Demo Day 2, PMGear Bro and Praxis Concept

Rounding out some of the local ski options, I rented a pair of PMGear Bro Fat 183s for the day, and managed to hop on some Praxis Concept 187s too.  With 6+" of fresh, it wasn't a bad day to do it.  That said, the fresh snow was over a sketchy base, so a damage waiver for minor scrapes was purchased, and tried to stay clear of known rocky zones to avoid any serious edge damage.

After a late binding release last weekend, it's been taking a little time to warm up the torn muscle in my calf.  And my flatlander lifestyle and work commitments/travel combined with only enough snow to motivate 7 days of skiing so far this year meant the opposing quad had taken a beating over the last few days.  Protecting a bad leg is harder work than previous realized, I learned.

With that, I was on a pair of PMGear Bro Fat 183s (183cm, 136/112/126, 33m radius) much of the day.  It took me a bit to settle in, as they don't punish you at all for being a bit laid back with them.  They listen and behave fine, but aren't terribly exciting and make you feel lame and weak.  Get on top of them with a great aggressive stance, and plenty of speed and they completely wake up.  Somehow lively yet stable.  I was pulling huge arced turns through the afternoon chop and grinning the whole time.  When you inevitably ended up on a skid patch of ice, no problem, they hooked up and kept you going.  I really felt like they'd serve me better in a truly sketchy spot than anything else I skied.  But they definitely made me work for the full amount of fun.  I only wonder if I'm really comfortable enough at speed to bring out the best in them.  But seriously, FKNA!  If I'm looking to storm everything, these are the skis to do it in.

I spent significantly less time on the Praxis Concepts (187cm, 139/117/125, 26m radius), so I don't have as thorough of a review.  That said, Praxis Concepts were more playful for sure, and rewarded a more centered stance.  Definitely damper than the Bros.  They were shockingly happy to just straightline through the chopped snow.  Much more like the Bibby Pros for me, they were a completely different ski than the Bros.  It's a little hard to compare directly to the Bibby Pros since the conditions were so very different.  But it seems to me like they'd fill a similar spot in my lineup to the Kikus.. bouncy, more relaxed, and let you have a ton of fun even if your legs aren't feeling 100%.

It sounds like a real contradiction to claim that the damper ski was more playful, but somehow to me the playfulness comes from bouncing out of turns, which the Bros just didn't need you to do at all to feel lively.  In any case, I don't claim to be an expert, it's all just my personal experience of my skiing style (lame as it might be) on these skis.

At the end of this little experiment, I really feel like I couldn't go wrong with the right length of any of the local skis I tried -- Moment Bibby Pro, Moment Governor (Bibby Special), PMGear Bro Fat, or Praxis Concept.  I'm personally more excited about the Bros than the Governors as chargers.  The Governor just didn't have enough for me as a skier over the Bibby Pro to justify the less playful feel.  On the playful front, I'm having a harder time comparing the Bibby Pro and the Concept.

The other realization is that I'm significantly less sore than I would have been on my shorter EHPs or Kikus all day, without making any effort at all to avoid the chop or crud.  Once I got some heat into my quad and calf, I felt pretty good, and real achiness still hasn't set in many hours later.  The longer skis are a nothing short of a revelation.