From parsavan@boulder.Colorado.EDU Mon Feb 26 10:58:40 MST 1996 Newsgroups: rec.skiing.backcountry Subject: length advice >>> What length should I get? >>Get them in your alpine length if they are standard width. 5 cm >>shorter if they are a little wide, 10 cm if they are fat. >Given that the person who asks is 6'3 and 195lb, that sounds a bit >short to me. I'd say 205 standard with, 200 fat, 195 very fat (alpine >skis with Tele bindings). a bit short? are you assuming what alpine length is? (which i doubt is any more agreed on than tele length) i'm sure this is a dead horse, but i'm still puzzled about this length of ski issue. let's say the person above is concerned with flotation. let's also say standard is 80/60/70mm, fat 85/65/75mm and very fat 90/70/80mm. then if you idealize a ski to be two trapezoids in computing area, a 205 normal has the same area a 191 fat and a 179 very fat. granted the trapezoidal rule is only an approximation for flotation, but a 195 very fat is definitely going to have way more flotation than a 205 standard. perhaps the issue is the geometry of the tele position - if one has skis that are too short, the rear ski can duck behind the front ski in desperate situations. for me (175cm) this is a problem right around 180 cm. paul parker's length recommendation in free-heel skiing (nice book) is: "For more focused tele downhill skiing, go height plus 20 centimeters for alpine-cambered telemark skis, and height plus about 10 centimeters for really wide boards like randonee skis." (he doesn't even take weight into account.) a table for the above rule is: (for the metric challenged like me) Height ft/in: 4'11" 5'3" 5'7" 5'11" 6'3" cm: 150 160 170 180 190 +10: 160 170 180 190 200 +20: 170 180 190 200 210 now, i know some mountaineering skis top out at 190cm and some tele-skis that bottom out at 185cm. this covers most people but very tall or short people can't follow this rule. anybody know any other rules of thumb? dara parsavand - parsavan@prony.colorado.edu From parsavan@boulder.Colorado.EDU Tue Mar 4 15:43:44 MST 1997 Newsgroups: rec.skiing.backcountry Subject: Re: rsb-FAQ skis -- Comments? >I disagree (a LOT!); keep the ski length description as it is. I'm >185 cm and my skis are 170 to 190 cm - I would NEVER tell anyone to >ski a board 20 cm greater than their height. You're certainly free to >experiment as you please, but even my 170 cm shortcuts don't suffer from >lack of stability. ski length is a commonly debated topic on this newsgroup and i doubt a simple rule would ever satisfy everybody. i'm 175cm/65kg and usually ski wide shovel skis (85-90mm). i've tried 175, 180, and 185cm in wide skis and 195, 200, and 205cm in narrow skis (65-75mm at the shovel). i currently can't stand narrow skis, but the 195's (+20cm) were a reasonable length for a touring oriented ski. for wide telemark skis, i prefer to go as short as possible while avoiding the problem of the trailing ski crossing behind the leading ski which is very difficult to recover from. the length where this occurs will depend on your leg length, boots, bindings, and style of skiing. for me, it rarely occurs with 180's, almost never with 185's and happens a little too often with 175's. i don't really notice a stability problem with short skis though others seem to complain about this a lot. i ski to turn, not to go straight so i probably wouldn't notice the instability of the most squirrely ski ever made. once you pick a length, then there is a question of how wide you want to go. for me, the 175's with 85mm shovels and a standard 20mm sidecut profile often do not have enough flotation even without a pack. i'm not sure if it is reasonable to calculate length*(shovel width + the tail width + 2*waist width) and try to get below a certain number of kg/cm^2, but if you do this, you will find you have to go pretty long with narrow skis compared to a body height 90mm ski. i'm reasonably happy with my 180 90/70/80 skis for now. excellent start to the FAQ David! dara parsavand | parsavan@prony.colorado.edu (don't use header address)