It grips with minimal effort, and I’ll often find myself knocking down fluid GS turns in powder with a rhythm and ease I never once matched during my NASTAR days as a yute’. In soft, loose, lighter snow, the Underworld carves an absolutely majestic medium-radius turn. The Underworld can carve an absolute magical turn in soft snow. Occasionally, it took a tad more focus to maintain contact in those situations, but this was truly a rarity in my overall experience. I’ll just note that on firm, beat-up skintracks, the micro camber in the tail of the ski, combined with the tail rocker, means that not a ton of the rear of the ski – where much of your weight tends to sit while touring up steeper skin tracks – is firmly placed on the ground. The tip is also a bit more rounded than Moment's regular square tips, making for an easier time securing skins. Moment added a slight tail notch to the Underworld for touring skins. The huge drop in weight was a godsend for ski tours, and I was blown away to be basically on the same ski I’d enjoyed for the past several seasons while enjoying way less pain for the gain on the uphill. Almost no matter how far I walked, my hips never tightened up and got sore as they might have after hours of dragging a heavier setup up the hill. Having spent the previous few seasons with the Deathwish (and Marker plate bindings) as my go-to touring setup, the switch to Dynafit Beast 14's and Underworlds marked an immense shift in my uphill experience. Uphill Touring PerformanceĪt barely more than 1,600 grams a ski, the Underworld is very easy to haul uphill for being 106 in the waist. The Underworld also utilizes Twin Rocker at the tip and tail, which is a bit more of a newschool approach to a touring ski but which I find allows you to pop out of each turn in deeper snow. It also makes for a fun, snappy feel that has you grabbing airs at every opportunity. Moment Skis graphic.īoth the Underworld and Deathwish use Moment’s Triple Camber Technology, in which a flat section underfoot and two micro cambers fore and aft of the bindings create four contact points along the edge, making for a similarly remarkable edge-holding experience as you might find skiing Lib Tech’s Magne Traction or Praxis’ Tri-Cut sidecut.ĭepending on where you put your weight, the Triple Camber either loosens up for predictable, slarvy turns, or bites like a razor blade into the snow, making you think an Austrian Ski Team tech did some magic to your skis the night before – even though they look beat to shit from your season banging them around on rocks and snow. That lightweight feeling was immediately noticeable on the up. In thinning the waist by 6 mm and using their Low Fat Layup with a paulownia and southern yellow pine wood core, Moment managed to get my 181 cm Underworlds down to 1,666 grams (hail Satan!) per ski – an impressive drop from a 2,015 gram Deathwish in the same size. Moment did add a notched tail to the ski for touring, however, and overall, the finish on their skis has greatly improved over the past few years, and you’ll be impressed holding these how clean the design and construction is. Shauna Fraser photo.Īs was mentioned earlier, the Underworld is basically a slimmed-down, lightened-up version of the best-selling Deathwish all-mountain ski – it’s even built out of the same mold, with the same effective edge length. The Triple Camber of the Underworld can be seen with the slight, individual cambers fore and aft of the bindings. With the tenacious edge hold that Moment’s Triple Camber allows, Moment’s idea with the Underworld was to create a light, versatile, all-conditions touring ski that has a snappy, playful feel when things are deep but which can still rail groomers and hold it together in firm snow. Moment’s Underworld ski, out in its second year this season, took the Triple Camber construction of their best-selling Deathwish ski (of which, I am admittedly a giant fanboy) and the same exact mold, but thinned the waist down from 112 mm to 106 mm and dropped over a pound and a half from a Deathwish of comparable length. The Underworld is Moment's first foray into the lightweight touring ski world.
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