In good mogul lines, the Monster 108s are fun. At my 175 – 180 lbs., I do need to stay strong, but I’m sure that bigger / stronger skiers than me will find the Monster 108 to be less work and simple “stable.”
But it is nice that you can just pressure the front of the ski as hard as you want or can, which reduces the likelihood that you will end up on the ski’s tails, getting bucked. On the Monster 108, you do not want to get back on those tails – whether on the 177 or the 184.
Other people like a stiff tail and a soft shovel, but I find that such a flex pattern – while they are fun to carve because it is easy to bend the front of the ski – can inspire less confidence in steep (and especially bumped-up) terrain. I’ve said this before, but if you give me a ski with a very solid / stiff back end, I appreciate having a solid / stiff front end to match – because it means that I know I can get on the front half of the ski and it will support me. On the shorter ski, if you got caught on those equally-stiff-but-shorter tails, there seemed to be less room for recovery. Worth noting: given that the 177 cm Monster 108 is just as stiff as the 184 cm version, Charlie and I both found it to be a bit easier to get caught in the backseat on the 177s in heavily moguled terrain (e.g., Taos’ Castor 4 weeks after a storm). But the Monster 108 is a ski that smoothes things out nicely even when you are pushing it hard and slamming around in bumps and rutted-up run outs. And that isn’t merely a factor of this ski being heavy-we’ve been on other pretty heavy skis that feel more jarring. There is nothing jarring about it it feels damp and plush. While this is definitely not a “loose” ski, so long as I was ‘on’ the ski and providing strong input, the tails never, ever felt grabby.Īnother comment re: the Monster 108’s ride in variable conditions and bumped-up terrain: Charlie Bradley and I both love the suspension of this ski.
#Teton gravity research dps wailer free
And I found the modest tail rocker on the 108 to still allow me to break the tails free without a problem. This is also a benefit if you tend to ski tight chutes or gnarly, steep moguls, and you don’t always want to drag a ~190+ cm long ski into that terrain just to get the stability bump.Īnd that’s sort of the beauty of the 184 cm Monster 108 – you get quite a lot of stability without a lot of length. But if you’re willing and able to provide that input, the stability and smoothness of the ride is pretty remarkable - especially given the relatively short length. There’s no question that the 184 cm Monster 108 requires a good amount of input. Lighter skiers or those less interested in super high speed limits will still likely enjoy the 177. The 177 was by no means a bad ski, but the power, smoothness, and stability felt more pronounced to us on the 184.
(And in my forthcoming Deep Dive Comparison, I’ll go into more detail here, specifically re: the Line Supernatural 108.)įor what it’s worth (and this is certainly subjective territory here), Charlie Bradley and I both preferred the 184 to the 177 Monster 108 on groomers. Still, I would call the Monster 108 the “best” carver we’ve ever been on in the in ~108 mm class - and certainly as you dial up the speed, rough up the groomers, or ice up the groomers. You can make shorter-radius turns on the Monster 108, but the fact is, if you don’t love nuking down groomers, you don’t need this much ski unless you weigh, say, 220+ lbs. Fat tips + fat tails + ~25 meter sidecut radius + mellow tip rocker + WEIGHT … this all adds up to really good times on groomers if you like to make bigger turns at speed – and want to do that whether the groomers are pristine or whether they are beat up, riddled with chunks of ice, whatever.Īnd yet, I think it’s important to note that you don’t have to be going mach looney to get this ski up on edge - unlike another big gun that we really like, the Liberty Variant 113. And on groomers, the Monster 108 behaves a bit like a fat, awesome GS ski. You might think that Head knows a thing or two about making race skis.
And I’ll say more about the two lengths below and in my follow up “Deep Dive Comparisons” article. So we’ve actually been spending time on both the 177 and the 184 cm Monster 108-A/B-ing the ski in these two lengths, which has been quite beneficial. Head was pretty nervous about this, insisting that the 184 is a lot of ski. We wanted to review the 184, they were pretty worried that we’d find this to be too much ski, and much preferred us to review the 177.īut since most of the ~108mm-wide skis we’ve reviewed are in the 185 – 190 cm length range, there was no question for us that we wanted to review the 184 cm Monster 108 – the longest length it comes in. We had a lot of back and forth with Head Skis about which length of the Monster 108 we should review.
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