This is the beginning of a long term review of the 2016 Head Strong Instinct Ti. I demoed this ski at Copper Mountain last season and was immediately hooked. It was light, quick, had good edge grip and was softer than my Nordica FA 84 EDTs. The radius for the Head is 14.2 vs 17 for the FA. The FA has a tiny amount of early rise while the Head has what their marketing department has deemed “All Ride Rocker.” The Head at 170cm skis a bit shorter than the FA at 168cm.
I went to Red Lodge Mountain today to make some runs on the Head and get used to it. Since I plan to take it with me December 11-13 to Big Sky for the Northern Rocky Mountain PSIA fall clinic getting acquainted with the ski seemed a good idea. There are currently only a couple runs open at RLM, all green and all groomed. The Head was fun. I made everything from short slow turns to high speed GS turns and it never complained, it just did what I told it to do. Turning was almost effortless. It has a pretty big sweet spot and I think it would be a good ski for an advancing intermediate who can make parallel turns and it would also be very good as a teaching ski. The ski seems to adjust to the quality of input it gets, the better you ski it the better it responds. I think it might have a speed limit but until I can get on a longer run with a more consistent gradient I can't really tell. I had it up to 39mph (according to ski tracks) arcing GS turns and it felt pretty solid, although certainly not as solid as the Fire Arrows, but I never expected that it would.
To be continued when I can get into more variable conditions, hopefully at Big Sky.
I went to Red Lodge Mountain today to make some runs on the Head and get used to it. Since I plan to take it with me December 11-13 to Big Sky for the Northern Rocky Mountain PSIA fall clinic getting acquainted with the ski seemed a good idea. There are currently only a couple runs open at RLM, all green and all groomed. The Head was fun. I made everything from short slow turns to high speed GS turns and it never complained, it just did what I told it to do. Turning was almost effortless. It has a pretty big sweet spot and I think it would be a good ski for an advancing intermediate who can make parallel turns and it would also be very good as a teaching ski. The ski seems to adjust to the quality of input it gets, the better you ski it the better it responds. I think it might have a speed limit but until I can get on a longer run with a more consistent gradient I can't really tell. I had it up to 39mph (according to ski tracks) arcing GS turns and it felt pretty solid, although certainly not as solid as the Fire Arrows, but I never expected that it would.
To be continued when I can get into more variable conditions, hopefully at Big Sky.