ARG! its a pirate's life for me!

i was going to say i hate you, but i don't, i just wish there was enough pow here for those...

half the people in this thread have ON3P in their signature....that makes me happy.

anyway, your quiver is tits! Very nice.  I think though ARGs are going to be a blast. 

I have a boot PK tonight at work, and we just got a pair of ARGs in. They are by far the most ridiculous ski I've seen on a ski shop wall since the prophet 130. But the scary part is that while the owner looks at it and goes "WTF is this???!?!?!" I look at it and go "Wow that makes sense as a pow ski...I want one".

Yeah when I was getting mine mounted in the shop some guy came in while we were drilling them and was like what the fuck you are mounting water skis? I explained for a second, and he was amazed. Said he used to shoot movies with stump at verbier back in the 80s and was amazing at what we are using to ski shit they did with 60mm waisted 215s. lol

O YEA IM GONNA GET SOME OF THOES FOR THE EAST COAST POWWWW!!

i know shit, back in the day they skied powder with less then 70 at the waist, and some people fucking tele-marked down big huge bowl's

sick skis, but def. not stiffer then the ANTs.

I'm so jealous right now, I've got some Prophet 130's, and some JP's on hold...and I'm thinking that if the situation ever presented itself, I might trade both pairs for those ARG's, they are ridiculously sexy. The whole quiver is sick. Iggy - what's up with on3p? We are all anxiously awaiting an update, preferably with pics and specs of some finished sticks.

The ski really will change the way people ski. The tip is key w/ the only sidecut right under foot. That keeps the ski from hooking in top crud. That and its stiffness make it a better ski than the Pontoon, in my opinion. I can't wait to get on em.' I should get mine next week - I hope. No rush though. Boreal is the only thing open in Tahoe and it doesn't look too hopeful any time soon.
I'd also like to try some of the other variations on this design idea though. Just to see how each skis. Surely they all have their advantages.

man...

awesome brake bendage!

now please don't tell me you life on the east cost

the flex looks fucked up. skis normaly touch at the nose and at the tip, but not in the middle

Press Frame is almost complete.  Money has been the major issue at the moment, but finally should have some coming in shortly.

It has been hard with school, plus I will be gone for 2 weeks, so I am hoping to be colse to pressing skis mid january.  Found a company that can supply bamboo cores too, so probably going to go thru them!

whole oint of the ski, noob :)

^point

those are some sick skis. We just recently got a pair into my shop and im in awe of how awsome they are. Id love to have a pair, but sence i only ride about 30 days in the mountians t aint gona happen

Yaahrrrr, you're a bastard.

I dont get why everybody is like "oooooo, these are soo uber neat."
 There have been skis built just like this before specifically for powder. Everybody here is basically basing there oohs and ahhs over the graphics and the rocker construction. There have been plenty of skis before with that same construction but just because Armada "the core company" made one, then its all of a sudden cool. I guessing prolly about 99% of the people on this site will never actually ski these yet they are "so cool."

^I might be wrong but arent the ARG the ONLY twin tip skis with rocker construction, decent graphics and reverse sidecut before the waist, a standard sidecut at the waist and reverse sidecut on the tail?

but yea the fact that armada makes them makes is helping building the hype up.

reverse cambers skis have been there for a while, atomic, k2 and volant made some.

sweet mary mother of god look at those babies!

Iggy - glad to hear the press is being finished, and the bamboo sounds like money, that's what I would have gone with if I was in your position too. Let us know when the first pair are done.

Killermonkey - Yes, there have been rockered skis with reverse sidecut before, and non-traditional shapes too, Praxis, DP Lotus, Spatula, and so forth...however the ARG is the only ski ever (to my knowledge) to have sidecut underfoot, making getting back to the lift via hardpack easier, that was one Spatula suffered from, awesome in pow, scary as hell in hardpack.

That's because people with appreciation for this ski also have appreciation and involvement with on3p. We know what's up.

SO thats what it was for. Do you think there is enough sidecut underfoot? Doesnt seem like a whole hell of a lot.

You mentioned the lotus in there, and yet fail to realize that it too has sidecut underfoot. The shapes of the 138 and the ARG are very very similar, however construction and dimensions vary.

You are probably right, I haven't seriously looked into the 138 though, I know I can't afford it right now so I never researched it. I was just using the Lotus as an example of non-traditional shapes in skis.

FYI....look at a pair on pontoons up close.  Same exact thing.  They all have some actually sidecut under foot, their tips are just fucking gigantic.

After 2 10" days on my FFFs now....I really want to mod them with a rocker tip so they float like a motherfucker.  My first fat skis are going to be around 145/120/125 with a nice, big rocker

Definitional clarity: when you talk about the stiffness of the ANT, recognize that last year's were somewhat stiffer than this year's.

However, the ARG isn't stiffer than either of them.

But it's DEFINITELY not stiffer than the first gens.

ON3P Shoutout, because I don't have it in my sig!

I can't speak for skiing them (yet) but hand flexing them my ARGs are indeed stiffer than this years ANT.

I think I need to call in Levin.

Either way they look cool.

I'll go with "I can't be sure, but I'd say that the ARGs are damn stiff, and it's exactly what you'd want out of the ski, since you don't need the tip to flex to not get tip dive". When you flex it, it does indeed feel pretty damn stiff. I'd say around as stiff as an ANT, maybe more. But I'm pretty sure that "stiffness", in the traditional sense, is irrelevant in how the ARG performs, so none of this matters.

I'm glad you guys chimed in above. Every untraditional powder ski that has come out since the spatula has addressed this issue of hardpack skiing. Adding flat spots and traditional sidecut underfoot. The general idea hasn't change since the spatula (which has now been around for 4 years). They suck on hard pack, but you can do it, traverses are where they really suck though. Pontoon was supposed to be a big improvement, and on hardpack, but that tip proved to be just too big, and it lost the crud performance of the spat. It's like Shane forgot he wrote the whole MIND FLOSS for the spats. DP figured it out with the 138, gotta keep that tip thinner than waist, but we can tweak it underfoot to make it more managable. Many people have said that the ARG is just a Lotus copy cat. Shape wise it pretty much is, but like all skis, it has its own characteristics. It's progression, the spatulas ended up being sold primarily out of people's garages and on ebay because no one believed. Now several companies are experimenting and building. Having put 2 seasons on the spats, there is nothing that will give you more confidence and flat out fun in pow than a reverse sidecut and reverse camber. (Who cares if it's camber or rocker, it's all the same). ARG looks fun, light and an improvement on the spat. A little short for my liking, if my spats broke tomorrow I'd be buying some 192 lotus 138's.

If you haven't read it, try to find Shane's 'mind floss' it will give you some insight to the thinking behind reverse sidecut and camber.


Oh and onP3skis

that is such a reasonable ski to have in the quiver i mean so many days out of the year that ski is soo practical good job!

those are so sick
where'd you get 'em?

Posted originally over at TGR:

Had my ARGs out yesterday on Whistler for the Peak opening. They do not suck.

First off, this is the first time I've ever skied a non-traditional shape, so my experience is limited to regular fatties (JP vs. Julien, ANT, Made'ns, and 1st gen Pistols). I lapped the Peak probably 6-7 times though the day and even as it got tracked out I was happy to be on them. They ski the deep stuff like nothing I've ever skied. The floatation is amazing and as a result you can absolutely rip. I'm used to soft skis and these were so much more stable going really fast and laying down huge turns on the open bowls. They wanted me to find stuff that was even steeper so I could go faster.

After waiting in line for about 40 minutes we only got one run in with the sun and with the fog and snow rolling in quickly were were off to find some lines in the trees. After reading many spatula reviews about their instant pivot point I was hoping to find something like it on these. They did not disappoint. Effortless transitition between turns, at least compared to regular sidecut skis, which allowed me to haul ass towards trees faster than I normally would because I knew I'd be able to turn on a dime once I needed too. It also helped going fast cause once I reached the bottom of the bowls I knew I'd need the speed.

On hardpack these things are slow. I heard about this problem on spatulas but did not expect it to be this bad. I'm usually the fastest one of all the guys I ski with and it was extremely frustrating getting passed by boarders on the flats as I was skating like mad. They are also really squirrelly on the groomers, but that was to be expected. You can feel the minimal sidecut in the middle of the ski, but you really have to be ripping to use it. With that 2mm of sidecut I have no idea what the turning radius would be, but its long. It took some getting used to, but by the end of the day I was more comfortable with it and wasn't almost bailing when gapers cut me off and forcing me to react quickly.

On the later runs in the day it was harder to find untouched lines but cutting through the semi-tracked out pow was a breeze. Definitely the most noticable difference compared to anything else I've skied. Going through some of this cut up stuff I noticed only a small difference between the untouched stuff. Virtually no tip flap made it so easy to charge through this stuff. This made me feel better about my purchase as I know I won't only be using them on the fresh, deep days but also 1 or even 2 days after the storm.

Towards the end of the day Whistler Bowl was completely tracked out with some pretty brutal moguls forming. Combined with the flat light this wasn't a enjoyable experience, but better than I thought it would be on the ARGs. It wasn't too difficult to manouver through them, and I seemed to be having an easier time than the guy I saw on Pontoons who crossed his massive tips a couple times and took a nose dive into a mogul once.

The slow speed on the cat tracks is definitely the most frustrating thing about them, but easily worth the inconvience in the pow. All in all I'm extremely happy with the skis, but would love to be able to try some 138s, spats and Pontoons, as well as EHPs, 120s to see how they compare.

I would have loved some ARGs today on blackcomb in the trees. They would have killed it.

YOU WHORE!!! Sweet setup