yea it sounds like you should get elizabeths then since you want them for park and stuff. I have both bacons and lizzies, and the lizzies are more well rounded I'd say. The bacons are a great ski, but much more powder oriented, it's a lot of ski to haul around for everyday all mountain riding/groomers. Way too much ski for the park if you ask me. They are also a lot stiffer underfoot then the lizzies, they actually seem to have a completely different flex pattern as it's a lot harder to butter on them, at least it's nothing like lizzie softness. I guess this makes the bacons a little more stable though at speed and crud. The mantra is a good ski, keep them for big mountain riding!
I have been using my bacons more lately though only because they have a good edge on them. The edges on my lizzies are rounded, so I can't get an edge on anything icy, but if the elizabeths had good edges, I would be using them more on groomer days.
I'd say the bacons are slightly better for going fast through sketchy stuff, but still by no means is it ANT stability. I've been sketched out a few times when trying to dump speed when maching through choppy hard stuff, the tips start flopping around and it's just scary. I haven't gone down on them yet, but there's been a couple times where I was positive I was haha. In comparison, I've ridden ANTs and you can basically point it through mogul fields of crud... I would never conisder doing that on Elizabeths! I'd be afraid of going over the handle bars, catching an edge, etc. Your mantras are for that stuff.
The Elizabeths and Bacon are where it's at though in my opinion. It's a completely different style of ski, some love it, others will hate. Who needs mogul skis anymore anyway? I haven't skied my lizzies in much powder, this year has been a bad snow year (blah blah blah)... but in the powder I have had them in (like 1 or 2 day old, 8inch deep), they float like a dream. The tips flex up, almost like they are reverse camber, the just sit on the snow. I don't know how they would be in real deep and light pow, I imagine you'd have to really mach and sit back to get the tips up at first. There was a pow day where I had Jp Juliens, and only took a few runs on them, then traded them for my Lizzies! It was chopped up by that point though and I wasn't crazy over the lizzies in that stuff. I keep wanting to try them on a big pow day, but the bacons are too much fun and powder days are hard to come by!
The bacons feel a lot different from the elizabeth, I wouldn't exactly describe them as a longer version of the elizabeth, they ski quite a bit different. The fact that the tips and tails have early rise, makes them look funky and ski shorter on hardpack. The ski took a bit of getting used to in the powder, I think it's because of the tip design, they really like to slide out sideways, but once I got the hang of that, they just keep getting better and better, and more and more fun. As long as you keep your speed up, they are like riding a big boat in powder, I see no need for pontoons or anything reverse sidecut, etc, bacons have the versatility that those skis don't have.
I think I've found the ideal quiver for me.
-Elizabeth for all mountain/park (understand that I'm not a park rat by any means, but I'll slide a rail and hit a table from time to time, when there's absolutely nothing better to do of course!)
-SFB - Powder days, charging soft snow, switch pow
-JP/Juliens mounted AT for backcountry. They are super light, and I think they'd make a great touring ski. Originally I was going to use Bacons or Lizzies for touring, but the Bacons are too heavy and I want to keep regular bindings on them. I used a trekker setup one day to tour on the bacons.. I kept up fine, but I was beat by the end of the day, and a lighter setup would be much more welcomed. It's a lot of ski to haul around in the BC.
Only dilemmna I think I might be faced with next year, is, do I keep the bacons, or replace them with EP Pros? HAHA
Once you go fat... you don't go back!
Very unorganized and lots of random thoughts, but hey this isn't english class! hopefully that helps.
