![]() ![]() That meant not just reworking the heavier, performance oriented carbon, full sidewall Helio platform into a light skinny ski. You need the lightweight for a reason but you also want to get down in a good fun way and have the performance there.” “If you’re going to put your skis on your pack and are probably at some point going to pull out a rope and harness, then the Cirques are the skis for you. The goal with the Cirque, says Black Diamond Ski Category Directory Andy Merriman, was to create an objective-oriented ski specifically for the ski mountaineering side of the community. The partial ABS sidewall and semi-cap construction trim weight without sacrificing much by way of performance. So I was excited to see how it would handle an objective closer to what it was made for: long approach ski mountaineering missions where ski weight and skiability carry relatively equal importance. The ski had been delightfully easy and light on the up, and unexpectedly fun in the powder snow on the down. I’d skied the Cirques one other day that spring, a resort uphill hamster wheel day in 10 inches of dense spring powder. I’d chosen the ski for our late day mission for two reasons: 1) Its sub-1000g weight gave me confidence I could cover the 14 mile round trip relatively quickly and 2) I wasn’t sure what sort of conditions we’d encounter and wanted to see how the ski would handle whatever was thrown at it. Sliding underfoot were the Black Diamond Cirque 78s, a new ski in a new category in Black Diamond’s 20/21 lineup. The mellower slopes we sought were farther down the ridge, which meant we’d burn more daylight to reach them. The ridge we stood on rolled out to the south and off of it ran numerous open slopes ranging in pitch from 25 to 40 degrees. Doug and I had broken out of dense trees to witness a gentle kaleidoscope of evening sun patches passing over the not-too-distant flanks of nearby summits. Photo: approaching the ridge of a peak near Marble, Colorado last spring, I realized just how quickly daylight was fading. ![]() Dropping the 50 degree lip into Grizzly Couloir - no second thoughts here. ![]()
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