 Poster: A snowHead
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Why were skis so long in the '80s?
Was out skiing today with Mrs Oceanic, who learnt to ski in the '80s, I asked her, and the best (ironic) answer she could offer was that it was important to use long skis so that everyone knew that you were a good skier.
Would it not have been easier to 'wedel' on shorter skis?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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People needed really long skis to go with their really big shoulder pads.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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My first skis were 215! I did see a table that compared modern wide skis and old long skinny skis comparing acreage and they were similar.
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| davidof wrote: |
| erm they didn't have that little hole in the end that touring skis had back in the day. |
I've always wondered if that is so they could be hung up in the garage on a nail ?
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@AndAnotherThing.., another advantage
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@AndAnotherThing.., it was so you could make a sledge out of them. @davidof,'s second looks like the infamous paddle turn.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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80s skis weren't terribly stiff. You could hold then upright at the tips and bend them like Beckham. Going longer gave you a bit more stability. If you are a moderately heavy person, this was most helpful. At some point in the 80s one of the French ski schools developed 'Ski Évolutif' which was basically a beginners course starting on much shorter skis which were easier to turn and very wobbly at speed. This meant that most beginners did not go very fast, as soon as they picked any speed up they went into a terminal tank slapper.
There were also other significant differences in the 80s:
1. No snowmaking. Pistes were often a bare/brown in places. They didn't always close such pistes, you just found out the hard way.
2. Pistes weren't groomed so well, maybe partly due to point 1.
3. Lifts were cold. There were a lot more drag lifts, no heated chair lifts and for anyone who remembers, those ghastly cattle truck lifts.
4. It was the era of the onesie, possibly to deal with point 3. But you then didn't drink anything for the entire day so as not to have to completely strip off to go for a wazz. Onesies were particularly unpleasant when faced with the Italian 'footprint' loos.
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Ha I was moaning about heated chairlifts yesterday that they were not sufficiently "northern"
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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@Oceanic, because Old Timers like me wanted more of a challenge when we were young.
Long thin skis need impressive muscle power, allied to fine technique, to initiate and complete turns properly. They make negotiating moguls much harder. They go way faster when you go slightly out of control down a 40 degree slope couloir, after not quite nailing just one turn.
Off the slopes, great spatial awareness is essential when transporting them, to avoid poking out eyes or knocking off heads. They demand superb dexterity to take on and off buses, without ramming a hole through the roof or breaking a window.
Not for us the cushy option of teeny weeny low maintenance composite material carvers, that do most, if not all, of the work for you. You youngsters, you don't know you're born. I suppose there'll be an App that makes your legs angulate next?
That's why 'Old Timers Rule'. Skills honed the hard way. Bring back compulsory 195cms minimum, straight skis, for all beginner lessons NOW 
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@PeakyB, that.
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More seriously, they were long in the 80s because they were longer in the 70s. And anyway you could buy “compact skis” in the 70s (but they were crap). My mother had a pair of 150s.
Skiing was a cottage industry into the 50s.
Metal edges were only invented in 1926 and only one race team used them for the first time in 1930.
Ski Evolutif on short progressive lengths failed, I think in part because the skis were pretty useless. And it was frowned on.
Short wide skis in 1980 were a solution without an identified problem, and the materials and manufacturing were only getting up to speed in Jake Burton’s head. (And an obscure workshop in Eastern Europe).
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You know it makes sense.
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when I first went in '68 you were measured by standing with your arm extended vertically and the ski went to your wrist ..along with cable bindings and there were still some double lace up boots about ..the most popular injury was a spiral fracture...when I bought my first skis .. Heads JC killy 203cm with ESS 3 bindings ( a fore runner of the Look GT) I was very advanced ..I bought them from Ellis Brigham when they only had one shop in Manchester...I.m still skiing on 190s but I am 189cm and ..overweight lol
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Poster: A snowHead
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Long skis looked good when posing for photos- still do 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| Quote: |
when I first went in '68 you were measured by standing with your arm extended vertically and the ski went to your wrist
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This was the drill when I first went skiing in Norway in 1963. Bindings were pretty primitive but I don't remember much about them. It was great, though! Even though I couldn't afford to go again till the late '80s.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Call those skis long? Pah!!
This is what long skis look like! 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I skied on 215s in the 80s. Hooning down smooth pistes making GS turns requires very little effort but good technique.
The stability at speed is great, just like being on rails.
I still ski on 200s.
Yes I hate narrow moguled couloirs.
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@TQA, my Bonafides at 173cms are like being on rails. As, naturally, are my 203cm SGs...
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Back in the 70's & the 80's it was a "Thing" ...
the longer the skis you could drive .. the better skier you were perceived to be.
We still have a bit of that.
The longest skis I think I ever bought were 195cm ... They were Volkl P10s circa 1993.
They were so difficult to drive ... but when you were in the right locations and on the right slope they were just brilliant. It was only a couple of years later riding on a pair of rentals, I thought ... why does life need to be so difficult.
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Maybe I’m missing something here and everyone else thought it too obvious to mention, but AFAIK the reason ski lengths changed was that before carvers/parabolics you turned the straight skis by turning the ski on edge and bending it through weight and pressure thereby creating a curve. New materials/manufacturing techniques enabled them to create far more waisted skis. These skis didn’t require anything like the pressure to create a curve as the curve was ‘built in’ and therefore they turn far more easily. Once you’ve don’t that there was no need to make skis as long.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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@DrLawn, P10s were great skis! Mine were 207s and I never found them hard to drive.
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@foxtrotzulu, ummm, hmmm, yes and no. More that the materials allowed shorter skis that had similar (well, massively better now) performance.
You still turn the ski by applying edge and pressure, it’s just a much more efficient process.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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It's all BS.
Before Snowboarding....
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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@Steilhang aha! a Big Boy 
I must admit, I only realised they were a bit of a handful once I tried something else.
I remember thinking .. "Why am I using these railway lines to ski on?"
But 207 ! that was pretty long even back in the 90's
You would never be able to get a ski bag that big now.
But they were yellow, went with the yellow boots, and had great cred.
I cant understand why I threw them in the skip
I got myself a pair of Volkl "Snow Rangers" after that, went down to a more sensible 190
They were a semi "Fat Boy" of the time, they look positively skinny now compared to the Heli Ski hardware that people use now for the piste and a promise of perhaps one day "off piste", if powder should ever happen.
They are still languishing in the garage.
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| under a new name wrote: |
@foxtrotzulu, ummm, hmmm, yes and no. More that the materials allowed shorter skis that had similar (well, massively better now) performance.
You still turn the ski by applying edge and pressure, it’s just a much more efficient process. |
Yes, you still turn by edging and applying pressure but I thought that the innovation of carving skis was a bit more revolutionary than you suggest. I'm sure we are arguing about the same thing, but my understanding was not quite that better materials allowed skis to be shorter, but that better materials allowed skis to be made with a side-cut as opposed to being almost straight, and that then allowed the skis to be shorter. i.e. if we had stuck with the traditional ski shape then we wouldn't really have been able to shorten the skis.
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You know it makes sense.
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I don't think you can compare modern skiing with skiing on traditional straight skis and rear entry boots.
My favourite straight skis were my rossi 4s, but you skied them really very differently to a modern shaped ski, it was feet slammed together, they never moved from being together, rear entry boots didn't help much, you could not really bend your ankle, and lots of pivoting and skidding the tails most of the time.
To "carve" them was something that racers did, and most people did not, I remember a lesson In Andorra (very early 90's) involving swing turns, and the instructor making sure I finished a turn by fully swinging the tails around, like doing a series of hockey stops, my edges always were more worn on the tails. Another much younger instructor then the next year tried to introduce carving, with feet apart (only slightly mind you) and we were incredulous that you would do such a thing.......the future he said.
The skis needed to be longer to give some sort of stability, powder skiing was er interesting.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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It's cos we were taller in the 80s.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Had a pair of Salomon 9000 Equipe 2S (Power-8 ) 210cms. Salomon produced iconic "monocoque" skis at a time when laminate skis were mass produced. The 9000 S2's skied exceptionally smoothly, held a perfect medium to long GS turn, very progressive fairly stiff flex, at a time when "carving" was done with the "A-Frame" technique used by twins Phil and Steve Mahre - US Ski Team. Phil had 27 World Cup wins, dominating the tour in the early eighties.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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@skimastaaah, Salomon’s monocoque was significantly cheaper to produce that any other method at the time.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| under a new name wrote: |
| @skimastaaah, Salomon’s monocoque was significantly cheaper to produce that any other method at the time. |
the Dynastar "omega" fibro-metal construction was an internal monocoque construction that Salomon replicated as a shell system. Brilliant!!!!! Still great skis way ahead of their time.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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Probably something to do with the prevalence of cocaine in the 80s... People wanted massively long straight skis to do lines off of.
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The longest skis were generally used by Americans, from what I remember. American males, to be precise. I think there may be a clue in that. They'd be in the cable car with their big skis, and then you'd see them barely able to stem turn the things down the hill. So reason #1: they serve the same purpose large cars do, to people who are worried about "their size".
Otherwise... the size of a ski (or snowboard) is a design decision. They engineer the ski so that the flex-response, which is more important than the nominal length, is whatever you want it to be. It would be easy (but confusing) to make skis in a single length but with variable flexes, so they could be bought by people of any weight. You can see why that would not be sensible, but it's entirely possible technically.
Whilst materials are a little more sophisticated now, that doesn't stop you making skis just as long as they used to be. And it doesn't particularly enable you to make them shorter.
On piste "stability" is more determined by the use of metal and damping than the running length of the ski. In powder "float" is mostly a function of surface area issue, not running length.
=> It's a fashion issue.
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@skimastaaah, Although they stocked them, the early Salomon "monocoques" were much derided by the shop we used. To the extent that I never even tried them. (So I could be well wrong). I did try the prototype "Pilots" and wasn't much impressed. But the X-Screams they evolved from were a lovely hangover ski.
@philwig, It may have taken the Americans longer to catch on, as I don't recall them having any longer skis in the late 80s.
I'm sticking with my thesis. Also, I'm pretty sure that contemporary reports were that the designer at Elan had been working on shorter skis with shorter radius sidecuts but the materials and manufacturing didn't allow for a production ski such as he had in mind until the early 90s.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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There was the macho thing with "the longer your skis then the better the skier you were". Including the "Look how good a skier I am" when standing with your skis in a queue for the bubble either resting them on your boot like the chap on the far right of the picture or holding them off the ground like the guys in the back row. Never just rest them on the ground as that made them look shorter.
Hire shops would ask what length you had last year then give you skis 5cm longer for this year
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FAQ
They are only 176cm long though 
