Welcome to Louis (Lou) Dawson's backcountry skiing information opinion website and e magazine. Lou's passion for the past 45 years has been alpinism, climbing, mountaineering and skiing -- along with all manner of outdoor recreation. He has authored numerous books and articles about
backcountry skiing and is well known as the first person to ski down all 54 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, otherwise known as the
Fourteeners! Books and free back country news and information here, and tons of Randonnee rando telemark info.
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An extremely highly regarded company in the Alpine skiing world, it will be nice to see your review; I’ve been interested in these and one of the larger models like FX94/104, but so few are seen and so few are the reviews. A very expensive ski to buy blind (without trying it out).
I have been skiing the FX94 for 3 seasons. Fantastic, rock solid, high performance ski but heavy for long steep skinning approaches. Really shines in steep gnar! Generally if the approach is low angle, the weight is not an issue. My preference is to use these on low angle glacier approaches to very steep couloirs we climb rather then skin.
May be on my FX104s for the first time next week.
I hope you enjoy this ski Lou. This is the ski that Neal and I skied the Lhotse Face on Everest on. It’s got great performance to weight, and loves corn snow, but is not as high-perf as the FX series, which has metal sheets and weighs more (The FX 94 in a 176 is 1000 grams more than the TX 87 177) I have been skiing the FX 94 on Ajax and Highlands so far this season (and 104′s when it snows) but will tour exclusively on the TX 87 and 97 this season.
Cheers
Thanks for chiming in Chris! We’re looking forward to this ski, as it’s the same form factor as some other well liked mountaineering skis in our quiver, and in the same weight class. Yet wider has been important lately, as we’ve been skiing backcountry and enjoying the bottomless faceted snowpack in the wild Elks. Continues to amaze me how we actually can have fun on fat skis in snow that used to be virtually unskiable with our skinny sticks.
When is the TX97 going to be available?
hi there, just putting up some pressure on you guys
and making sure you’re extensively testing these! (not that it’s boring anyway).
do you have any idea of when will the reviews be ready? as always, thanks for the great work
Have you tested this ski Lou? I’m thinking of change. Narrower sounds good to me.
Might be time to start weighing skins, not just skis, boots, and bindings, packs, etc. Skins, especially if ‘damp’, must amount to something.
Also interesting to come up with some kind of measure of skin drag (friction).