my normal setup, but it was far from survival turns. I noticed the lack of waist width much more then the length which isn't surprising given the conditions. I lost some fluidity vs. a wider ski, but never felt like the ski was "getting away" from under me or wasn't comfortable in the terrain. I always felt like I could turn when I needed to and stop when I wanted to.