Details: 184cm, radii ~19.5, sidecut 118/76/104mm, extended wood core, traditional shapeAverage retail price: $899
Conditions: Jackson Hole (Wyoming) sub-zero mostly sunny, 0 inches of fresh powder in 24 hours.
Terrain: Groomed intermediate trails with soft chalky snow on top of hard ice, off-trail advanced in-bounds bumps with chunky, unpredictable conditions.
Review: After fighting with the twin tips all morning, I switched to the Volkl AC3's for the afternoon and the difference was night and day. They aren't overly shaped, allowing for cruising the groomers with gentle, large radius turns. It has some fancy technology, but it felt nicely stiff to me, holding its edge very confidently with zero chatter, and extremely stable at speed. The graphics are a little boring and generic, but that's once of the tradeoffs with an all-mountain ski intended for the masses. I enjoyed these so much, that I'm keeping them for tomorrow, which looks to be another groomer day, as this afternoon's snow showers never really materialized. I can't quite stomach $900 for a pair of skis when I rarely get more than 10 days on the mountain in a season, half of which are spent snowboarding now. And honestly, as confident as these skis are on the groomers, they are not a $900 improvement over my K2 Four's, which are very happy on groomer days.
Score (scale of 1-3): 3 - Very fun current-gen ski, would buy as a replacement/upgrade to outdated or broken skis
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