Serpens

The ski to pick up after the ego is back in the jar of formaldehyde in the closet, and you just want to have some fun. I like to think of these guys as the direct descendents of the first ski; they are the ones to use if you need to go somewhere over a wide variety of terrain. They aren't the best at anything, but they do just about everything. A new incarnation of the classic XCD-GT, with a little more tip width, they are best saddled with burly 3-pins, perhaps a cable, mid to heavy leather boots, and a weird looking wool hat. You can't race nordic or shred couloirs, but if you only want one ski for everything in between, this is it.

I don't own these skis, so I give them the same score as Chenault. I did, however, watch as my brother-in-law skied them on a fairly long mixed tour of Round Top.

Until we got to the steep stuff, he had no trouble climbing with the pattern (up to 15°). For anything over 20°, he had to use skins.

The snow was just a hair short of nightmarish: super hard breakable crust OR mashed 'taters, with nothing in between. Robert had beefy tele boots (Garmont Gara) and a beefy 3-pin. While his telemark turns on the ice were pretty tentative, he was able to make snowplow/parallel turns pretty effectively on this setup.

Fischer makes a beefier waxless patterned ski ("Outta bounds" or something like that). At that point, you start asking yourself if you shouldn't just use a normal pair of tele skis with kicker skins???