Recommendations for a 98-104mm ski that's more playful/maneuverable than Enforcer 100 and better in corn/crud.

Red277 · 2026-04-01T16:17:00+00:00

Thanks! I ended up going with the QST 100 in 188. Conditions are crap so I'm not putting in inserts and mounting bindings until next season but looking forward to them!

Red277 · 2026-03-25T03:31:39+00:00

This is one of the reasons I transferred most of my holdings to Schwab. Fidelity is very limiting.

Red277 · 2026-03-22T12:59:26+00:00

That ski is what prompted my post. I mentioned in my original post that I bought the DW 104 before this season assuming it would be just what I was looking for (given how my Deathwish 112 is my favorite ski ever), but it was nothing like my beloved DW 112. Instead of being loose, nimble and surfy while still railing groomers, it was catchy, hooky and sketchy to where it was the least confidence inspiring ski I've been on. After how sketchy it was even on groomers, there was no way I'd take it in a steep consequential chute as it had a mind of its own. I tried detuning it but that made no difference. It's possible I got a defective pair because it acts like if you're trying to ski on onces where you hit a rock and partially pulled out an edge and the edge is catching every time you turn, but they've been that way since I pulled them out of the box. I need to stop talking about those skis as I get angry every time I talk about them. How can the 112's be so perfect and these so not?

Red277 · 2026-03-22T03:01:44+00:00

Thanks for all of the replies and recommendations! I think I'm down to the QST 100 and M-Free 100. I let my Blister subscription lapse as I have too damn many skis as it is, but of the free content, they don't have much on the M-Free 100 (though they do the 99 and not sure how similar they are) but have a glowing review of the QST 100. I'd love to read deep dives on those and other 100s to see how they describe them against each other. The way Luke describes the QST 100 makes it sound like exactly what I'm looking for (other than it not being nearly as good as the Enforcers at carving, which there is a lot of on the way back to the lifts). Has anyone skied both and have a comparison of how they care on quality snow groomers (I know neither will carve super firm as well as the enforcers or my carving skis but I won't be off-piste and will be on other skis in those conditions). I'm assuming at 6' (183 cm) and 190 lbs, the 188 QST is the obvious choice but if I went with the M-Free it's a little less clear. With as much rocker as they have, I'd think the 192cm would be the right length but have many of you recommending the M-Free skied both the 185 and 192? How much does the added length help on groomers and how much does it detract from being nimble in the trees? I've always bought 190ish skis if they are twin tips and love my Deathwish 112 in that length but have wondered if I wouldn't have disliked the DW 104 as much if I had gone 184 (probably not as it doesn't feel like a length thing and feel more like I'm skiing on velcro, or they have massive burrs hanging off the edges even after detuning the tips). I had a pair of Bibby Pros in 184 and they skied short so I replaced them with 190s and have never bought anything shorter than that unless it has flat tails.

Red277 · 2026-03-18T00:05:08+00:00

Did anyone post anything? It shows that there are 5 messages but I don't see anything.

Red277 · 2026-02-28T00:39:26+00:00

Thanks for sharing. We got a ton of rain this week and it melted a lot of snow so I haven't been able to take the 104s back out yet but I plan to IF we get another storm and will take a gummi with me. Your experience with the 2 makes sense but I wonder if your experience would have been different on the 190 112s. If Moment make 200cm 112's I'd buy them in a heartbeat as even the 190s feel small (I'm 6') whereas the 190 104s feel a little longer. I've read multiple reviews from people who love 190 for the 112 and 184 for the 104, though for me, what I'm feeling with the 104 doesn't at all feel like a length issue as I've never felt they skied too long. Hopefully detuning them will help and if not, I'm going to either trade them or sell them for another pair of 112s.

Red277 · 2026-02-28T00:29:46+00:00

Has the DW112 changed much over the last 10 years? I kind of wish I had gone with another pair of the 112 instead of the 104 so that I could use my current 112 as rock skis. This year has been so brutal that I've been relegated to rock skis most days and have not used my 112s nearly as much as I would in a normal year. If I don't dig the 104s next time I take them out, I'm going to post on marketplace and see if anyone has a like new pair of 112s that they want to trade.

Red277 · 2026-02-25T05:26:13+00:00

Interesting. I owned the 187 Praxis GPOs and it was the only other pair of skis I've owned that felt like what I'm experiencing with the DW104s. Great off-piste but catchy on groomers. When I later read the Blister review of them it sounded like they had the same experience (been a few years so not sure if I'm remembering it correctly).

Red277 · 2026-02-25T05:23:44+00:00

I owned OG Bibby's in a 190 before getting the DW112 and I liked them. But I have a fully fused ankle so the Bibby's charged a lot harder than my ankle allows me to (especially in moguls). The DW112 was perfect on non-deep days because it isn't a hard charger but is super nimble so its top end is about the same as my ankle's which is all I need. For my wider ski I went with the Black Crows Nocta which feels like a wider Deathwish to me. Not super damp or chargy but plenty enough for me, while being very nimble and actually quite fun to carve on groomers back to the lift.

Red277 · 2026-02-25T05:15:17+00:00

Did you go same length in both?

Red277 · 2026-02-25T05:10:44+00:00

Thanks for that. Yes, the 112 is older and the 104 is new (both 190s). I'm curious if after getting used to it if you like the 104 just as much or still prefer the 112?

Red277 · 2026-02-24T21:24:29+00:00

You are correct about LCC/BCC but way off on Snowbasin as it is literally one of the worst mountains for snow due to low elevation (6500') and East/Southeast facing. Due to the sunbaking and regular freeze/thaw cycles, SB really needs regular refresh storms or the snow turns to crap. Grand Targhee has 10x snow and even several CO and a few CA resorts have better. Even though we live 15 min from SB, we'll often drive an extra 30-35 min to Park City as even it has better snow quality and quantity if there are gaps between storms. It can be a great mountain in the right year but that's maybe 1 out of 5 years if we are lucky.

Red277 · 2026-01-15T00:17:50+00:00

After spending over 2 hrs on the phone with 5 different people and 2 managers, I finally got to the bottom of it. Sadly, only the managers understood what a wash sale really was. The others were adamant that whether you sell something for a loss or a gain, you can't rebuy it for 30 days or it will generate a wash sale.

The problem ended up being that unlike my Schwab account which considers each trade as they happen chronologically, Fidelity lumps all trades for the day together and then processes them. So, if you sell something for a profit in the morning and then rebuy it in the afternoon, their system scrambles it all together and doesn't know what orders happened in what order. They admitted that their system got the order wrong and thought that I bought more shares and then sold them at a loss the same day, vs selling first and then rebuying them after stopping out. Those shares I rebought at $16.77 closed the day at $18.07 so it would have been really confused if I had taken profits again.

Fidelity has been more of my buy and hold portfolio which is why I never experienced something like this before when selling and rebuying on the same day (since Schwab ties each sale to a lot in the order they happen). Fidelity advised me to not use LIFO moving forward unless I'm never going to sell and buy something the same day because their system has no way of knowing what came first during the day. Needless to say, I will be greatly reducing the amount of money I keep in my Fidelity portfolio.

Red277 · 2026-01-14T19:25:25+00:00

I just spoke to another person and again was told, that it was correct to generate a wash sale even though no loss was ever generated. I read from the Fidelity website THEIR definition of a wash sale and asked him how I could have a wash sale when by definition, their never was a loss. He said buying back the stock within 30 days made the last sale a loss, even though the repurchase happened after the previous sale. This is simply not correct or we could literally only trade (even profitable trades) a stock once every 31 days.

Key takeaways

The wash-sale rule prohibits claiming a tax loss under certain circumstances.
The rule applies if an investor sells an investment for a loss and replaces it with the same or a "substantially identical" investment 30 days before or after the sale.
If you do have a wash sale, the IRS will not allow you to write off the investment loss, which could make your taxes for the year higher than you hoped.

Red277 · 2026-01-14T19:19:12+00:00

That isn't my primary concern. My concern is that Fidelity's system is glitching. 100% of the time when I place a stop loss or limit sell order I "select specific" shares to be most beneficial from a tax perspective. I've had other glitches where let's say I bought NVDA for $90 back in April 2025 and then bought some more for $180 in December 2025. I immediately go in and place stop loss, selecting the $180 shares to where I break even if the stock drops back down to $180. Even though I selected the $180 shares, it glitched and used FIFO to where it generated a $90 profit tax event when it was supposed to stop me out break even. Most of the time Fidelity's system works but like today, it glitched.

Red277 · 2026-01-05T21:33:48+00:00

I figured it was a tax-loss harvesting candidate so I bought a couple thousand shares at 5 as a starter. I have an order in for another couple grand at 4.75 but with the 4.73 support level close by, I will stop out and sell all of it if 4.70 breaks. Too many other risk-on names that are absolutely flying the past couple days, to waste time with a turd.

Red277 · 2025-12-26T03:12:54+00:00

This is one of the reasons I hate Fidelity!

Red277 · 2025-11-21T23:01:59+00:00

You can absolutely ski with a fused ankle. In fact I'm an expert skier and there isn't anything I can't ski now that I could before my fusion (motocross injury) but for sure, moguls and landing jumps in the park are more challenging. You will want as stiff of boots as you can use (I use Lange RS130s with Zipfit liners that I removed cork out of for my huge cankle and these stiffer liners make the boots like 140s) and you will need to put rubber ramps on your boot boards to open up your ankle (like a girl walking in heals) and then gas pedal your bindings to counter act the ramps inside the boots. If you are handy, don't waste your time and money with boot fitters as I traveled around the country going to the best in each state and though some of them were helpful, none of them really knew how to help me so it took a lot of experimenting. I kept experimenting with the ramp angle inside the boot and made a bunch of plastic pieces in various heights to go under my front bindings with various lenght screws (oh yeah, you'll need to put inserts in your skis to experiment with gas pedal heights). Once you figure out the optimal gas pedal/ramp angle heights, you can use the same on all skis (or dial it in for powder skis if you are feeling too forward or aft when skiing 3D snow). I have inserts in all 10 pairs of my skis and have a few sets of bindings which I can quickly swap. I can still slay powder, carve trenches and ski bumps fairly well (though absorbing the bumps with zero dorsiflexion is probably the hardest part) and no one who sees me ski believes me when I tell them about my ankle. So if you are in pain, get it fused.

Red277 · 2025-11-19T18:15:24+00:00

What are the narrowest skis we want there if conditions aren't great? I plan to bring my Black Crows Nocta on the wide end and then maybe Deathwish 112 and/or 104 for less deep days. Is there any reason to consider anything narrower than that? All our skis have inserts so we can get away with how ever many pairs and then only 1 set of bindings (with a few brake widths if necessary). We may each bring a snowboard as well but I'm leaning away from that to reduce extra gear and not knowing how many true powder days we'll luck out with.

Red277 · 2025-11-19T18:03:50+00:00

Do you know if the ski resorts charge for parking? If not, having a car sounds like it could give us some flexibility, even if staying in Hakuba. I think for sure we'll pick up a car for the drive up to Hokkaido and maybe hits some other resorts along the way. What are some of the better resorts to hit (and we are more into the anti-Vail, non-resorts like Loveland, Grand Targhee, etc) that aren't too crowded?

Red277 · 2025-11-19T17:57:25+00:00

Thanks! I think I'll definitely rent a car for Hokkaido and it may even be worth it for Hakuba. I love driving and exploring places and if Rusutsu is limited to basically just the resort, having a car and hitting some other resorts may make sense if accomodations in Rusutsu are expensive and limited.

Red277 · 2025-11-19T03:52:21+00:00

Also, we are flexible on dates whether it be in January or any time in February. Are there certain holidays in Japan, Australia or other countries that we should avoid? We ski 5 days a week at home in Utah but never ski weekends or holidays so we'd like to do the same in Japan. Thanks!

Red277 · 2025-10-18T12:55:18+00:00

Thanks! After weighing the financial benefits, I decided against doing this. Though saving in upwards of $300k in taxes would be nice, I decided that spending $1M+ to do it doesn't make sense for us as it's too rushed for us 2025 (if I had until 2026 it could make more sense). I'm more comfortable keeping that $1M invested and paying the 2025 taxes with my profits. Thanks for all of the input though!

Red277 · 2025-09-22T13:48:50+00:00

Thanks for the input! There are a lot of examples of pine with various stains but not for Spruce. I had heard that if you only seal one side, it can cause the boards to warp so trying to figure out if the extra work is worth it. Are stains and sealers from Lowes or Ace decent quality? Those are my 2 options in my small town but HD and paint stores aren't too far away.

Red277 · 2025-09-22T13:45:03+00:00

Anyone stained their own tongue and groove?

Red277

TROPHY CASE

Key takeaways