It was such a nice demo! There were TWO females at the tent, one being Hannah that gave the presentation at the wine, cheese, chicks, & skis event and another who was super nice as well. Then there was a guy who was also very nice to chat with, he asked some questions about my Zipfits when I was booting up in the morning.
So my initial objective was the try the Nordica Multipista 74... they had next year's multipista 80 width ski which I started out with. They then went into Wachusett's demo shop to pull the 74 for me since they had forgotten that one, which I thought was really nice of them to accommodate! The only catch is that they were both a 170 length, which is longer than I would normally ever ski, so I was a bit apprehensive about it. However, both were fun to ski, though I popped myself up in the air on one turn when carving my first run with the 80 underfoot version lol, they definitely push back! I preferred the 74 underfoot between the two which is good since I'm looking for a narrower ski and my main two skis are mid-80s so I don't want another so close in width. There was a big difference between the 80 and 74 in terms of how quickly you get on edge, the 74 is just effortless. Two reps told me they would call 170 my correct size in that ski due to some tip rocker making it ski "short", but I still felt like I would want to try the 165 since that is my usual happy length and these felt a tad long. In general for the last year or so I have been going back and forth on buying the Kastle MX74 but when I heard about the Multipista 74 I thought I'd like to try that as well before deciding. I think I am still leaning towards the Kastle to be honest... but I would love to get on the 165 Nordica to really confirm. I'll have to see if any shops have the 165 to try since the Nordica reps do not have any shorter lengths in that ski to try out.
I also skied the Santa Ana 87 in a 167 length, Santa Ana 92 in a 161 and then 167 because the 161 felt too short, and the 102 in a 161 because they didn't have a longer option but I actually felt okay on that one as I guess the additional width gave enough stability to the ski. I really had fun on all of them, the soft snow was all chopped up and thinker by the end of the day and all of these skis are so surfy and fun in it. The downside to demoing in such ideal snow conditions is that is not at all what we have for snow most of the time in New England, so there's that. Couldn't get any idea of firm snow grip ability today. I will say that I do feel a little goldilocks about the sizing Nordica has right now... several years ago it was more skewed towards a mid 160 length that felt really good whereas I was feeling a bit like the 161s were short enough to be unstable for me outside of the 102 but the 167s felt a teeny tiny bit long. In any case, my favorite ski of the day ended up being the Santa Ana 87 in the 167 length that I took out multiple times because it was so much fun both before and after lunch as the snow went from hero groomers to fun choppy, soft snow.
