No love for K2 Kung Fujas?

I've posted a few threads about trying to find a replacement for my aging 2003 Atomic Sugar Daddies.

I'm an advanced/expert skier, can ski anything inbounds and prefers steep pow runs. I'm 6'1", 215 lbs, a little overweight, but also have pretty good ski muscles and leg power.  I needed a ski that would handle steep/deep, yet also have adequate manners on groomers because I ski with developing skiers.

After recommendations from my brother, who is 6'4", about the same weight, and has skied K2 Seth incarnations as an Aspen ski bum for the better part of a decade, I started to seriously look at the Kung Fujas.

I was concerned about the ski because it was less stiff than what I was skiing, and I felt I would overpower the ski. Still, I saw my brother certainly didn't overpower his Seths, so I took a second look, then took the plunge and picked up a set of 09/10 189 Kung Fujas when the price was right.

I skied them for the first time last weekend at Monarch, 3 days, all three days very different condition, and got a good feel for them.

Put simply, these things ROCK as an all mountain ski. Holy Crap.

First day- No fresh snow in a week, warm weather has laid down fairly hard boilerplate, although the sunny weather softended it. I hadn't really figured out how to turn the ski and was hack/skidding many turns, but the edge still grabbed every turn. From the get go, these were much better on hard snow than my old Atomics.  Turns were lively, but the ski never felt floppy.

Second day- Storm hits, fresh untracked 12" of snow. The ski charged hard all day, and felt very balanced.  Whenever I would get bounced into the backseat, the ski seemed to naturally push me back over my feet. The rocker seemed to do its job in helping the ski float. I hiked Mirkwood Bowl when the gates dropped, went weak on the top of the Mirkwood Bowl cornice and broke it on me starting a mini-avalanche, but was able to pop the skis back under me and ski it out. The skis cut beautiful lines, no tip dives, just effortless hard charging turns at speed.  I'm thinking, "hey, the ski is pretty cool."

Third day- Fresh snow is now crud. Underneath the crud is rock-solid refrozen boilerplate from the thawing prior to the storm.  I think the defining run was a moderate black run that had patches of boilerplate mixed with crud, and then pockets off loose, soft snow, so that every turn carried you through each. I was struggling on the upper part of the run, trying to tailor each turn to the kind of snow it was on, then getting pushed around when  the snow changed mid-turn. Halfway through, I inadvertently laid down a nice carve, and was shocked to have the ski compliantly hold the edge through the crud and loose snow. I rolled the ski over into another turn, and the ski just ran over everything making nice neat arcs the whole way down.  I've never been able to railroad track cut up snow, yet here we are.

I never felt I was overpowering the ski, and while the tip and tails are a bit (lot) floppy, the ski is still fairly firm underfoot.  I could certainly drive this ski.

I've seen very few comments about the Kung Fu, and I think this is really a gem of a ski. Try one!

Quote:

Originally Posted by chickenmonkey 

I was talking to a K2 rep and he was saying the Kung Fujas were the closest thing to the last generation Obsetheds and if you were a fan of those then to try the Fujas.

That said, they seemed less bomber than my 08 Obsetheds but I haven't skied them so I donno. I would love to know from folks that have skied both.

The dimensions of the Kung Fujas have always been very similar to the previous generation Seth. Very similar flex and similar design.

When they first came out, they were nearly identical to the Seth Pistols, with 2 mm off the tip added to the tail to make it a better ski to ride switch.

The 2010/2011 model is 102 mm wide instead of the 95 of previous years, while the Seth is now 117 waist, which to me pushes it out of the range of an everyday ski like the previous Seths.